Genesis 1:5 - Meditate the Scripture Daily bit by bit
Childhood and Youth | Notes
1.
2. The Witnesses: Apostle Talent Farai with Brother Nelson
The Teaching/Didache: Childhood and Youth
Principal Scripture (PS): Ecclesiastes 9:9-11
9 Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he
hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in
thy labour which thou takest under the sun.
10 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device,
nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
11 I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the
strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to
men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
3. Hebrew Translation of Principal Scripture (PS): Qohelet 9:9-11
9 Asher ishshah im chay raah hebel chay yom kol aheb tachath Nathan asher ki hebel yom kol
shemesh chay cheleq hu amel atta hasher amal shemesh tachath.
10 Yad matsa asher kol asah koach asah cheshbon maaseh ayin ki asher sheol chokmah death
sham halak attah.
11 Shemesh tachath raah shub qal lo ki lo merots gam milchamah gibbor gam lechem chakam
lo osher bin lo yada lo gam eth qarah pega eth ki chen kol.
Key Scripture (KS): Ecclesiastes 11:9-10
9 Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and
walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these
things God will bring thee into judgment.
10 Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh: for childhood
and youth are vanity.
Hebrew Translation of Key Scripture (KS): Qohelet 11:9-10
9 Yalduth bachur samach yom leb yatab derek halak bechurim ayin mareh leb elleh kol al ki
yada mishpat Elohim bo.
10 Leb ka’ac sur basar ra’ abar shacharuth yalduth ki hebel.
4. Didache
-The work of Diakonis/Deacon Enock Muchinako (Global Chairperson of the Youth
For Jesus) and the current Youth Leadership has been appraised and applauded, it
is a work of the Lord.
- We thank the Lord for the work Pastor G. Baloyi is doing with the Youth, we are
appreciative of his hard work.
- Because of the appointment to one day sleep (third death) [Hebrews 9:27], the
Apostle, other able Ministers of the New Testament and leaders in the Ministry
today, won’t be there forever, so, if the Youth For Jesus Department is alive and
kicking, the future of the Ministry is secured.
- The Youth are the vanguard of the posterity of the Church.
- The health of the Church is measured from the grasp the Youth have in the
Doctrine and the Gospel and including their conduct.
- The Youth are beginning to learn the Hebrew language, the Ziklag language.
- You should never be self-willed and selfish with the word because you need the
input of other Brethren in your spiritual growth [1 Corinthians 12:12-31].
- The Objectives of the Message:
5. ❖ Who is a Youth according to God?
❖ The danger of being a Youth!
❖ What does God expect from HIS Youth?
- Who is a Youth according to God? Don’t we have married youths and those
unmarried but stills not youths before God?
- Traditionally, even within the corridors of the Church, youth are the young ones
in the House, yet the youths also consider those older in the Church to be those
people who are not fashionable, the people who lost track of time and are not
7. - In certain cultural setups, there are certain procedures to be taken for youths to
transition from being boys into men. For example, the Zulu people. In the
initiation of the Zulu, some boys even die because of the harshness of the
initiation procedures:
- Even in medieval Africa, there were certain cultural initiation programs where
young boys and girls transitioned to men and women respectively.
- This information seeks to clarify the need to define the youth from the
panoramic viewpoint and lenses of Holy Scriptures which contain the mind of
God.
- In some political parties (especially in the African Context) you can find a fifty-
year-old in the youth congress. This is so because they have their own criterion of
defining who is youth and who isn’t.
- Does one cease to be a youth because of marriage?
8. - The most dangerous and most vulnerable stage of one’s life is the time of being
a youth.
- This message won’t be comfortable, but it seeks to establish sobriety within the
youth.
- (Ecclesiastes 9:9) – marriage is vanity! So, the first wakeup call is to know that
the main objective of the Youth Department is not to prepare the youth for
marriage, that is, preparing them for vanity. The ‘life’ in our Scripture is not our
life in Christ but this mortal life. Without salvation, without adoption [Galatians
4:5, Romans 8:15], this life is the sorriest experience ever, it is a terrible vanity.
