Young People’s Blog

“Those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man” (Matthew 15:18).

 “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matthew 12:34).

At the time that I am writing this, the 2021 summer Olympics are being held in Tokyo, Japan. Yesterday a girl from Australia won a gold medal in a swimming event, and she was very excited about it. During an interview with the news media afterward, she used a very vulgar swear word in her conversation, which everyone heard. But the people in the news media excused her, and commented, “Say whatever you want; you’re an Olympic gold medalist.”

Will God excuse us for saying something bad, simply because we may be good athletes? No, of course not. Why did that girl use such a word in her conversation? It was because that word was in her heart. Probably she was used to speaking like that in her everyday life, and when she was being recorded by the news media, the same kind of language came out of her mouth. But the Lord says that what comes out of our mouths defiles us.

The Bible says, “Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36). Let us be careful about how we speak, and what words we store up in our hearts.

“Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men…for ye serve the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23-24).

The Lord may give us some special work to do for Him, but even in our everyday schoolwork, or perhaps in a job that we do for payment, we should do it well, as if we were doing it for the Lord. Sometimes our boss may not treat us well, and then perhaps we are tempted not to do our best at our work. However, we should always do our work as if we were doing it for the Lord. He has done so much for us, and it pleases Him when we do our work as if He were the boss, and not some man or woman here in this world. Then, even if our boss does not treat us properly, the Lord will give us a reward for doing our work for Him.

In the days when this verse was written, many people in the Roman empire were slaves, and had to work for masters who did not treat them well. But some of those slaves got saved, and then they could do their work as if they were serving the Lord. That made it a lot easier!

“The Son of Man…gave authority to His servants, and to every man his work” (Mark 13:34).

After we are saved, the Lord Jesus gives us the privilege of working for Him. When the Lord Jesus was here on earth, His disciples helped Him with the work He was doing. He is well able to do His work without us, but He likes to have us work with Him. All of us are not suited to do the same thing, and since there are different kinds of work to be done, the Lord gives each one his or her own work to do.

If you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, He has a special work for you to do for Him, and He will give you the ability to do it. No one else can do it as well as you, for it is your special work. Perhaps you ask, What is my special work? If you do not know, then simply do what is obvious to you. There is usually something “right in front of us” that we can do, and do it for the Lord. If we show that we are willing to work for the Lord Jesus, He will make it clear what He wants us to do.

“Whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:27).

When we talk about bearing a cross, some people think of our having a particularly hard time in our life, such as losing our job, having a long-term illness, or perhaps having a problem in our family that lasts a long time. But in the days when this verse was written, if you saw a man carrying a cross, and walking down the road surrounded by soldiers, it meant only one thing. That man was going to die! When the Romans decided to execute a man, they usually made him carry on his back the actual cross on which he would be crucified.

What then does the Lord mean when He says that we too must carry our cross, if we want to be His disciple? He means that we must give up our own will, and die to all the things that we might wish to do, in order to do what pleases the Lord. We must be willing to give up our natural plans, and be willing to do what the Lord tells us. This might seem hard, but it is a happy path, for in doing the Lord’s will, we will have an inner joy that nothing else can give.

“For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7).

You will remember that the first passover was kept in Egypt, when the Israelites had to put blood on the doors of their houses, so that the Lord would not enter that night and destroy the firstborn in that house. They were to keep that passover every year, as a remembrance of their deliverance from being slaves in Egypt.

You and I have a much greater deliverance, for Christ was the true passover, and the passover kept in the Old Testament was only a picture of His death on Calvary’s cross. Now we no longer keep the passover, but the Lord Jesus has asked us to remember Him. We are not to do this only once a year, but every Lord’s day. The Lord Jesus appreciates it when we remember Him in His death, as He has asked us to do.

“If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26).

