Our Young People Need Jesus — E.A. Johnston

The Church’s Failure to Teach the Gospel

One of the saddest chapters in the life of our churches is how we lost our young people today. We somehow managed to get them to accept our Jesus when they were children by inviting him into their heart.

Entertainment Instead of Repentance

We then told them they were saved as they grew up in the church. We gave them pizza night and movie night and mud fights, and we hid the real gospel from them because we didn't want to lose them. We didn't want to scare them off by preaching on hell.

We didn't want to offend them by calling them sinners. We did not want them to quit coming to church on Sunday, so we left out their duty of repentance. Instead, we made Jesus fond with vacation Bible school, and we made church entertaining.

We made sure our kids had a good time at church, thinking that when they got older, they'd want to stay. We played softball at church, and we played soccer at church, and we gave them the music they wanted at church and worship, so they'd have a good time.

The Need for Intercession and Discipleship

But that time might have been better spent on our faces in intercession for their souls. Perhaps we should have spent more time in training them to follow Jesus in a life of discipleship. But instead, we just gave them what they wanted instead of what they needed, and as they grew up, they saw right through it all, saw that we were frauds and fakes, that we were one person at church on Sunday and the opposite at home during the week, that there was no reality of God at church and no reality of God in the lives of their parents.

Hypocrisy and the Loss of Spiritual Reality

They heard their parents say, do as I say, but not do as I do. They grew up in the church, and then when they grew up, they left church for the world. We gave them an appetite for the world in church, and now they want all the world and its pleasures.

The young people left church a long time ago, but we just didn't notice. We're focused on the next generation of kids to ruin them the same way, with the hope that this time it'll be different. Our young people need Jesus because we failed to get them to Jesus to be truly converted.

Praying for the Salvation of Young People

Our young people need Jesus, or they will surely end up in hell. Maybe we ought to pray for them differently, instead of praying that they'll come back to Jesus. Maybe it's time we were honest with ourselves and started praying for their salvation, because right now the world and the devil has them.

Our young people need Jesus. Let us pray.