27 SEPTEMBER

SERVE GOD IN YOUR YOUTH

“There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?” (John 6:9)

A great multitude of about five thousand followed Jesus right across the Sea of Galilee. Jesus had been feeding their souls and spirits with His teachings and miracles. But the time came when their bodies needed to be fed with physical food.

I imagine that when Jesus asked Phillip where they would buy bread for the people, this young boy heard it and immediately offered what he had to Andrew. He was not the only one who heard it but he was the only one who gave the little he had in faith.

Phillip thought of how impossible it was to have enough money to buy bread for all the people. As the boy drank the water in the pouch he carried, he must have thought: “I would rather drink only water till I get home than miss the teaching and miracles of Jesus. Moreover, I saw him heal the man who had been lame and had laid at the Pool of Bethesda for thirty eight years. He may just do a miracle with my food.”

That young boy remembered and trusted the Creator in the days of his youth (Ecclesiastes 12:1). He was willing to dedicate his life to the Lord and serve Him with all that he had. He was willing to give what he had to receive what he could not buy with money.

A Pastor once said he had seen many young people saved and serve God for years and none of them had ever said: “I wish I had waited till I was older,” but almost all the people saved in their last years of life expressed regret that they did not give their lives to Christ when they were younger.

ACTION: Jesus offers fullness of life and life more abundantly from birth to youth and to old age. Have you made Him your Saviour and Lord? If not, now is the time to start.

PRAYER: Lord, take my life, and let it be consecrated unto you.