I would like to speak to the teenagers. The teenage years are from thirteen to nineteen. After twelve years old and before twenty, there are seven years in your teens. The teenage years are the golden years of a human being. These seven years are golden and crucial. They are a deciding factor for your whole human life. You may have been careless, sloppy, doing nothing, and even bad when you were twelve or under. After you are past nineteen, you may still try to do something bad, although that is not right. During the seven teenage years, however, you should not do anything wrong. If you do, that is awful and terrible. It is risky. Do not waste one day of your teenage years. Every day, every hour, every minute, and every second have to count. I mean this.
Seven years are not very long. Very quickly your teenage years will be over. If you do not build yourself up within these years, you are finished. It is needless to speak of other things; this is the case even with education. If you cannot do well in these seven years to lay a good foundation for your human life, especially in your education, you are through. If you fail in school, it will be hard to redo it, even if you try. It will be almost impossible, because your teenage years will be over.
Keep in mind that the teenage years are your golden years in every way. Strictly speaking, if you do not build up a good body within these seven years, after nineteen you will be too small and weak. If you expect to be in good health and have a good body, you must do something within your golden years. In these seven years you have to be busy, even in exercise. If you try to enter a medical school or law school, they may check with you to see how much exercise you had in these seven years. If you say that you did not have any exercise or participated in any sport, the school may not take you even if your grade point average is above 4.0.
In your human life there are many aspects, including education, health, your body, morality, ethics, and your relationship with the Lord. Of all these, your relationship with the Lord is first. Even this should be built up while you are a teenager. You should love the Lord, seek Him, and pursue after Him, particularly in these seven years. After these years it is hard to have a proper start, even in seeking after the Lord.
This is also true in learning a language. It is hard for anyone over nineteen to learn another language; you can never do it properly. I would say that after you are past your teens, you can no longer do anything like this. Do you want to get the best grades? Do it during your teenage years. Do you want to love the Lord in the top way? Do it now, because after your teenage years, it is hard to start. After the teenage years, you are good for beginning nothing. Therefore, love the Lord in these years.
Joshua once extended a day by commanding the sun to stand still (Josh. 10:12-13). The way to “make the sun stand still” is to treat one day as if it were a month. Do not finish only one day’s work in one day. You have to finish thirty days’ work in a day. In this way you will spend one year as if it were thirty years. You have to endeavor, strive, struggle, and labor in seeking after the Lord, in reading the Bible, in loving the Lord, in praying, in praising, and in everything.
How much do you pursue after the Lord? If you say not much or not enough, you are not very wise. The smartest young person is the one who always treats one day as if it were thirty. I mean what I am saying. Do not waste an hour or a minute within the seven years of your teens, especially in loving the Lord and seeking after Him.
You have probably heard of Watchman Nee. When he was young, he made up his mind to read the New Testament fifty-two times in one year, that is, once a week continually for a year. Eventually he became a living New Testament. This means that he treated one of his days as many days and one year as many years. I give you this example so that you can follow it to do the same thing. This will never waste your time. Even going to exercise is not a waste of time. You should budget your time, your energy, and even your breathing. If you do this, you will not miss anything in the spiritual realm, in the spiritual kingdom. You will get what you should get.
I advise you all to treasure your teenage years. Even if you are eighteen, you have one year to go. Treasure this one year as a hundred years to get everything that you can. Then you will see that you will be successful in any field, even in seeking the Lord.
So many Christians meet defeat simply because they did not lay a good foundation in so many matters. Look at the world today. Many people in the United States have become nothing. They are just a living entity breathing, eating, and sleeping. They have become nothing because they did not lay a foundation that was good enough for them to be successful in their human life. This is also true in the spiritual field. If you expect to have success in the spiritual field, in seeking the Lord, you must treasure your golden years, your teenage years. Do everything you can. Get into the Bible as much as you can. Pray as much as possible, and function in the meetings with as much as you have. Exhaust yourself. Try your best to do this.