What is Holding Us Back?

Jeremiah ‘“ The Young Prophet

Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Then I said, “Alas, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, because I am a youth.” But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am a youth,’ because everywhere I send you, you shall go, and all that I command you, you shall speak. -Jeremiah 1: 4-7

Despite Jeremiah’s fears he listened to God’s voice and obeyed His commandments. Jeremiah ended up writing the longest prophetic book of the Bible, covering a span of around 40 years. He was most likely a teen when he became a prophet.

I would find that hard to believe. A young person just dropped everything he was doing and gave the rest of his life to God ‘“ having a career of prophesy from his youth? Didn’t God see Jeremiah’s age as a hindrance? No. In fact He said, ‘Do not say, ‘˜I am a youth,’ because everywhere I send you, you shall go, and all that I command you, you shall speak.’ God wouldn’t take any excuses from Jeremiah. He knew that a youth can be just as capable as an adult to preach the Word of God to an ungodly generation.

Stuck But Don’t Know It

In this day and age, the biggest problem we young adults face is not drugs or alcohol ‘“ but the stereotype that we’re stuck in. Today’s teens are categorized as adolescents, so they act like adolescents. The definition of adolescents is: The period of transition from childhood to adulthood, describing both the development to sexual maturity and to psychological and relative economic independence.

Orison Swett Marden states:

Every experience in life, everything with which we have come in contact in life, is a chisel which has been cutting away at our life statue, molding, modifying, shaping it. We are part of all we have met. Everything we have seen, heard, felt, or thought has had its hand in molding us, shaping us.

I find this to be very true. Whatever we encounter in our life has some effect on us. If we encounter no expectations and negativity, we respond accordingly. By categorizing teens as adolescents the world is forcing them to remain juvenile.

Biblical Age Categories

The entire Bible never mentions the word adolescence once. Notice that 1 Corinthians 13:11 says ‘When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.’ There was no going from a child to an adolescent. You were a child, then an adult.

Commerce Boost ‘“ Adolescence

Adolescence is a prolonged period of life where teens hang out until they finally get to grow up. The longer we are held captive in la la land, the longer we can be a huge money making opportunity for society. In fact, the description of adolescence from Wikipedia goes so far as to say, ‘In commerce, this generation is seen as an important target. Mobile phones, contemporary popular music, movies, television programs, sports, video games and clothes are heavily marketed and often popular amongst adolescents.’

Our Restricting Society

How could people like George Washington and Henry Ford make a name for themselves at such a young age? It’s because they were not restricted to live in an in-between stage by their society.

As I looked in the headlines today, I couldn’t find one article about teens that was positive. I’m still counting the number of negative articles I came across. Mostly all that teens are being fed today is negative. If people constantly tell us that we are irresponsible adolescents, that’s what we’ll be, unless we listen to God’s Word and believe what He says we are capable of.

As Alex and Brett Harris said in their entries on the Myth of Adolescence, ‘As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.’