Marriage is vanity because it is an earthly affair, only the body (the mind and
emotions) participate in marriage, and one only marries a body.
9. - Saying you are being connected to a person’s body, mind and soul/spirit because
of marriage is just a fallacy and pure expedience:
- Only the Lord can connect with our souls/spirits because He is a Spirit [John
4:24].
- Man to man cannot connect spirit to spirit.
- If you are getting married, be clear to know that the spirit is not involved at all.
10. - When people are in a marriage, they will be talking about their hearts, but the
truth of the matter is, the word heart will be a euphemism referring to the mind
and emotions.
- The bonding in courtships and consequentially marriage is solemnly an
emotional bond.
- Marriage is a body-to-body arrangement regardless of who is saved and who is
not.
- Because we are not philosophical but Doctrinal/Sola Scriptura, the word vain
(according to Holy Scripture) means – of no spiritual significance.
- Anything that doesn’t change your spiritual state is vanity.
- Marriage is not a sin but it remains vain nonetheless so never expect a thank you
from God after getting married. Don’t expect blessings from God because of being
married.
- (1 Corinthians 8:8) helps us define what vanity is. In the stated Scripture, the
word ‘meat’ is symbolical of everything used in this life, marriage included. So,
getting married doesn’t make one better and not getting married still doesn’t
make better.
- If the spirit is symbolized by a woman, conception is not based on whether a
woman wears expensive clothes or not, whether a woman baths frequently or not
so basing on conception, expensive clothes are a vanity, only seed from a man can
result in conception.
- A message which has been promised by the Holy Spirit: Understanding Spiritual
and natural blessings of God.
- Everything the Lord gives is a Blessing, but some are shadowy blessings (natural
blessings) which are a picture of the true blessings [Spiritual Blessings] (Ephesians
1:3).
- You are not in the Youth Department to get married.
- But marriage is a dangerous vanity which can derail a believer from the true
awaited Spiritual Marriage.
11. - The whole enterprise of the mortal life is vanity (1 Corinthians 15:19), ‘this life’
is further explained in (Mark 10:28-31), clarifying that there are two worlds hence
two different lives so the phrase ‘this life’ refers to this mortal physical soon-to-
perish life.
- The whole book of Ecclesiastes is there to stress that this life is a vanity of
vanities so 1 Corinthians 15:19 is a summary of the whole message of the book.
- Marriage is as significant as it being a drama of the awaited Marriage of the
Lamb.
- (1 Corinthians 7:27-31)- (verse 28) the message is not forbidding marriage but
instructing the youth not to seek marriage meaning, one should not focus and
concentrate all his/her energy on seeking a suiter for marriage.
- Because the married are expected to live as if they are not married, it is not
expected for someone to miss a Church service because the in-laws have visited.
- The instruction in (1 Corinthians 7:27-31) shows that marriage is vanity and on
top of that, gives instruction on how to handle marriage. The phrase the ‘time is
short’, is telling us that there is lesser time left before we sleep (third death) so
we need to learn the Gospel the more. Hence the need to
- If you have a girlfriend/boyfriend, live as if you have none.
12. - The youth stage is highly explosive and marred with detonative, troubling
temptations.
- (1 Corinthians 7:8-9, 32-34) – the wife/husband is part of the world (1 John
2:15-16, John 17:14] so with this knowledge, how can one stress over rejection
and break-ups.
- Marriage is a destructive vanity which frictions and opposes one’s love for the
Lord.
- Marriage is not evil, it is a vanity.
- Solomon is the best suited to categories marriage as a vanity because he is not a
stranger to marriage, he had seven hundred wives, three hundred concubines and
so, he had all kinds, types and forms of women [the tall, slim, fat, slick and so
forth] (1 Kings 11:1-3).
❖ Who is the Youth according to God?
- (Proverbs 20:29) – Youthfulness represents strength.
