The Days of Our Youth
by Laurence Windham

This month I will turn 40 years old. I have no complaints. God has already given me a full life, and if it were to end sooner than expected, well, it's been a great ride.

If it were not for my understanding and acceptance of the sovereignty of God, the fact that He could have brought me to Himself sooner (had He desired), but chose instead to introduce me to life's stage when He did, looking back at my adolescent years would cause me great regret.

I had little chance (and little inclination by myself) to regard my Creator in the days of my youth. There was no godly influence in my life other than the occasional sermonette by my grandmother. I was your basic consumer driven, television addicted, peer pressured, authority hating, self-promoting, know it all teenager. Just an average sinner growing up into adult size sins.

Maybe that's why I work with college students. I wish someone had been there for me during my formative years. A guide, a coach, a sage, a friend. Someone to go to for wisdom. A person committed enough to intrude in my affairs and set me straight. A mentor to direct me on the holy quest, to keep me from floundering in the slough of mediocrity with most of my age group, worshipping at the Altar of the Immediate.

Youth is beautiful and fragile and fleeting. Decisions are made here that govern the rest of a person's life. We pass from young to old to older sooner than we think or want, and are left with the consequences and memories of our choices. That is why we are enjoined so strongly to remember God in our youth.

There are, as I alluded to earlier, forces at work that strive for the position of pre-eminence in the young Christian's heart, a heart which properly belongs to God alone. These voices of secular society use the age old tactic of the wily serpent, tactics honed from practice dating back to the garden--false promises.

Vanity Fair is still in business, and business is booming. Soft drinks are no longer sold as carbonated water and syrup, but as potions which give the radical daredevil in you the power you need. Clothes are more than epidermal protection. Now they communicate attitude, independence and image. Of course they also communicate what's for sale in Vanity Fair, carrying tiny billboards for Fortune Five Hundred Corporations who make their fortune by allowing us to identify with their (and some sports star's) image. Image is nothing, Sprite tells us, projecting the hippest image of all.

Meanwhile popular music, literature and television meet demand by becoming more "spiritual". They serve up a god who is nice and/or powerless, but by no means the absolute Sovereign of Scripture.

The dangers that secular society pose pale, however, in comparison to the damaging influence in the church and home. Here, all to often, the next generation witnesses a comfortable, causeless Christianity that tithes but doesn't sacrifice, learns but doesn't apply, congregates, but has no community, and discusses but fails to practice. Unfortunately, this is the pattern.

…"and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works He had done…"

Somewhere along the way prosperity and compromise had diluted the legacy that was to be passed to posterity. This verse doesn't show a sudden spiritual change, but the gradual dissembling of the sacred assembly. Consequently young Israel was robbed of its birthright.

We too are one generation away from apostasy. Why should our children live for God? How do we display our fear of Him, our utter dependence on Him, our love for Him? If we do not in the routine way we live, how do they know He exists? Many parents are concerned with the influences of the pagan world on their children. But too many forget to be concerned about the absence of holy living by the parents and in the church. Do they see you pray? In meditation? Overhear you singing hymns and spiritual songs? Reading and studying the Scriptures? Helping those in need?

Or maybe they see us living just like our neighbors, except instead of sleeping at home each Lord's Day morning, we sleep in the pew. The outside world is not a problem, as long as it stays outside.