“I Write Unto You, Young Men”

Young Men,

Brother John issues this as a statement, but it stands as an exhortation as well. If you are one of God’s saved children, this is the normal condition God has provided for you. It is not a statement of feeling, nor is it a statement that leaves nothing for you to do. To be strong, we must exercise our spiritual muscles. To have the Word of God abide in us; we must read and meditate over it and obey it until it does abide in us, and to overcome the wicked one, we must fight with God’s weapons until we do overcome. If you are not saved, this is part of God’s offer to you. Seek salvation. “And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”* (Revelation 22:17) God paid a great price to make salvation available to you, but your destiny is in your hands. I want to share a meditation along this line from Brother C. E. Orr:

Heaven gives out the announcement that as you spend your moments of life, so shall your eternity be. If you rightly improve the moments, you will be qualified for higher enjoyments and greater riches in eternity. All moments wasted have a woeful disqualifying effect. You shall give an account for every idle word and every wasted moment. The account you will have to render is that these idle words and wasted moments are disqualifying you for heavenly enjoyments. Every moment rightly improved is making you capable of higher felicity in heaven.

We see a mother coming with her boys, asking Jesus for a higher position for them in His heavenly kingdom. His reply to her is, “[Such positions are] not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father.”* (Matthew 20:23) And for whom has the Father prepared such positions? They are prepared for all those who prepare for the position. There is a place close up at the right hand of Jesus for all those who will qualify for the place. How you spend life’s moments determines what positions you will occupy in glory. You will fit into the place for which you are fitted. Young people, you have this matter in your own hands. How you spend the moments of this day goes to determine what your position in that eternal world shall be. Just one life lies before you, young man, young woman. You will pass over life’s pathway but once; yes, but once. And every step you take never can be taken over. You do not have the privilege of trying it over again. If you make a misstep, the best it can do, and it should do this, is to help you to not make another one like it. It is true that Jesus can and will forgive us all our missteps, but the effect they leave upon our character will stand through all eternity. By the way you spend the moments of time today, you are adding to or diminishing your treasures in heaven. Your mansion in glory will be this evening according to how you spend the moments of the day. There is great responsibility in life. It means much to live. Thank God it is blessed when we hide our life with Christ in God and live in Him.

[Charles E. Orr; The Instruction of Youth in the Christian Life, “The Value of Life”]

Young men, I beseech you, take hold of eternal life! The place of a child of God is a lowly place, and it is yet also an exalted place. We are nothing in ourselves, but we are vessels of precious and holy things. “Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.”* (1 Timothy 4:12)