13. - In aviation engineering, if a plane has many routes to take, say, it is flying to
Ethiopia from Zimbabwe, but it lands in Zambia, the fuel put in the tank will be
sufficient for that specified flight (refilling will be done at the subsequent stops)
because it is highly dangerous to land a plane on a full tank since the aviation fuel
is highly flammable. The fuel is important for the flight but excess of it is
dangerous – therefore youthfulness is the most dangerous time in one’s life
because there is too much strength against too little control (self-control) to
manage that strength
- We need help and a lot of training and grooming to manage and control the
strength of youthfulness.
- There is optimal strength in the youth but for the older, they have strength in
the mind, so all the old can do is to advice the youth.
14. - This disparity is not only detrimental to the youth but to the society as a
collective because the best decisions are with the elderly who do not have the
strength to execute them.
- All that is left for the youth is to trust the elderly for advice but usually, the
youth heed the advice later when they have already made the mistakes then,
what will be left of them is grow older and start giving advice to the younger. This
becomes a cycle of societal incompetence.
- This teaching seeks to empower the Youth with wisdom by the Gospel so that
they can make the best decisions at a time they have their optimal strength.
- The tree types of strength for the youth:
▪ Energy/Power
▪ Zeal/Will-power/Enthusiasm/Motivation/Adventurous
▪ Imagination (The power of the mind)
- Energy is the power in the body by which one works. This energy lacks a control
room called wisdom for proper management.
- Enthusiasm is the drive which pushes the youth to have an experimental
approach to life.
- This enthusiasm is a strength because it was and still is, the drive behind all
inventions and innovations.
- Enthusiasm is the anesthesia against a dogmatic approach to life.
- These imaginations are good if thoroughly monitored and controlled.
- Some evil imaginations might lead someone to sell his/her life at a discount.
- Imaginations about sex lead to eloping and unwanted marriges.
- The youth have a wilderness of imaginations which are not guided by knowledge
but rather by ignorance.
15. - Unchecked imaginations lead to addictions and slavery to sin:
- How many imaginations do we put in action without proper scrutiny and
judgement?
- Failed marriages are at times anchored on faulty imaginations.
- An imagination is a fantasy which needs to be turned into reality, it is a dream.
- (Psalm 71:5) – the youthful stage is a transitional stage of life, the beginning of
one’s life because as an infant, you will be living your parents’ life.
- (Job 33:25) – renewal of strength takes you back to your youth.
- (Ecclesiastes 11:9-10), God is going to bring you into judgement because of what
you did as a youth because that’s when you had prime strength. (Verse 10), evil is
to be removed from the flesh not the spirit because vanity is found in the flesh.
The repercussions of being youth are, ‘childhood and youth are vanity’.
- (1 Corinthians 13:8-11), the mismatch is having optimal strength yet having
childish and vain understanding insufficient to manage the optimal strength.
- How many injuries do you have because of childish understanding?
16. - Being youth is actually being vanity based.
- The optimal strength in the youth should be harnessed by the Church.
- Strength has this disadvantage of empowering a person to act even if the
destination (result) is not good.
- The strength in the youth is surrounded by vanity.
- (1 Corinthians 10:23), the word ‘edify’ means benefitting the spirit-man. If the
strength in a youth does not benefit his/her spirit, then that youth is a vain
youth.
- Vanity is associated with sin (Ecclesiastes 11:10) so the first port of call is to
make sure that the energy you have is not used to an occasion of sin.
- True repentance is to quit sin even if you have the strength (ability and capacity)
to commit that sin. You cannot say you are quitting beer when you do not have
the money to buy the alcohol.
❖ What the Lord expects from the Youth.
17. - (Ecclesiastes 12:1), remembering God in the days of one’s youth, in simple
language means, God wants to harvest one’s strength.
- The above-mentioned Scripture can be rewritten as:
Remember Christ in the days of thy strength, while the evil days come not, nor
the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them:
- Christ is the Creator (Colossians 1:13-15).
- The strength you use in committing sin, you will be using that strength against
Christ because the Lord wants to use that strength in His work.
- Every youth using energy for anything rather than remembering Christ is a vain
youth.
- The Church should open up space to accommodate the strength of the youth.
