Should God Wait?
Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth,
before the difficult days come, and the years draw near when you say,
"I have no pleasure in them."
Ecclesiastes 12:1
Solomon, a king who was hardly naive about what the world has to offer,
counseled that we should remember our Creator while we are young. To defer
dealing with God until we are out of our youth is a costly error. And if we've
not yet decided whether we're going to take God seriously, there is something we
need to know: the question only gets tougher the longer we delay answering it.
We're only deceiving ourselves if we think we need to take care of more
important matters first. There is no such thing as a more important matter than
God.
Particularly in our youth, the thing that tempts us to postpone dealing with God
is the myth that godliness requires us to forfeit our pleasure. Because the life
of serious spirituality seems so dull, it's only natural to defer doing anything
about it until after we've drunk as deeply from the world as we want to drink.
Our adversary would like us to believe that the only young folks who follow God
are the losers who don't know what they're missing. One of the saddest things
about this myth, however, is that it misrepresents a God who has never wanted
anything but our good and who has never forbidden anything except what would
hurt us or degrade us. We'd do well to go back and reconsider Ecclesiastes. The
very God whom Solomon advised us to "remember" is also the God who said,
"Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days
of your youth" (Ecclesiastes 11:9).
Many of the reasons for taking a responsible approach to God in our youth are
powerfully practical. One of the most practical (and also one of the most
important) is that the basic shape of our personal character is set while we're
in our younger years. The ideal time to commit ourselves to godly principles and
begin adjusting our lifestyles to those principles is when our minds and hearts
are still open and we've not yet begun to suffer "hardening of the categories."
If we say no to God at the time when it is most crucial to say yes, it is not
likely that our minds will be changed by anything later on -- except
circumstances that are truly tragic.
If you refuse to be made straight when you are green,
you will not be made straight when you are dry.
African Proverb
By Gary Henry
From Expository Files 13.11; November 2006
