Remember Your Creator In The Days Of Your Youth

REMEMBER YOUR CREATOR IN THE DAYS OF YOUR YOUTH

Ecclesiastes 12:1 “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you say: ‘I find no pleasure in them.”

King Solomon gave this advice to the youth of his day. His advice came from years of experience. In the beginning of his reign as King Solomon sought the Lord with all his heart and God gave him both wisdom and wealth. Solomon experienced fame and fortune. With all his wealth and worldwide influence he forgot God. He turned to the desires of the world, wine, women and song.

Solomon confessed that everything he received in life, all his wants and needs were met. He was a multi-billionaire. He enjoyed all the pleasures this world could give. He said that all the pleasures brought vanity and meaninglessness.

As Junior High Youth now is the time to remember the Lord in your life, not tomorrow, but today. Today make the commitment to follow-Jesus. Say in your heart, “I have decided to follow Jesus.”

During my first year of High School I experienced trauma that moved me to turn to the Lord for help.

One day I was playing at a friend’s house and I saw my father come out of the house next door with a woman. They got in my dad’s car and drove off.

I went home and told my mother what I had witnessed and that event was the beginning of my parent’s separation. My mother found a teaching job in another city and we moved that summer and I started my sophomore year in Sterling, Kansas. In October of that year at the age of 15 I confessed my sins and invited Jesus into my heart and life. Later that month I was baptized by immersion at the Missionary Church.

When I accepted the Lord as Savior, Jesus gave me a new purpose in life, to honor and serve Him. I started studying harder and I got involved in the youth group at the Missionary Church.

When you accept Jesus into your heart and life you begin a great adventure in life. You are no longer walking alone, you take the hand of the Lord and He guides you.

My High School Sunday school teacher became my mentor and spiritual life coach. He picked me up and took me to activities. He played tennis with me. He enrolled me in the Navigators Topical Memory System. During the summer between my sophomore and junior year in high school I memorized scripture while I drove a tractor plowing fields following the wheat harvest.

I began to study harder and received A’s and B’s in all my classes during my high school years.

Whatever talents you have been given you can use them to accomplish much. You don’t have to be tall with a body bulging with muscles to accomplish great things in your life. You have this promise in Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

#A man who owned a circus elephant did research and discovered that an elephant can’t jump. He took the elephant on a tour from city to city offering anyone $1,000 if they could make the elephant jump.

He came to one small city in Kansas and gave out the challenge to a crowd of people who had paid an admission to see the elephant. After waiting quite a while an young boy wearing glasses and with a freckled face stepped out of the crowd and said he would take the challenge. The boy pulled out his slingshot and put a long nail in his slingshot and went around behind the elephant and pulled back the slingshot and shot the elephant his rear end and the elephant jumped several feet into the air.

The man who owned the elephant was dumbfounded. He gave the boy his money.

The man nursed his elephant back to health and after doing more research he read that an elephant wont shake it’s head up and down and then side to side in sequence. So he took the elephant on the road with a new challenge. He would give anyone a $1,000 if they could make the elephant shake his head up and down and then side to side in sequence. He traveled from city to city and no one could make the elephant shake his head in that sequence.

In his travels he came back to the same town in Kansas and gathered a crowd. He threw out the challenge. He would give anyone a thousand dollars who could make the elephant perform with the head shaking. After a long pause a year older boy wearing glasses and with a face filled with freckles stepped out of the crowd and approached the man with his elephant with his slingshot.