- Vanity is being able to watch useless videos on tiktok for six hours end to end
but fail to listen to a six-hour long Sermon, being subjected to vanity is a
Babysitting exercise
18. - If one has short temper, their problem is not the need to fight people but
misplaced energy, if they approached poverty with the same tenacity, anger and
energy, they could be somewhere else.
- Anger is not a problem, it just needs to be channeled correctly to one’s proper
enemies in life.
- We have boys who go to unprecedented levels of canniness to lure and trick
girls, if this energy and intelligence was used properly, they could be productive.
- How much energy do you put in pursuing and following vanity?
- Proper grooming for the youth to channel and manage their strength properly
will result in proper marriages even thou, its vanity.
- Its stupidity to buy a car without a house (a stand), that shows misplaced
priorities.
- ‘Remember now’, as found in (Ecclesiastes 12:1), focusing on the word now
which is a word referring to the New Testament dispensation (Hebrews 11:1).
- The instruction to remember is a call to observe, to obey, to uphold, to subject
yourself under the authority of Christ.
- There were no old men amongst the twelve Apostles counting Apostle Paul also,
even our Lord, The Apostle of our profession [Hebrews 3:1], was youthful at the
time he died for us.
19. - Even our Mother, Apostle Chiwenga, the same happened to him:
- Even Evangelist Timotheus was young and still a youth (2 Timothy 2:22).
- The Lord does this because he wants to harvest the primal strength of His
servants.
- Remembering our Creator won’t end with us listening to sermons but rendering
a service in the House.
- The strength used to commit sin should be used to serve Jesus Christ.
- Three things the youth should do to avoid being vain:
The primary concern is to walk away from sin.
The youth should focus on the things that edify them that is, listening to
the Gospel and serving God in a capacity that edifies others, that might
be fellowshipping or offering a service in the House. Edification also
includes improving one’s own self to be at a better position to attend to
20. the Gospel with less hindrance and not being a burden to other
believers.
An Assignment given to the youth.
- (Genesis 49:3) – Rueben was Jacob’s strength, the 12 patriarchs are the fruits,
manifestations of Jacob’s strength. The fruits of the youth’s strength should be
committed serving the Lord.
The Assignment
- It is a youth ministration whereby every year, all youths in Jesus Revelation
Ministries must commit to a certain amount (according to individual discretion).
- This ministration will be in monetary value.
- At the beginning of the year, one will commit a certain amount to youth
leadership which will be settled at the end of the year.
- That offering is a thanksgiving offering thanking the Lord for the youthful
strength. This is a call to remembering our Creator.
- This money won’t be used for nominal church operations, but the Lord will
advice how the funds are to be used.
- It’s a chance to serve the Lord, the Only Potentate True God.
- (Revelation 5:12) – the Lamb was slain to receive (mind you, not give but
receive) power, to receive strength. The Lamb is worthy to receive our strength.
- Gossip mongering will cease once the youth are committed to remembering
their Creator.
Let no one despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word,
in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. [1 Timothy 4:12]
21. Youth For Jesus – Cape Town Assembly:
Sermon Referrals:
THIS SERMON IS AVAILABLE ON YouTube.
23. Have you been pricked unto Salvation? Contact: -
Website: www.jrm.org.zw
Mail: info@jrm.org.zw
WhatsApp: +263 773 005 000; +263 782 500 000; +263 783 000 020
24. Notes Compilation Addressee:
Brother Tapiwa ‘Nyemba’
Jesus Revelation Ministries
South Africa Region
Cape Town Assembly
Khayelitsha Section
Contact details [For reviewing and sharing of Notes]:
Email: brothertapiwa123@gmail.com
gorerasimuka.amen@gmail.com
Facebook: Tapiwa Nyemba (Available Here:
https://www.facebook.com/tapiwa.nyemba.98)
YouTube: Sola Scriptura (Available Here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjf0oOSrigQ1LB1lZ1z-MwQ)
WhatsApp: +27644945290
The Youth are the vanguard of the posterity of the Church. [Apostle Chiwenga]
