I'm not too young!

While I have been up here in Orlando I have had to introduce myself many times. Converstations usually start one of two ways. Let me illustrate:

Number 1

Number 2

Both end awkwardly, they walk away and I stand there wondering what just happened. So many people are telling me what they think I should be doing right now in my life. "You should go to college." "You are too young to be doing what you are doing." "Just wait until you are older." "Do you want to join our youth group?"

It has gotten to a point where I don't want to tell people my age... I want to avoid that question. Because my age immediately stereotypes me. Unfortunately, I don't fit into the stereotype so they try to drag me back into  the box that I don't fit into....... it is really discouraging. Here I am trying to follow the Lord, (and of course it doesn't make sense to everyone but it's what He wants me to do) and Christian people are telling me that I'm wrong.

WARNING: I am going to vent for a second. 

It is hard enough to leave my family, move to a completely new place without any friends and do a new job that is stretching me, without having to deal with people looking down on me because I am so young. Venting done... :)  

On Sunday afternoon I was really discouraged. I just wished I could be older....even 20 because that gets more respect than 19. Then I went to a church in High Springs to present the ministry of CYIA. I had only a few minutes so I didn't get to share one of my elaborate presentations, I simply told them how I got into CEF through CYIA. They watched me as I spoke, completely silent, but all the teens were listening. They respected me. 

Monday morning I shared my testimony again in a chapel at a Christian School. When the older people were talking their was giggling in the corner and talking over here, but when I got up they introduced me like this "This is Charissa, she is 19 years old, not very much older than some of you." They stopped talking and just looked at me expectantly, like "What is she going to say?" 

And it was on that stage that I suddenly realized why I am so young doing the job that I am doing. I am giving them an idea of what they can be like at 19. I'm telling them that they don't have to be like the stereotypical 19 year old. So many of these teens just want to make a difference, but society tells them that they are too young, the church tells them that too. But we're not too young. David was young, and he didn't go to college and God used him. Samuel was young when God used him. The little servant girl that told Naaman's wife about the prophet, God used her too. And there are so many other Biblical examples of people who changed the world when they were young. Maybe not the whole world, but just their world, their sphere of influence. 

As I was up there I knew that I have been giving the great opportunity to encourage teens to follow God, even at young ages. Also to give them an opportunity to do that through CYIA. 

I guess I wrote all of that just to say that now I know... I'm not too young. 

1 Timothy 4:12

Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an 

example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.