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The Sowing and Reaping of Life, March 15
Flee also youthful lusts: but follow after righteousness, faith, charity,
peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
2
Timothy 2:22
.
A little time spent in sowing your wild oats, dear young friends, will
produce a crop that will embitter your whole life; an hour of thoughtlessness,
once yielding to temptation, may turn the whole current of your life in the
wrong direction. You can have but one youth; make that useful. When
once you have passed over the ground you can never return to rectify your
mistakes....
Satan...transforms himself into an angel of light and comes to the youth
with his specious temptations and succeeds in winning them, step by step,
from the path of duty. He is described as an accuser, a deceiver, a liar, a
tormentor, and a murderer. ...It is Satan’s act to tempt you, but your own act
to yield. It is not in the power of all the host of Satan to force the tempted
to transgress. There is no excuse for sin.
Temptation is not sin. Jesus was holy and pure; yet He was tempted in
all points as we are, but with a strength and power that man will never be
called upon to endure. In His successful resistance He has left us a bright
example, that we should follow in His steps. If we are self-confident or
self-righteous we shall be left to fall under the power of temptation; but
if we look to Jesus and trust in Him we call to our aid a power that has
conquered the foe on the field of battle, and with every temptation He will
make a way of escape. When Satan comes in like a flood, we must meet his
temptations with the sword of the Spirit, and Jesus will be our helper and
will lift up for us a standard against him.
One wrong trait of character, one sinful desire cherished, will eventually
neutralize all the power of the gospel.... The pains of duty and the pleasures
of sin are the cords with which Satan binds men in his snares. Those who
would rather die than perform a wrong act are the only ones who will be
found faithful.
The youth may have principles so firm that the most powerful tempta-
tions of Satan will not draw them away from their allegiance.
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