How often are we reminded of our age? For me, as a member of the emerging generation, I get reminded quite often. “Don’t worry about starting in ministry. Remember, Jesus was 30 before he started his…” “We are looking for someone with experience…” “We don’t want this to be an ‘18 to 25′ thing…” I hear these remarks all the time. The other week, I was studying some things about the disciples that followed Jesus around, and got to thinking. Ok, these guys were probably late teens, maybe a couple in their 20s, when the Christ called them. They were in the beginnings of their careers as fishermen, tax collectors, etc, when the Christ called them out of apprenticeship of the world to an apprenticeship of himself.

These were young men who were not qualified to be disciples of other rabbis, because for some reason or another, they hadn’t accomplished all their religious study or done it satisfactorily. By the Christ calling these young men, he was essentially saying,” I don’t need experienced, knowledgeable people. I need people who are passionate and willing to learn. I have a gospel that is so simple, it can be understood and taught by the common man.”

So as I was pondering these things, the verse kept popping into my head that Paul wrote to Timothy: Let no one look down on you because you are young, but be an example… The Christ ascended to heaven, and left his followers standing below, not knowing what to do next, or what exactly had just happened. All they had was 3 years of living with this guy and hearing him teach, and now they were promised some “Helper” that would show them the way.

At this point, they were a group of 11 twenty-somethings. That’s all. Jesus had left the future of his church in the hands of a bunch of confused twenty-somethings. Then he gave them his Spirit, and told them to go preach the gospel.

That is all we need. We need a passion to see God glorified, and the power of his Spirit, and we, even as wet-behind-the-ears twentysomethings, can revolutionize the world for God.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2006 at 7:12 pm and is filed under 21CW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.