Age Is No Impediment

You are never too old to set a new goal or dream a new dream - C.S. Lewis

I am aging. I don’t like to admit it, but I am. I now receive regular membership offers from AARP, which I find very annoying. More seriously, I often wonder if God has any more work for me to do and if He can still use me. However, my Bible shows me God can, and will, use us, no matter what our age. All He needs is a willing heart.

Abraham thought he was too old. Jeremiah thought he was too young. Timothy thought he was too inexperienced. Noah was past his prime. God disagreed with all of them.

Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, “shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” (Genesis 17:17 NKJV).

Then said I: “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth” (Jeremiah 1:6 NKJV).

Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity (1 Timothy 4:12 NKJV).

Moses thought life had passed him by. He had left the courts of Pharaoh for a simple life in the wilderness herding sheep. He was eighty when the call from God came. One would think a forty-year-old Moses would have been a better bet for leading a few million Hebrews on what would ultimately become a forty-year hike in the wilderness. But God knew He needed a wiser, older, more tempered Moses to fulfil His calling. And speaking of temper, He also needed a Moses who had learned to control his. Murdering Egyptians whenever they irked him would not have been helpful to the cause. Also, what Moses learned in those years in the desert tending his sheep was perfect for handling the stubborn, hard-headed Hebrew flock he was going to be leading and his survival skills and understanding of the desert would be invaluable for the long march ahead under the harsh conditions.

Jeremiah was called when he was a youth and was horrified at the prospect. Self-confidence was not his strongest attribute, and God had to strengthen and encourage him that he could do whatever God called him to do.

But the Lord said to me, “Don’t say, ‘I am only a boy.’ You must go everywhere I send you, and you must say everything I tell you to say. Don’t be afraid of anyone, because I am with you to protect you,” says the Lord (Jeremiah 1:7-8 NCV).

Timothy was young and insecure. He was dealing with people older than himself in the church at Ephesus. Paul had to encourage him in the verse above not to let anyone make him feel that he was not capable of handling the job he had been called to do.

Noah was a hundred years old when God called him to service. And not just any service, service that required hard manual labor. It must have taken tremendous faith for Noah to take that first swipe of his axe to the gopherwood tree. Can you imagine being told by God to build an ark?

Noah had never seen rain, never mind a flood. In antediluvian times, the earth was a biosphere and a canopy of moisture covered the earth keeping the land watered.1 Added to that, the people of Noah’s time also had never experienced rain, so the mocking must have been intense. “Oh dear, Noah is still at it building his wooden contraption. There will be no gopherwood trees left at the rate he is going!”

Someone once said that those God calls, God endows. And He does. He uses the weak, the young, the old, and the foolish to advance His kingdom.

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty (1 Corinthians 1:27 NKJV).

Age is no impediment, whether you are young or more advanced in years. I always remind myself God is pretty old Himself.

Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bear fruit in old age; they shall be fresh and flourishing, to declare that the Lord is upright; He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him (Psalm 92:13-15 NKJV).

If you think you are too young or too old, think again. Open your heart and let Him show you what amazing adventures He has ahead for you if you are willing to heed His call.

“Don’t let age – whether the lack of years or the lack of years remaining – keep you from serving God. The heart for God knows no age” (David Jeremiah).