Am I too old for God to use me?
No. And if the story of Gideon is any guide, the call tends to come exactly when you feel least ready for it, often while you are hiding, doing small work in the smallest place you could find.
When the angel found Gideon, he was hiding. He was threshing wheat in a winepress, which tells you almost everything. Wheat is threshed on a breezy hilltop, out in the open. A winepress is a pit.
Gideon had taken a job meant for high ground and was doing it down in a hole, out of sight, so the enemy would not take the little he had left. A frightened man, doing honest work in the most hidden place he could find. And the first words out of the angel's mouth were, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior."
Not someday. Not if he climbed out. Present tense, while he was still crouched in the hole. This is the thing I have spent most of my life learning: the fear's name for us and God's name for us are not the same name. God's name came first, and it lasts longer.
If you want to sit with the whole story yourself, it is in Judges, chapters 6 and 7.
Why does He start taking things away after you say yes?
Gideon finally says yes, and raises an army of thirty-two thousand, which against that enemy is already not many. God's answer is not to send more. God says you have too many, and starts sending them home. The frightened ones first, twenty-two thousand of them. Then a strange test at the water, until only three hundred remain.
Gideon said his yes and then stood there watching God trim away the very resources any reasonable person would say he needed. I know that silence, and maybe you do too. You say your yes, and instead of being handed more, you watch what you were counting on get taken. Strength. Certainty. People you were sure would be there. Sometimes the person you loved most in the world.
But God tells Gideon plainly why: so that no one could stand at the end and say, my own hand saved me. The stripping was not abandonment. It was God protecting the truth of who was doing the saving.
Why did the plan work only after they moved?
The battle plan is the strangest part, and I love it for that. No swords in a line. Three hundred people, each holding a trumpet and a clay jar with a torch hidden inside. They surround the camp in the dark, smash the jars, blow the trumpets, lift the light, and shout. And the fearsome enemy turned on each other and ran.
Wait, what? No war college on earth teaches that. And notice, Scripture records no rousing speech, because you could not convince anyone the lanterns would work. What Gideon says is almost startling in its plainness. Look at me, and do the same. When I blow the trumpet, you blow yours.
He led them into the dark by going first, into a plan not one of them understood ahead of time. They could not see how it would work before they did it. Faith was not the reward for seeing the way through. Faith was the thing that revealed the way.
Where does real aliveness come from?
I have started to suspect that the most alive life is not governed by the mind at all. Not by the strategy, not by the careful managing of the resources we are so sure we cannot live without.
Radiant aliveness is generated in the heart, and that is precisely why it fills you instead of draining you. Effort spends down your own small reserves until you are empty. The heart moving in obedience draws on a wellspring that is not you. You are filled while you are being poured out. That cannot be earned by trying harder. It becomes available the moment you stop insisting on being the one who saves.
What does this mean for my third act?
If I could do one thing, I would call the whole world of third-act women up out of the rocking chairs the culture has assigned us. Not to build a movement with a center someone can seize, but to become quiet warriors in whatever corner we are already standing in. Each one a node of her own particular love. A grandmother's kitchen. A hospital waiting room. A neighbor's driveway. A comment left in the dark for a woman who thinks no one sees her.
You cannot storm a thing that has no center. You cannot buy out a grid of women each choosing love in her own place, moment by moment. It is three hundred lights in the dark that do not look like an army and change everything anyway.
If you are in a basement today, doing honest work in the smallest place you could find, hear what the angel is calling to you. Mighty warrior. You do not have to see the whole way through. You never were going to. You only have to take the next step, and blow the trumpet, and lift the light.
When I was in college I asked an eighty-year-old woman the most important lesson life had taught her. She said, "Let go and let God." It might surprise you what you can do with a light and a cook pot.
Frequently asked questions
Is it ever too late to be used by God?
No. Gideon was hiding in a winepress when he was called a mighty warrior. The call tends to come while you feel least qualified, not after you finally have it all together.
Why does God take away the things I was counting on?
Sometimes you say your yes and then watch your strength, your certainty, even people you were counting on get taken away. In Gideon's story that stripping was not abandonment. It was God making sure that when the rescue came, no one could mistake whose hand had done it.
Can one person really make a difference?
More than the loud world imagines. Gideon changed everything with three hundred lights in the dark, not an army. A grid of third-act women each choosing love in her own corner, a kitchen, a waiting room, a comment left for someone who feels unseen, has no center to attack and cannot be bought. That is how heaven gets built on earth, quietly, where no one is watching.
Why did God reduce Gideon's army from thirty-two thousand to three hundred?
So no one could claim their own strength won the day. The thinning protected the truth of who was doing the saving. It was preparation, not punishment.
Where is the story of Gideon in the Bible?
In the book of Judges, chapters 6 and 7.
A gentle place to take the next step
Seven free morning mini-resets, each beginning with your hand over your heart, five minutes or less. A small, quiet way to lift the light right where you are.
Get the mini-resetsYou were named a mighty warrior while you were still hiding. Now go lift the light.
Coach and author for women in the third act of life, holding faith and consciousness in the same hand. Master's in Social Work, degree in Psychology, HeartMath trained, and nearly five decades engaged with the science of change. She writes about outgrowing the aging default and coming home to a wholeness you already belong to. Meet Kristin