Daily Devotional – 10/22/18 “Our youth is in trouble!”

Our youth is in trouble and here is a sad reality, most of them don’t have a relationship with God. I don’t care if they’ve been in the church since they were in diapers, if nobody is teaching them how to build a relationship with God, they don’t have one. And it is more than just dragging them to worship on Sunday morning, forcing them to sit in the back of the church during bible study because you didn’t have time to drop them off or telling them, when they face trouble, to pray. With the plight of our youth and young adults, prayer meetings need to start with them. Traditions, if they are no longer sufficient to handle the growing need of the church, throw them out because we need to get back to pure worship. The kind when deacons could pray and it sets the tone of service. When a Dr. Watts could slay the house long before some of these preachers started “slaying” service. When an altar call prayer could turn into an hour of worship and weeping. When the spirit was so heavy, no preaching was done because all folk wanted was to be under the Holy Spirit. Y’all our youth is in trouble and they are running from the church because so many Christians are worried about their rip jeans than their ripped relationship with God. They are being judged because of their tattoos and the turmoil they’re facing is being overlooked. Church folk are more concerned with their sexual orientation than whether they know what it means to be saved.

We are pushing our youth away due to the lack of sound doctrine and then get mad when they question about it. We are consistently having revivals but nobody is leaving restored or resuscitated let alone revived. Yet we’ll open up the door of the church at the funeral of another youth that has been gunned down, take in fifty youth who were driven to the altar by emotion but won’t take the time to follow-up with them, the next day. Our youth are in trouble. They are dying without knowing God, committing suicide because the weight of the world is heavy, being bullied and afraid to speak, being abused and thinking it’s loved, being sexually molested and covering up and facing mental illness, chalked up to acting out. Understand something, as a parent, I am not perfect and I know how hard it is to get and keep the youth in church yet I talk about Jesus, whether they want to hear it or not. I pray over their pillows and I walk around their rooms and I pray around their cars. I even pray about their friends, jobs and relationships. Even with me being the Asst. Pastor of a church, I don’t obligate them to that church because I want them to be connected to a place of worship that meets their needs. And my children are not perfect or all the way righteous but I will not stop praying because my grandma and momma didn’t stop praying for me. This is why we’ve got to intercede for them. They are facing more trouble than we ever did. So, will you take time today to pray for a youth/young adult? Will you call the name of a youth/young adult today? And if you want me too, send me their name and I shall go in prayer for them tonight at midnight. “In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord; In the night my hand was stretched out without weariness; My soul refused to be comforted.” Psalm 77:2