We often get fixated on age and what is allowed (or not allowed) at certain ages.
It makes sense that young kids shouldn’t have the decision to have dessert before dinner, but Biblically, it seems that age is of little significance to be used by God.
For example, Abraham was 100 when he had his son Isaac. Caleb stormed the mountain of giants (Hebron) and expelled the three sons of Anak (the famous family of giants) at age 85. That’s not even to mention the numerous decendents of Adam (remember Noah?) who lived for hundreds of years old.
Or go the other direction and you have Jesus at age 12 teaching the teachers in the Temple. Scholars tell us that David fought Goliah sometime betwen the ages of 8-14. And since the duty of caring for the flocks were the duties of the youngest members of the household, there is good chance that the angels announced the birth of the Messiah to teenage shepherds.
In all these cases, it is not age that mattered, but faith. Each of the people mentioned above all lived lives of faith in the power, provision, and providence of God.
Age doesn’t seem to matter. Yet faith is everything.
And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented– of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us. Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (see Hebrews 11:32 – 12:2).
I’m cheering you on unto that end!
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