She was an older woman, sweet, gentle and obviously in love with Jesus. “But,” she said, “I am too old to do anything for the kingdom of God, it is up to the younger generations to do it now.” She went on to say, “I don’t have talents that God could use, so I have nothing to offer.”
She was content to be in the fellowship of believers but believed she was too old to fulfill a purpose.
What a sad place to be! Yet, I meet women like her every day. Older, mature believers who love God deeply, but think they have nothing useful to offer in service to the Lord.
I totally disagree with her because I met someone like her as a younger believing that totally changed my life. She was about twenty years older and had lived a life with challenges similar to those I was facing at that stage of my life. She opened up to me and shared with me how God helped her overcome her struggles, gave her strength to face the darkest times in her life and how she was totally convinced that God heard our prayers, no matter how desperate.
I remember praising the Lord for her, not because she had wonderful answers for my questions, or solutions to my problems, but she convinced me to keep trusting the Lord. Her words were: “If God can do this wonderful thing for me, He can do it for you.”
Her presence in my life encouraged me because she had walked the journey I was still walking. Her years of faith gave me courage. Convinced me that God could be counted on.
I believe 2 Cor 1:3-7
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.”
Older believers have a role to play in encouraging younger believers. Time and grey hair qualifies them to be an encouragement. An older woman who comforts you through a tough time where she came through victorious, is much more powerful than all the counselors and life coaches in the world, because she knows Who she has believed and trusted.
“Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.” (Titus 2:3-5)
Older women still have much work to do in the Kingdom because in truth; no one quite gets a woman like other women.
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