When we first come to know the Lord Jesus as Savior, we enjoy the wonderful privilege of having salvation given to us as a free gift. We cannot pay for it, for the Lord Jesus has already paid the full price on Calvary’s cross. But we soon learn that though salvation is free, to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus is costly. That is what the Lord Jesus was reminding people about in today’s verse.

It does not mean that we actually hate our closest relatives and family. Rather it means that in our lives, the Lord Jesus must have the first place, even before our families. Sometimes people get saved when their parents and family are not saved, and in some countries in this world this means that the one who gets saved is literally sent out of the house, and not allowed to live at home anymore. I have known more than one young person to whom this happened, and it was very hard for them. But they would not give up the Lord Jesus, because He meant so much to them. We cannot be a disciple of the Lord unless we want to give Him the first place in our life.

“I hate vain thoughts: but Thy law do I love” (Psalm 119:113).

Another good translation reads, “The double-minded have I hated: but Thy law do I love” (JND trans.).

Sometimes when we are young, and we do not know how to figure something out, our parents may say to us, “You have a head on your shoulders; use it!” This verse does not mean that we should not use our brains to figure things out. God gave us good brains, and in natural things He intends us to use them. But when the Lord tells us in His Word to do something, we should not think it over, and try to reason it out. Rather we should obey it, and this is the secret of being an overcomer. To be double-minded is to want to please the Lord, but also to want my own way. That kind of a Christian is not an overcomer. No, simple obedience to God’s Word is the way to overcome, and that is what this verse is telling us. Not only does obedience please the Lord, but it is the happy path for us too.

“I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one” (1 John 2:14).

This verse includes both young men and young women; God intends that they should be strong in their Christian faith. It does not mean that they are strong in themselves, but rather because the Word of God abides in them. How does God’s Word abide in us? It is not only by reading the Word of God, but by letting it sink down into our hearts, so that our lives are formed by it. This makes us strong as Christians, and we are able to overcome the wicked one — Satan.

Sometimes young people think that if only they could live somewhere else, or perhaps go out and serve the Lord in a foreign country, they would be able to overcome better. However, this is not true. If we cannot be overcomers at home, we cannot overcome anywhere. It is not our circumstances that make us able to overcome, but our state of soul before the Lord. The Lord may send us somewhere else to work for Him, but first we must show that we are willing to live for Him where we are now. It is often in the little things of life that our true strength as Christians shows itself.

“Overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

Here is the positive side of yesterday’s verse. It is a good thing when we are not overcome of evil, and continue to swim against the current of this world. But this is not enough. No, we are to influence others in the right direction by telling them about the Lord Jesus. I remember hearing a story about a Christian boy in Russia about forty years ago who did this. His teacher at school, along with other students, made fun of him, and often tried to get him to say bad things about God and the Bible. One day his teacher said to him, “I want you to stand up and shake your fist in the face of God!” What an awful thing for her to say! The boy wisely replied, “Teacher, you have always told us that there is no God. Shall I shake my fist at someone who does not exist? But if there is a God, and I believe that there is, I am afraid to shake my fist at Him.” Not only was the boy not overcome of evil, but he overcame evil with good. The teacher had nothing further to say, for the Christian boy had been a good witness to her, and to the rest of his class.

 “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

Notice that there are two parts to this verse, one negative, and the other positive. Let’s talk about the negative side today. Yesterday we spoke about evil communications, and how it is easy to have our good manners corrupted by them. To be overcome is to be defeated, and sometimes in our Christian lives we can be defeated by the devil. There is a lot of evil in this world, and when we are surrounded by it at school, at work, and perhaps at other times, it is easy to give in to it. We are sometimes reminded that, as Christians, we should be like fish which swim against the current.This takes a lot of energy. The current of this world is going in the wrong direction, and we need energy from the Lord to swim against the current. But it is easy to get tired of doing this and decide simply to let the current carry us along.

We do not need to do this. The Lord will give us strength not to be overcome of evil, but to continue to swim in the right direction, against the current of this world.