They shall make that joyful noise in the house of the Lord and offer up the incense of worship unto the praise of the Lord. Let there be within your heart the release, for the Lord speaketh unto thee to loose thee, to make thee a worshiper in spirit and in truth. He brings forth the days of great praise and exaltation of His own name in the house of the Lord. Shall man be exalted? Nay. But the name of man shall perish: the name of the Lord shall endure and it shall be glorified. Behold, honor ye the Lord; glorify His name together; let His praise be heard; let your songs come forth; for it is the season of victory. It is the time and occasion of psalms and songs of joy in the name of the Lord. Amen.
Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment. Ecclesiastes 11:9.
Does that Scripture bother you when you read it? Remember also thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the evil days come, and the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; before the sun, and the lights, and the moon, and the stars, are darkened and the clouds return after the rain. Ecclesiastes 12:1–2.
One of the most morbid books of the Bible is Ecclesiastes; but there is something in this chapter that is important for you to hear. It is talking about living your life aware of the consequences; that the past has a way of continuing its action and the force of its events into the present and into the future. It tells you to remember God now, in the days of your youth.… before the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. Some interpret this as saying, “Then sin comes and I have no pleasure in it.” It is not talking about that. The day comes when there is no pleasure in the years. There is no doubt about it.
Young people feel that pleasure is something on which they have a franchise; nobody else can enjoy it. Of course, you could not be more wrong. But eventually the years do come in which they do not have much pleasure.
I remember talking with my grandfather when he was ninety-four and I asked him how he was. He said, “I’m all right, but the trouble is I don’t get as much pleasure out of my days as I used to.” It is true the time comes when you don’t have as much pleasure in the days. What God is trying to say here is, Remember God now. The remembrance of the Lord and the opening of your heart to God in your youth continues on and on and on.
We speak of the consequences of sin and they do have devastating effects on us. They have a way of doing something to us that establishes certain attitudes of mind.
But an experience with God is even far more forceful than sin. You have a real experience with God and you remember the Lord: it is a force that goes on and on and on through the years.
Problems in life may come up and you may face difficulties and great discouragements. You may have a time that you even lose a sense of your personal relationship with the Lord. It doesn’t matter.
The things that God has meant to you in your youth linger on and the pattern is set. You young people now are experiencing many things of a negative nature and you come to the house of the Lord to be blessed and receive something positive. It is true, kids get away from it; a lot of them come and go; but we notice that they keep coming back. They have beaten a trail once and they find it easy to walk back over that trail to get the blessing of the Lord, and what He can mean to them.
The habits, the patterns of walking with God are established in the time of youth and have a great continuing force in your life. They continue to bless even more than you realize in the great events of your life. There is a distinct difference in the spirit of a newborn child whose parent has had an early experience with God. You may have had an experience way back when you were not in this walk but you really were sincere. That is all it takes. If you meant business and you really wanted to serve God, it has a continuous action in your life year after year.
If you haven’t done it yet, start right now. Build up experiences. Experiences accumulated have a way of producing good attitudes. Several wrong experiences can build a wrong attitude too. You should learn by one experience not to do it again. Experience after experience of a negative nature builds up until there is an attitude deep in the subconscious and then it takes the grace of God to root it out of you. The axe must be laid to the root of the tree to put an end to it. The same thing works in the spirit. While you young people are trying to destroy old memories and old patterns, start in right now to have the experiences that are going to build good memories and good patterns and good experiences.
You can’t wipe out the past. You may have been hung up on drugs or other things; you can’t correct that. But you can look to God to wipe it out by His grace; and then you can start planting, by faith, the memory of one real meeting with God after another. They are accumulative. I have heard so many words from the Lord that it has built up an attitude that I don’t have to stop and recall any one of them. Upon occasion they are a great blessing and I recall them but I don’t have to.
Much dripping of the water wears away the stone is a well-known proverb. Our lives and our spirits become grooved; attitudes are formed by repetitious experience. What is the value of daily prayer? Why should I remember the Lord in the days of my youth? If it is done sincerely so it becomes an experience, if you do it until the Word becomes bread to your spirit, if you do it until you seem to feel Christ speaking to you out of the pages, if you pray until you can feel that your breath touches God—then that everyday experience builds up day after day after day. It isn’t very long until there is a rapport between you and the Lord and no hostile thing could ever separate you from it.
We come to the service so we can be ministered to and blessed; then we are free. Let me tell you something. There isn’t anything that takes the place of habitually walking with God, habitually experiencing God, habitually breaking through in your own spirit to the Lord. If you don’t do that continuously you will find that your experience may open your spirit and you will get a blessing for the moment; but the depth in your spirit is not created by an occasional blessing. The blessing in your spirit is created in a right attitude by opening your heart every day to the Lord and touching Him, constantly reaching to Him.
The Lord knows that you don’t pray enough, you don’t read the Word enough and you let everything enter in. You do not realize that if you are going to be a man of God or walk as a woman of God you need to have those deep things worked in your spirit. The sins of neglect are those sins that catch you right now. A man doesn’t have to do anything to go broke in business. What does a Christian have to do in order to lose all that sweetness and fine attitude and openness to God? Nothing. There is a spiritual gravity which pulls you down.
As you walk with God every day, you build on it. When you come home from school, pray a little bit. Every day make a deposit of a real experience with the Lord.
Knowing the blessing of the Lord and things that God can do for you is so important. As you read your Bible, you build an attitude, something deep. When you hit a rough spot, what comes up? What you have been accumulating comes up—all the blessings, all the times you have rested in the Lord, all the times He has spoken peace to your heart, all the times He has blessed you. God meets you; He blesses you.
The continuous neglect of your health produces illness. The continuous practice of exercises builds good health. Spiritual health, good attitudes of mind and spirit are only built up by walking with God, by experiencing the Lord day by day. I have a new burden in my heart—to redouble my own personal devotions. You have to understand your own need.
Where is the blessing that will keep us going for long periods of time? We had better be able to build on every prophecy and revelation; live in God until every day the Word of the Lord is renewed. Personal ministry is not going to replace a good consistent walk with the Lord and an experience with Him every day. The great deep changes we want in our spirit are worked by having many experiences with God.