Dear Reader,
You are welcome to this great and wonderful month. The year is about rounding off, so it is important for us to make resolutions on who we would want to be and how we desire to live our lives before the next year unfolds.
Amidst the celebration that comes with this month, we must also always learn to take stock of what we have achieved in the year and how we can do better. This is why the Psalmist said: So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom (Psalm 90:12).
One way you can apply your heart unto wisdom is to decide to be useful. As a teenager, who is young and vibrant, your better and brighter tomorrow will be determined by the quality you put into today. So, this month, I will be teaching on: Becoming a Useful Youth!
Who is a youth?
According to the Webster dictionary, a youth is ‘someone who has or shows freshness and energy’. Being a youth is synonymous to ‘vigour’ ‘strength’.
What then, is being useful?
This means ‘to be of a valuable or productive kind’. Therefore, as a youth, you must not only be full of strength, you also need to be productive. This entails that you be a man or woman of value, adding positive impacts to the society and the world at large.
Life itself is all about adding values. The measure of success is not in what you can acquire or the fame you get, but how much impact you are able to make, which comes with how useful you are determined to be.
To understand the value of usefulness, we will be examining a few Biblical examples of youths who through being useful impacted their generation:
a. David
he was useful to his parents in helping to tend the sheep. Through this, He acquired the strength and boldness to save the whole nation from shame; he took off Goliath’s head and the glory and victory was given to the God of Israel (1 Samuel 17:3-55). The skills he acquired as a teenage shepherd boy guided him to being a great king.
b. Joseph
He utilized his special gift of the interpretations of dreams to preserve the nation where he sojourned. He gave ideas that brought about economic empowerment for the nation of Egypt (Genesis 41). That gift in you, that special skill may be what society will need for a time like this.
c. Jesus Christ
Even our Lord Jesus Christ was a useful youth. He was busy about his father’s business (Luke 2:49). He fulfilled his purpose here on earth at the youthful age of 33years.
d. Esther
She was a fearless lady who saved her people from destruction. (Esther 4)
e. Nehemiah
He was a nation builder (Nehemiah 2:5). He took the courage to raise and rebuild the ruined city wall of Jerusalem.
All these people among several others were useful youth that imparted or added value to their society.
If you want to be like one of the youths mentioned above whom God used mightily in their own time, your first step is to be born again and enter in God’s family.
You can say this prayer of faith:
Dear Lord, I come to You today. I am a sinner. Forgive me my sins.  Cleanse me with Your precious Blood. I accept You as my Lord and Saviour.  Now I know I am born again!