From the heart of the
pastor:
“Remember also your Creator in the days of your
youth, before the evil days come and the years draw
near when you will say, ‘I have no delight in them’”
(Ecc.
12:1).
You are as young today
as you will ever be. The youthfulness God allows
you today must not be abused, blemished, corrupted,
disgraced, dishonored or shamed. Unless you
carpe diem, seize the day, this day is going to
seize you. You do not want to enter the next season
of your life regretting what “might-have-been.”
Your feelings can become
slave-masters with you being their slave. Worldly
passions are without limits. Feelings imprison men
to youthful lusts. Nevertheless, God says, “Now
flee from youthful lusts, and pursue righteousness”
(II Ti. 2:22). Delay is deadly.
God commands you saying,
“Remember also your Creator.” Do you? Do you “know
that the Lord Himself is God; it is He who has made
us, and not we ourselves”? (Ps. 100:3). God loathes
being forgotten by the work of His own hands. God
made you for Himself and your remembrance of Him
should constrain you to imitate Christ. Many
churchgoers remember their professions, their
religious experiences and their baptisms, but not
their Lord.
You can be a prodigal at
any age – worldliness diseases every age of man.
Nonetheless, youth are captured more fully by this
world’s vanity. Is it not passing strange that
youth is the fittest season for godliness and
godlessness?
What is God’s standard
concerning early commitments and obediences?
- Manna was gathered
in the morning
- God is presented the
first-fruits;
- Jeremiah from his
infancy was the Lord’s
- Abraham sacrificed
Isaac early
Youth is the finest
season for self-denial and deadness to the world –
for trimming one’s lamps because your journey is
long and vital, and preparations must be made early.
A man cannot be too
righteous. God says Obadiah feared the Lord from
his youth (I Ki. 18:12). From Timothy’s childhood
he knew the sacred writings able to give him the
wisdom leading to salvation through faith in Christ
Jesus (II Ti. 3:15). At the ripe old age of twelve,
Jesus was conversing with the men of God about the
matters of God (Lk. 2:41ff.).
How many professing
Christians do you know continuing to experience
fresh sins in old wineskins? Is it not sad to have
sins as old as one’s age? Scores of professing
saints are as seasoned in sin as they are in age
because they have practiced sloth and loitered
amongst the Philistines. They only come to Christ
when their bodies and minds are so gutted they can
no longer serve their youthful lusts. Time divided
between sin and piety discovers little piety and
much sin as they limp along life’s way.
Seldom will you discover
a man arguing his need to get his heavenly riches in
place first, and then he will pursue earthly
benefits. He is committed to grooming his soul, but
only when the lamp is nearly out, his strength spent
and his youthful marrow consumed by this world’s
devils.
When God is ignored, joy
is forfeited. Regrets at youthful retreats
accompany the infirmity of old age. Do you have
regrets? Are you in a retreat or advance mode?
Have you besotted
yourself with false righteousness? Or is the devil
beguiling you with his age-old ploy of whispering in
your heart that you should follow your feelings?
You cannot afford to be in the avant guard of
testing your limits or God’s limits, for you will
discover only too late that your infatuation with
speed, libations and flirtations has become your
demise.
If you live to an old
age, will your closing season be a living penalty
for raucous living? Will your last years be housed
in a body and mind that is an infirmary
hospitalizing the worst of closing breaths? The man
trading the best years of his life for the least
spiritual benefits shall too soon discover he has
sacrificed an everlasting eternity for “the passing
pleasures of sin” (Heb. 11:25).
“For the wages of sin is
death” (Ro. 6:23a).
SOLI DEO GLORIA!
