Mid-Life Crisis

I can't help but wonder if what our society calls a mid-life crisis is really G-d's wake up call.  With the understanding that there are four kinds of people, I'm guessing there are basically four types of reaction to that wake-up call.  Some simply turn it off and continue doing what they are doing.  Others run out and make an extreme life changing decision that has long term consequences, like divorcing a spouse of 30 years and plunging headlong into new debt, or getting a significant other half their age and starting a new family, or the latest trend of finding a significant other of the same gender.  Then there are those who set out on a whole new path of life, like start a business or sell it all to relocate.

There is still that small minority who hear that still small voice that realize a door is about to open to the journey in which they have been called.  They may appear to be making drastic decisions rapidly, but the reality is they have heard The Voice.  I became a genuine follower of The Way at 36 years of age.  Oh, I'd gotten "saved" and baptized at a young age, but had no sound teaching or real leadership in what it is to follow Messiah, so I took many detours.  At the age of 36, I clearly heard The Voice and The Call, and although I immediately surrendered to that, I had a great deal to learn.  I spent a decade, serving and learning and being prepared to enter into the fullness of His call.  I knew by the age of 40, I would be teaching a different message than the lawlessness our society has embraced, but I knew it was truth. What if some of the Bible greats were alive today in America?  Messiah said the end of days would be as in the days of Noah, so let's begin with him.

Noah lived to be 950 years old, and began building the ark around the age of 500.  Sadly, in America, poor Noah would have been considered certifiable, probably even by good Christian counselors and Jewish psychiatrists, but the reality is, this began at about the half way mark in Noah's life.  Would the neighbors and Mrs. Noah have called it a mid-life crisis?  Would his peers have asked him why he couldn't just get a red corvette or Harley Davidson, like the rest of them?

Abraham, who lived to be 175, got a slight head start on his mid-life crisis at only 75, and then started a family years after that, with a woman on the side, and then a late life baby with his wife.  So he may have appeared to be a bit more in social step, but the reality was far from ordinary.  Abraham believed G-d for the impossible . . .

Moses ran for his life at 40 and didn't even get started in his call until 80.  Although that age was past his half-way point, he certainly gave credence to the fact, the actual plan for you, may not be what you thought in your early years, at all!

Dr. Luke has always fascinated me, in that there is little mention in Scripture as to him being a doctor.  I've never found a passage in which Messiah or the apostles sent anyone to Dr. Luke to be healed, although he certainly documented miracles throughout the account of the gospel that bears his name, as well as the book of Acts.  From what I gather in Scripture, he laid down a highly respected Greek medical career to take notes of where the real healing was going on.  From the time frame of the writings, the indication is a mid-life discovery.

Paul was clearly advanced in his career and a well respected Pharisee.  So well respected, he could obtain death orders and carry them out at his own discretion.  Acts 9 gives a full account of Paul's mid-life conversion . . . and the rest is clearly; Scriptural history.

YHWH does not change and Y'hshuwah Messiah is His Son, therefore; Messiah, in fulfilling the will of the Father, did not bring a new religion, but rather came to bring us back to YHWH.

At the age of 47, I received the vision to proceed . . . Most everyone thought I was crazy, and took the time to share their views.  I've never regretted my obedience.  The life I have enjoyed for the past eight and a half years is hardly the result of a mid-life crisis, but rather the destination of the Call of The Way.