Weekend, January 6, 2024
While You’re Young
Don’t let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. Honor him in your youth before you grow old and say, “Life is not pleasant anymore.” (Ecclesiastes 12:1 NLT)
The days of your youth are such an important time in life. It’s the time when you lay a foundation for life. You’re setting your course. You’re developing attitudes and habits, whether good or bad. And you’re making decisions that will affect you for the rest of your life. You’re sowing seeds that you will reap in the years ahead.
Solomon wrote, “Don’t let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. Honor him in your youth before you grow old and say, ‘Life is not pleasant anymore’ ” (Ecclesiastes 12:1 NLT).
When you’re young, you like action. You like change. A common phrase young people use is “I’m bored.” But when you get older, you kind of start to like boredom. The older you get, the more you enjoy routine.
On the other hand, when you’re young, you’re thinking about life and looking at the future. You’re open to things. And you might say, “I do want to get right with God. I do want to be a spiritual person. But right now I’m too young. I have so much that I want to do, so much fun I want to have. I’m going to commit myself to Christ at a later date. I’ll get around to it eventually.”
However, months turn into years. And years turn into decades. That is not to say that someone cannot come to Christ when they’re older. But the fact is that 80 percent of people who come to Jesus Christ do so before their eighteenth birthday.
It gets more difficult with each year that passes, because you become more set in your ways. And by the time you’re older, you just might say, “Don’t bother with me. I really don’t care anymore.”
I gave my life to Christ at age seventeen. Occasionally I run into old friends from back then, and we reminisce a bit. Some of them followed the Lord, and some of them did not. And when I look at my friends who didn’t follow the Lord and the courses their lives took, I can see the toll sin has taken on them and how it has ravaged them physically.
Then I look at my life. I followed Christ. When they were out doing all their stuff, I was going to Bible studies, praying, and growing in the Lord. And what I gave up is so small in comparison to what I received in return.
Life goes by so quickly. It doesn’t seem that way when you’re young. But the older you get, the faster life will seem to clip by. Then one day you’ll wake up, look in the mirror, and see an old person staring back at you. And you’ll say, “When did that happen?”
Here’s the good news: If you’ve lived for Jesus Christ all those years, you have lost nothing (except maybe a few hairs). You’re getting closer to the day when you will see Him face-to-face. And you can look back with no regrets.
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