Thoughts For Young MenSample

Lack of thought is one simple reason why thousands of souls are cast away forever. Men will not consider, will not look ahead, will not look around them, will not reflect on the end of their present course, and the sure consequences of their present ways, and awake at last to find they are damned for lack of thinking. 

Young men, none are in more danger of this than yourselves. You know little of the perils around you, and so you are careless how you walk. You hate the trouble of sober, quiet thinking, and so you make wrong decisions and bring upon yourselves much sorrow. Young Esau had to have his brother’s stew and sold his birthright to get it; he never thought how much he would one day want it. Young Simeon and Levi wanted to avenge their sister Dinah by slaying the Shechemites; they never considered how much trouble and anxiety they might bring on their father Jacob and his house by doing so. . . .

Believe me, this world is not a world in which we can do well without thinking, and least of all do well in the matter of our souls. “Don’t think,” whispers Satan; he knows that an unconverted heart is like a dishonest businessman’s financial records—it will not bear close inspection. “Consider your ways,” says the Word of God. Stop and think; consider and be wise. Well says the Spanish proverb, “Hurry comes from the devil.” Just as men marry in a rush and then are miserable for the rest of their lives, so they make mistakes about their souls in a minute, and then suffer for it for years. Just as a bad servant does wrong, and then says, “I never gave it a thought,” so young men run into sin, and then say, “I did not think about it; it did not look like sin.” Not look like sin! What would you expect? Sin will not come to you, saying, “I am sin;” it would do little harm if it did. Sin always seems “good, and pleasant, and desirable,” at the time of commission. Oh, get wisdom! Get discretion!