I am Afraid I'm Young

I’m young. I’ve been constantly reminded of my age of late and I am young. 25 years of life is what I can tout under my belt and as I’ve been told: “people have socks older than me”. As I’ve been on this journey with God and myself, so far I’ve come to the conclusion that I am young.




I am afraid of being young. I want to be a great thinker. I want to be known and my words to be known. Just putting that down on paper as bold as brass and as arrogant as a peacock in front of his woman proves that I am young. What do I actually have to say that has any value? What can I add to the volumes of great thinkers? What new innovative idea could I really put down that hasn’t yet been put down? The answer, which pains me to say is nothing. I have bits of good things to add to this world, all of which have been graciously given to me by my Father…but I haven’t lived and wrestled with enough to really bring much of anything to the table.



I’m afraid of being young. I want to be respected. I want to be well-liked. I want to be sought out for my opinions. Again, these arrogant statements of the heart prove I am young. I fear in my heart that if I bring nothing to the table for the church now, I will disappear in the mist of obscurity, I fear not doing anything. When you’re young, there’s this fire that pushes you to do bold, crazy, wild things for God…I’m afraid that if I don’t give into this flame, one day it will peter out and I will have added nothing to the world of worth when I die.



I’m afraid of being young. I have read of pastors my age who have started churches and now many years later have been used by God to lead mega-churches…the very same church they started when young. I want to live that way. Balls to the wall (to quote another pastor named Brian Tome) is the way I want to live. It means nothing held back. I’m afraid that I will shrink back if I don’t step up now.



I’m afraid of being young. I fear that I am truly nothing of substance. I am afraid that I don’t matter and that I am not loved. This fear is what drives me sometimes to be known, to be noticed. Today, I had a couple ugly thoughts. One was how I could shovel every ones car out for them being very nice in doing it. Then the ugly inside of me said: “Yea, and then you can call the news station telling them that there is this great young man shoveling everyone’s car out for them and how they should do the story”. My desire was not to help people, but to be noticed helping people.

The other ugly thought was how I need to be apart of a good cause, like helping with the sex trade, or going to Haiti and helping out the orphans, or putting aside a good amount of money to help people in need. My desire wasn’t to help for helpings sake. I felt compelled to do these things because people I look up to are doing them and heck everyone is doing it. Plus, people will look at me as a nice humanitarian type dude. (I do have healthy motives too, God is birthing a desire to get behind a cause, not sure which one yet. I just have to get my motives in-line with his first)



I’m afraid of being young. I hate it when people lecture me or look down on me because of my youth. I hate it because they all have valid reasons to do so…after all I am young. I’ve been struck by these thoughts as of late. I hate feeling unloved. I hate feeling lesser than. I hate not having a valid addition to conversations. I hate…a lot about being young.



I lack the maturity that I need in order to get where God is calling me. I lack the experience, the knowledge and a lifetime of, well, life to get where God wants me to get to. I struggle when God gives me visions for my future because I always try and make it happen. I always expect myself to be “there” and sadly I act as though I am. All of the crap I’ve mentioned in past writings about my struggles is all due to the fact that I lack much. I lack the ability to accept the grace of God. I lack the ability to allow myself and all my faults to be wrapped up in the love of the Father. I feel as though I still need to perform for Him in order to make Him proud…by the way…I HATE that I STILL struggle with this! I know it is a problem within me and each time I make a leap and overcome a hurdle when it pertains to this struggle, I always re-find it somewhere in the recesses of my being needing to be re-ripped out! I am arrogant because it is a façade to cover up my need for praise…rather than it being just pride, it is the child of my fear of rejection. It’s a double whammy that I am constantly trying to kill.



WOW…this is only day one of sitting back and listening. It’s been tough and overwhelming to come back to these waters again…obviously God wants me to understand the gravity of it all.



I’m afraid of being young. Just when I thought I was getting to know stuff and be respectable for my vast array of knowledge, God slams me in the gut with this phrase: “You are young…and that’s OK”.