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Treasuring the teenage years for the Lord
I would like to speak to the teenagers. The teenage years are from thirteen to nineteen. After twelve years old and before twenty, there are seven years in your teens. The teenage years are the golden years of a human being. These seven years are golden and crucial. They are a deciding factor for your whole human life. You may have been careless, sloppy, doing nothing, and even bad when you were twelve or under. After you are past nineteen, you may still try to do something bad, although that is not right. During the seven teenage years, however, you should not do anything wrong. If you do, that is awful and terrible. It is risky. Do not waste one day of your teenage years. Every day, every hour, every minute, and every second have to count. I mean this.
Seven years are not very long. Very quickly, your teenage years will be over. If you do not build yourself up within these years, you will be finished. It is needless to speak of other things; this is the case even with education. If you cannot do well in these seven years to lay a good foundation for your human life, especially in your education, you will be through. If you fail in school, it will be hard to redo it, even if you try. It will be almost impossible, because your teenage years will be over.
Keep in mind that the teenage years are your golden years in every way. Strictly speaking, if you do not build up a good body within these seven years, after nineteen you will be too small and weak. If you expect to be in good health and have a good body, you must do something within your golden years. In these seven years you have to be busy, even in exercise. If you try to enter a medical school or law school, they may check with you to see how much exercise you had in these seven years. If you say that you did not have any exercise or participate in any sport, the school may not take you even if your grade point average is 4.0.
In your human life there are many aspects, including education, health, your body, morality, ethics, and your relationship with the Lord. Of all these, your relationship with the Lord is first. Even this should be built up while you are a teenager. You should love the Lord, seek Him, and pursue after Him, particularly in these seven years. After these years it is hard to have a proper start, even in seeking after the Lord.
This is also true in learning a language. It is hard for anyone over nineteen to learn another language; they can never do it properly. I would say that after you are past your teens, you can no longer do anything like this. Do you want to get the best grades? Do it during your teenage years. Do you want to love the Lord in the top way? Do it now, because after your teenage years it is hard to start. After the teenage years you are good for beginning nothing. Therefore, love the Lord in these years.
Joshua once extended a day by commanding the sun to stand still (Josh. 10:12-13). The way to “make the sun stand still” is to treat one day as if it were a month. Do not finish only one day’s work in one day. You have to finish thirty days’ work in a day. In this way you will spend one year as if it were thirty years. You have to endeavor, strive, struggle, and labor in seeking after the Lord, in reading the Bible, in loving the Lord, in praying, in praising, and in everything.
How much do you pursue after the Lord? If you say not much or not enough, you are not very wise. The smartest young person is the one who always treats one day as if it were thirty. I mean what I am saying. Do not waste an hour or a minute within the seven years of your teens, especially in loving the Lord and seeking after Him.
You have probably heard of Watchman Nee. When he was young, he made up his mind to read the New Testament fifty-two times in one year, that is, once a week continually for a year. Eventually, he became a living New Testament. This means that he treated one of his days as many days and one year as many years. I give you this example so that you can follow it to do the same thing. This will never waste your time. Even going to exercise is not a waste of time. You should budget your time, your energy, and even your breathing. If you do this, you will not miss anything in the spiritual realm, in the spiritual kingdom. You will get what you should get.
I advise you all to treasure your teenage years. Even if you are eighteen, you have one year to go. Treasure this one year as a hundred years to get everything that you can. Then you will see that you will be successful in any field, even in seeking the Lord.
So many Christians meet defeat simply because they did not lay a good foundation in so many matters. Look at the world today. Many people in the United States have become nothing. They are just a living entity breathing, eating, and sleeping. They have become nothing because they did not lay a foundation that was good enough for them to be successful in their human life. This is also true in the spiritual field. If you expect to have success in the spiritual field, in seeking the Lord, you must treasure your golden years, your teenage years. Do everything you can. Get into the Bible as much as you can. Pray as much as possible, and function in the meetings with as much as you have. Exhaust yourself. Try your best to do this.
Choosing God as the source of life
Question: If we know that the Lord is the only One who can fill us, why do we look for other things to fill us?
Answer: This is a very good question. At the very beginning of the Bible we see two trees. The first tree is the tree of life, signifying the Lord Himself. To our thought, that is adequate and sufficient for us. Why then was there another tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Why were there two trees, one signifying the Lord and the other implying the world and other items?
Throughout the whole history of mankind, there have always been two choices in the universe. Even today in our living — in family life, school life, and married life — there are two choices always before us. This is because in the universe there are two sources. The first source is God, and the other one is Satan. Satan was there before the restoration and further creation of the earth. In the original creation Satan was there as an archangel, God’s servant, serving God under His authority. However, he rebelled and became Satan. The name Satan means “adversary,” an enemy not on the outside but on the inside. Satan became God’s adversary, a kind of enemy within the limit of God’s kingdom. Therefore, from that time to today and until the end of this age, there have been two sources in the universe — God and Satan.
It was under this situation that man was created, so God had to put two signs in front of man: the tree of life, signifying God, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, signifying Satan. Today we have the Lord in front of us, and we also have something else in front of us. We may call it the world, or we may call it sin, self, the flesh, or other negative things. These things in two categories, belonging to two sources, are always in front of us.
God created man with a free will. He did not force Adam to choose the tree of life. God simply placed Adam in front of the tree of life and warned him that the other tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, would bring him death if he touched it and ate of it. That was a warning, reminding man not to choose that tree, because if he did, the issue would be death. We have to choose the first tree, the one that brings us life.
Today it is the same. The Lord is here, and so many things other than the Lord, belonging to the second source, are also here. In the Bible and even in our hymnal, there are many warnings to remind us that we should not take anything that belongs to the second source. We have to attach ourselves and even cleave to the first source, which is the very God.
Carrying out the campus meeting in a meaningful way
Question: What kind of meeting should we hold on the campus? We usually have a Bible study once a week, and not many attend it.
Answer: You should attend the meetings as often as you can. Whatever the meeting is, just attend it. Attending a meeting only once a week is for Christians who are over sixty, not sixteen. I am eighty-four years old, so it may be good enough for me to attend a meeting only once a week, but in actuality, I still attend all the meetings.
The meeting on campus is your meeting. It is hard to say what kind of meeting it should be. It depends on your burden. You have to pray desperately. Do not do anything in a light way. You must do everything in the most meaningful way. You have to treasure the weekly meeting because it uses your time, and you should not waste time. Therefore, you have to pray much to see how the Lord will lead you. What you do should also be according to the situation. Do you have a burden to pass on Christ to others, that is, to preach the gospel? Are there some unbelieving students around you? You have to consider all these factors. Then you can make a decision.
Regardless of what you do, in your teenage years you should not do anything in a light way. As long as you can be deeply impressed that your teenage years are the golden years, that is good enough.
Learning of the little children and having a new start
Question: I did not come to the Word much in my teenage years. What should we older ones do?
Answer: I am sorry if you are now past your teenage years. The college-aged brothers and sisters should take the teenagers as a good pattern and be as busy and diligent as they are. If you did not spend your teenage years properly, then follow the examples around you and go back to be a teenager again. The Lord Jesus told us to learn of the children (Matt. 18:2-4). Even though I am eighty-four years old, every day I try my best to learn of the little children. In a sense, I am going back to be a little child. Even those who are now fifty years old should go back to be a teenager. Learn of the pattern. We, the older ones, need to love the Lord just like a young child. We need to learn of the children and have a new start.
Praise the Lord! The Lord be with you and bless you to the uttermost.