No "Best if Used by: Date"



Best if used by: Date

 In my morning devotions the other day, I read a passage in Hebrews that I've read dozens of times, but this time, I saw it in a totally new way.  The passage is Hebrews 11:11-12:

"And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. ¹² And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

Wow, it hit me!  God does not have a "Best if Used By: Date" for those that call him Lord and Savior!  I read this and just began to cry!  You see, I'm 54 (soon to be 55), and I just figured that I'd blown it, and that there was no way that God could use an old guy like me for much any more.  Begin a ministry?  What, at my age?  That's just not going to happen!  People my age are looking longingly towards retirement.  Funny, I don't see much about "retirement" in God's Word, but for some reason, I thought I'd been "put out to pasture" by Him already.

I read Charles Swindoll's Daily Devotionals every day, and that same morning I read this in Exodus 2 and 3:

¹¹ "One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. ¹² Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. ¹³ The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
 ¹⁴ The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”
 ¹⁵ When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. ¹⁶ Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. ¹⁷ Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.
 ¹⁸ When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”
 ¹⁹ They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”
 ²⁰ “And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”
 ²¹ Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. ²² Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”
 ²³ During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. ²⁴ God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. ²⁵ So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
¹ Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ² There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush."

In this passage, which is only the span of a dozen verses or so, we see a span of time covering about 40 years!  Moses was God's chosen man to set His people free.  He tried it under his own power, failed misserably, fled to Midian, found a family that took him in and gave him a wife, a new job (a shepherd, interesting choice of profession, isn't it -- it's a God thing), and a family.  For about 40 years, Moses hears nothing from God.  Then, when he's set up for beginning to think of his life as all ordered and in place, God calls to him from that burning bush!

If you keep reading the story, you see that God has decided it's time that Moses move into the next phase of his life.  Think about that for just a minute.  He's in his 50s, maybe older, and God is going to use him for one of the mose amazing things to have ever happened in His Word.  He's going to move nearly 1.5 million men, women, and children, countless livestock, tons and tons of belongings on a 40 year trek around and around the desert and eventually to the Promised Land!  No retirement for Moses!  He never even gets to settle down in that Promised Land, but he gets to see it, and that's seems to be enough for him.

Ok, so what does this all mean for me... for us...?  I think that it's time I re-think this whole age thing!  God doesn't seem to place a "Best if used by: Date" on any of His people.  When He decides to call someone to a particular ministry, He never looks at their chronological age.  He looks at their spiritual age.  It took Moses over 40 years to get to where God knew he could count on him to get the job done (and even then he made excuses, or tried to, but God didn't let go of him).  Oh, and if you really want to see that this age thing isn't a big deal to God, look at all the "old men and women" God used to do mighty things, it will astound you if you take time to do that study!

I make excuses, age, education, my history of failures, and anything else I can put up there to say I'm not the one.  Not the one for what?  I don't even know, I just put the excuses there and don't go beyond that.  It's time I (we) begin to listen to God's call and stop putting up so many excuses/barriers to what He wants us to do.  I'm not saying that God is going to call me to pastor a church, or become a traveling evangelist, or.... whatever else He could do.  What I am saying is that no matter what it is, I am going to stop putting up walls, excuses, and barriers to what He wants and will do with me.

Years ago, I went to Bill Gotthard's Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts.  At the end of a very long week of messages, we all received a small button with these letters on it: "PBPGINFWMY" - "Please Be Patient, God Is Not Finished With Me, Yet".  I even used that as an excuse.  I thought when God was finished with me, then I'd be able to be used by Him.  What I now realize is that the important part of that little phrase is "God is not finished with me, yet."  He will never be "finished" with me until He calls me home to Glory or I see Jesus come in His Glory to take us home to be with Him! 

Retirement?  I think you may stop working in the secular world, but there isn't a "retirement plan" for God's people.  You don't have a date/age at which you are not useful and cannot be called to do something for him if we are open to that calling. 

Best if used by: NO EXPIRATION DATE

Carl