How Can Young Christians Keep Their Faith?

2/12/19         Jesse

Jesse is from the Bible Belt, a small town in West Virginia, and in high school most of his friends were professing Christians. Yet the majority – 75% he estimated – fell away from the faith once they went off to college. Why not Jesse?

Jesse told me that his roommate was the head of a Christian apologetics ministry on campus, and helped him work through many of the typical questions raised when Christian encounter the secular mindset.

It sounded to me like Jesse had heeded the advice of the elder Paul to a young Timothy, from a similar Christian household. In 1 Timothy 6 Paul wrote to Timothy “Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have departed from the faith.”

I could tell Jesse had followed this advice. He had gotten involved in Christian fellowship on campus and found reasonable explanations for secular arguments against Christianity. He not only chose to turn away from opposing ideas, but turned to Christian groups for fellowship and support.

Earlier in the chapter, Paul’s advice was “…But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”

In the presence of many witnesses, Jesse had confessed Christ at church camps in his junior high days. And his faith stayed strong in his college days and continues on today, because he not only rejected the secular mindset, but pursued righteousness, fought the good fight of faith, and took hold of the eternal life to which he was called.

May we all do the same!

See our conversation at https://youtu.be/YuBaMdGGGtI on my YouTube channel.