The sooner you start the farther you get
With the odd exception, it is common sense that the sooner you start on a journey the farther you will get. How I wish I could go back to my teenage years and begin living fully for Christ immediately from the word go. Where would I be now if I had realised what was important and stayed away from ungodly things.
Kids today are at a great advantage, in that they can start living for Christ from an early age. In hindsight, what I'd give to do so. Unfortunately in this world, 'learning from your mistakes' and 'learning the hard way' seem to be the way people learn what is good and what is not. Old people are naturally considered wise, presumably because of the vast amount of experience they have to draw from.
I can not accept that this is God's way. God can use bad situations to bring about good and can teach us through correction. Indeed, this very correction is proof that God loves us, just as a loving Father would correct his own child. However, I cannot accept that God who loves us and hates sin would want us to have to be hurt by our actions in order to learn from them, who would want us to defile ourselves through acts of sin before we seek forgiveness. God wants us to be pure, for He is pure.
As I get older it pains me to see the cycle that I had to endure before I realised that Christ's way is the only way is endured again and again by younger people. I used to place importance on things that where completely empty and anti-God, thinking they were cool. Today I see them for what they are. I have learnt from my mistakes, yet the kids who are yet to make them have not. They still think the empty, anti-God things are cool. In years to come may of those will look back in the same way that I do at the stupidity of their actions.
Which leads me to the question, where is the warning? The Church loves it's youth work, yet nobody ever bothered to warn me. They tell you how to do things, but not why to do them. They tell you 'not to have sex before marriage', yet they don't tell you why you shouldn't. It is human nature to disobey. It is human nature to do things that we are not aloud to do, therefore saying to a teenager who does not know any better 'do not have sex before marriage' is futile. However, if the church explained why they should not have sex before marriage it would be a different story. If the youth leaders taught the children from their own experiences, this cycle would not continue. If the children were told how God intended sex to be between one man and one woman, that it is more spiritual than physical, that it is completely damaging if used wrongly, that they would seriously regret it when they came to find somebody they loved in the future, that a moment you share with a person leaves a connection with that person so that when you finally come to get married you are not able to give your whole self over to the person you love because there is always that moment you have shared with somebody else, then not only would kids be running into the arms of Christ, rather than the arms of a promiscuous stranger, but we would have some very wise kids on our hands.
Arguably a reason this does not happen is because the very youth leaders who are to teach their children of why they should not do something do not know themselves because they are too young to have learnt from their mistakes. The youth leader still thinks all the empty, anti-God ways are cool. They are yet to learn from their mistakes. In time they will, and it is then that they should be youth leaders, but not now. The church has a habit of putting the coolest mid-twenties guy or gal they can find into youth work. We need to start reaching out to our youth through our experience that we have learnt the hard way, so that they won't have to.
-BACChristian
Kids today are at a great advantage, in that they can start living for Christ from an early age. In hindsight, what I'd give to do so. Unfortunately in this world, 'learning from your mistakes' and 'learning the hard way' seem to be the way people learn what is good and what is not. Old people are naturally considered wise, presumably because of the vast amount of experience they have to draw from.
I can not accept that this is God's way. God can use bad situations to bring about good and can teach us through correction. Indeed, this very correction is proof that God loves us, just as a loving Father would correct his own child. However, I cannot accept that God who loves us and hates sin would want us to have to be hurt by our actions in order to learn from them, who would want us to defile ourselves through acts of sin before we seek forgiveness. God wants us to be pure, for He is pure.
As I get older it pains me to see the cycle that I had to endure before I realised that Christ's way is the only way is endured again and again by younger people. I used to place importance on things that where completely empty and anti-God, thinking they were cool. Today I see them for what they are. I have learnt from my mistakes, yet the kids who are yet to make them have not. They still think the empty, anti-God things are cool. In years to come may of those will look back in the same way that I do at the stupidity of their actions.
Which leads me to the question, where is the warning? The Church loves it's youth work, yet nobody ever bothered to warn me. They tell you how to do things, but not why to do them. They tell you 'not to have sex before marriage', yet they don't tell you why you shouldn't. It is human nature to disobey. It is human nature to do things that we are not aloud to do, therefore saying to a teenager who does not know any better 'do not have sex before marriage' is futile. However, if the church explained why they should not have sex before marriage it would be a different story. If the youth leaders taught the children from their own experiences, this cycle would not continue. If the children were told how God intended sex to be between one man and one woman, that it is more spiritual than physical, that it is completely damaging if used wrongly, that they would seriously regret it when they came to find somebody they loved in the future, that a moment you share with a person leaves a connection with that person so that when you finally come to get married you are not able to give your whole self over to the person you love because there is always that moment you have shared with somebody else, then not only would kids be running into the arms of Christ, rather than the arms of a promiscuous stranger, but we would have some very wise kids on our hands.
Arguably a reason this does not happen is because the very youth leaders who are to teach their children of why they should not do something do not know themselves because they are too young to have learnt from their mistakes. The youth leader still thinks all the empty, anti-God ways are cool. They are yet to learn from their mistakes. In time they will, and it is then that they should be youth leaders, but not now. The church has a habit of putting the coolest mid-twenties guy or gal they can find into youth work. We need to start reaching out to our youth through our experience that we have learnt the hard way, so that they won't have to.
-BACChristian
Comments
Post a Comment