One of the phrases that God keeps bringing to my mind lately is, “Keep pouring your life into people.” These words are becoming clearer to me as I am only 13 months away from turning 50 years old, and in that time, my youngest will leave home, and I will have an empty nest. Like so many people, my life is moving into a new phase, and with it comes new responsibilities as a believer.

Perhaps the most significant thing each one of us who follows Jesus can do is pour our lives out for God. But it is equally important that what we pour out is filling up other people. Throughout your life, God allows you to gain an enormous amount of knowledge. Some of it comes from books, but that majority comes from life experiences. You have learned through success and failure what does and does not work in this life. You also have skills and talents that can be taught to others and used for their benefit.

The temptation when you reach a certain age is to set back and coast. You tell yourself, “I just need a little time for myself.” Phrases like “It is time for someone else to step up” become your excuse for inactivity. What if instead of setting the cruise control for comfort, we took what we know and have experienced and shared it with someone younger? What if we poured out a lifetime of insights gained into a person who is just starting?

There are a thousand ways to do this, and all you need to do is have to find one that works for you. You can step up to teach a class, volunteer in a prepared position, mentally adopt a young person to help, become a mentor, be a youth group sponsor, coach a team, lead an organization or pray daily for random people who you might bless.

Through the years, I have watched person after person slip into the comfort of self-absorption as they move into the second half of their life. The call of a believer is not to retire but reenlist. We are to take what God has given us over the first half and help someone who is now on that journey as a single adult, newly married couple, or just starting a family. Life is hard, and people need all the help they can get. God has spent your life pouring into you; now it is time for you to tip the handle and pour back into others for the good of his kingdom.

A lady who worked in research most of her life stated that her goal was to study people’s behavior and trends to predict and control future actions. As a result of this type of research, we have things like polls to determine what people think to help us know how future events will transpire. We also have tests performed like Pavlov’s dogs to understand how the simple ringing of a bell can control our desires. Researchers then provide their findings to everything from psychologists to marketing companies.

This desire to control and predict is, I believe, part of how God wired us together as humans. When humanity was created, it was to have dominion over the world God had made. This work includes planting and sewing, but it also involves preparing and planning. In an effort to be good stewards of the Lord’s creation, humanity started researching what he had given them.

The problem with this mindset is that you cannot then turn and apply it to God. We will always fail when we try to predict or control the actions of the Lord. I have seen it lead people to frustration in their faith. For some, it will push them away as God does not do what they desire. They say prayer X, and therefore God should do Y. They go to Church with their spouse for several weeks; therefore, God should heal their marriage. They attend two months of Bible study and deepen their knowledge of faith, and then God should give them that thing they want. “If we do this, then God will do that” type of thinking will always leave us disappointed with God.

One challenge of a believer is to let go of the research mindset. We are called to listen closely to God’s voice and follow him, never wholly knowing what will happen. That is why it is called faith. It requires trust that God is doing the right thing at the correct time and in the best possible way. God is beyond our control, and we cannot predict his actions correctly. We need to accept this as part of our journey of faith for us to experience joy. We never know when and how God will work and what exactly it will look like in our life. Faith is giving God control and us having no ability to predict or control what will happen next.