4 Reasons to Remember Your Creator

in Your Youth
FROM DAVID MURRAY MAY 09, 2012 CATEGORY: ARTICLES

Our enemy says, “Youth for pleasure, middle age for business, old
age for religion.” The Bible says, “Youth, middle age, and old age for
your Creator.”

But as it’s especially in our youth that we are most inclined

(determined?) to forget our Creator, it’s especially in these years
that we must work to remember our Creator (Ecc.12:1). Remember
that He made you, that He provides for you, that He cares for you,
that He watches you, that He controls you; and remember that He
can save you too. That’s a lot to remember, but it’s much easier to
start memorizing when we are young!

1. Energetic years
However, that’s not the only reason why God commands us to
remember our Creator in our young years. It’s also because these are
our most energetic years.
Why wait until we are pegging out, until we are running down, until
our gas is almost empty, before serving our Creator? The God who
made us deserves our most active and healthy years: our bodies are
strong and muscular (well kind of), our minds are sharp and clear,
our senses are receptive and keen and sensitive, our enthusiasm is
bright and bushy, our wills are steely and determined. Remember
Him in your energetic years.

2. Sensitive years
Why do far more of us become Christians in our youth than in our
middle or old age? It’s because youthful years are sensitive years.
Without giving up our belief in “Total Depravity” we can say that it’s
“easier” to believe and repent when we are younger. It’s never easy,
but it’s easier. And it’s easier because as we get older our heart is
hardened thicker, our conscience is seared number, our sins root
deeper, our deadness becomes deader.

Let’s use our youthful sensitivity and receptivity to remember our

Creator before the evil days of callous indifference set in.

3. Teachable years
We learn more in our youth than in any other period of life. That’s
true in all subjects, but especially true in religious instruction. All
the Christians I’ve met who were converted to Christ late in life have
expressed huge regrets about how little they know and how little
they can now learn. I encourage them to value and use whatever
time the Lord gives them, but they often feel they have to study
twice as hard to learn half as well.

4. Dangerous years
Young years are minefield years: hormones, peer pressure, alcohol,
drugs, pornography, immorality, testosterone, etc. Few navigate
these years without blowing up here and there. Dangers abound on
every side – and on the inside. How many “first” temptations
become “last” temptations! How much we need our Creator to keep
us and carry us through this battlefield.

Remember to remember
Let me then give you some helps to remember your Creator during
these best of years (and “worst” of years):

 Be persuaded that you have a Creator: Get well

grounded in a literal understanding of Genesis 1-2 and
shun all evolutionary influences.
 Get to know your Creator: Study His Word using
sermons, commentaries, and good books. But also
study His World using microscopes and telescopes and
any other instruments He gives.
 Join with your Creator’s friends: Build friendships with
other creatures that love to remember and respect
their Creator.
 Follow your Creator’s order: He set and gave the
pattern of six days work followed by one day of rest for
contemplation of His Works.
 Ask for your Creator’s salvation: Even if your rejection
of your Creator has broken you in pieces, He’s willing
to re-create you in His image.
 And while we’re on the subject of salvation, I don’t
want elderly readers to be discouraged. Compared to
the aeons of eternity, you are still in your “youth.” It’s
not too late to remember Him, before these evil days
come even nearer.
 4 Reasons to Remember your
Creator in Middle Age
 FROM DAVID MURRAY MAY 23, 2012 CATEGORY: ARTICLES


 Although it’s young people that are specifically commanded to
remember their Creator (Eccl. 12:1), it’s probably assumed
that middle-aged people will have the sense to do the same.
Surely by then we have accumulated enough experience to
realize that remembering we have a Creator and that we are
creatures is basic wisdom. How then do we respect and
remember our Creator in busy, striving, stressed-out
middle age?
 1. Remember that we are complex creatures
 The body is a complex mix of physical material and physical
forces - electricity, chemistry, physics, biology, plumbing,
gasses, pumps, siphons, lubrication, buttons, switches,
receptors, etc.
 Then there’s the soul, way more complex than the body and
completely inaccessible to empirical research methods.
Although we have some Biblical data to mine and research,
 yielding us some basics about the soul’s capacities and
abilities, so much about the soul remains a mystery.
 And then you put complex body and complex soul together
and what do you get – multiple complexities!
 The interconnectivity of human nature means that the health
of the body affects the health of the soul and vice versa, and
it’s not easy to figure out the contribution of each to our
problems! One thing is for sure, we cannot neglect one realm
and expect the other not to suffer the consequences.
 2. Remember that we are limited creatures
 Hopefully none of us think that we are unlimited. However
most of us think we are less limited than we actually are. We
vastly over-estimate our physical strength, emotional stamina,
moral courage, spiritual maturity, volitional muscle, and
conscience steel.
 Underestimating our limitations and over-estimating our
abilities can only have one outcome – weakness, fraying, and
eventually breaking. Try it with anything – your car engine, a
towrope, your computer, etc. Underestimate the limitations
and over-estimate the abilities and you will eventually blow
the engine, break the rope, and crash the computer.
 We must find out our limits – physical, spiritual, emotional,
moral – and work within them. And we must not impose our
limits on others, despising those with lower limits or envying
those with higher limits.
 3. Remember that we are dependent creatures
 Even before the fall, Adam and Eve were dependent upon
their Creator. They leaned upon him for everything. That was
 their most basic human experience, and in a fallen world it’s
even more necessary.
 Many of us are theologically dependent but experientially
independent. We depend on God with our lips but not with
our lives. We say we lean upon Him for everything but He
rarely feels our weight. If we don’t live as dependent
creatures, we are not worshipping our Creator. By our
independence, we are worshipping and serving the creature
rather than the Creator.
 4. Remember that we are fallen creatures
 As part of the curse upon us for our first parent’s first sin,
death entered the creation and even the greatest creature –
humanity.
 If you thought we were complex before, we are even more
complex now. I enjoy fishing, and like all anglers, I “know”
that the most complicated and sophisticated reels catch more
fish. But, when they break down they make a much bigger
mess than standard reels.
 That’s why complex humanity is in a much worse state than
any other creature. That’s why nature films focus on animals
rather than humanity. Who wants to look at ugly human
creatures in all their brokenness when you can see much more
beauty in the animal kingdom!
 But that’s not the end of the story. Remember, middle-agers,
our Creator is in the business of re-creating. In salvation, He
begins the process of making all things new, including His
creatures. In fact, the Creator lived as a creature in the midst
of His creation to save His creatures.