When Jeremiah received his calling, he was young, unsure and afraid. “Ah, Lord God,” he said, “I am only a youth.” But God interrupted his excuses and said, ‘do not say, ‘I am a youth,’ for you shall go to all to whom I send you.”’ The divine call did not wait for age or pedigree. God placed His word in Jeremiah’s mouth and sent him into a nation that had lost its conscience.

John, the youngest of the disciples, also began early. He leaned on Jesus’ chest, heard His heartbeat, and decades later wrote the deepest words ever penned about divine love and truth. Like Jeremiah, he too carried a revelation larger than himself. Both men show us that God’s burdens and visions do not wait for gray hairs. Heaven speaks through whoever is willing to listen, even when their youth makes them unlikely messengers.

The church of their day was not unlike ours. Jeremiah lived among priests who had lost moral authority and prophets who spoke only what was popular. John lived in an age of religious power and political compromise. Both men stood alone. Jeremiah warned of judgment to a people who preferred motivational words. John confronted deception in the early church and the corruption of empire. They were not influencers chasing applause; they were voices carrying weights they could not ignore.

That same tension defines much of today’s church conversation. Many young ministers now face a choice: to speak what is true or to say what trends. The modern pulpit is under pressure to stay politically correct, to avoid offending donors, to sound progressive, but never prophetic. The cost of truth has gone up, and the appetite for correction has gone down. Jeremiah’s story reminds us that calling is not a career choice; it is a consecration that comes with conflict. John’s story reminds us that revelation is not entertainment; it is responsibility.

Jeremiah’s burden was to speak correction to a nation headed for disaster. His words were sharp, his tone often sorrowful, but his motive was love. He wept because he cared.

He saw judgment not as divine cruelty, but as divine grief. John’s vision, by contrast, was full of glory, but it came with its own weight. He saw the church tempted by the world’s comfort, and he wrote with the urgency of one who had seen eternity.

The prophet and the apostle were both young when their obedience began, but neither treated their youth as an excuse to be silent.

There is something deeply relevant in that for this generation of ministers. We live in an age that celebrates charisma, but neglects conviction. We are raising platforms faster than we are building altars. Yet Jeremiah’s call began with fire in the bones, not followers on a list. John’s revelation came after years of obscurity, not after a viral clip. The real work of ministry has always required solitude, depthand the courage to speak against the drift.

• Sunday Ogidigbo, Senior Pastor, Holyhill Church, Abuja.Twitter/Instagram/Facebook: @Sogidigbo. Email: [email protected]