All Articles For Hard Questions for Young People

Rev. Gritters is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. Dear Christian parents and young people, This section of the Standard Bearer has always been written for the Young People. The Title “The Strength of Youth” emphasizes the unique strength that young people have in their teens and later. Although there is a unique strength that young people have, in their lives there are many difficult questions to face and answer. My purpose in this rubric is to address some of those questions and try to give guidelines for answering them, so that their strengths may be...

Rev. Gritters is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. What do you think of yourself as a person? How is your self esteem? In other words, in your eyes, how much are you worth? This isn’t a burning question just in the church world today. (It is that, too. I own and have read just two of the many books written about “self esteem” lately. Ray Burwick wrote one called, Self Esteem: You’re Better Than You Think, and Robert Schuller, Self Esteem: The New Reformation. And, though Burwick’s does not attack the basics of the Reformed faith as Schuller’s does, it...

Rev. Gritters is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. The Problem is Real Suppose you have a close friend with whom you do just about everything. Melody, we’ll call here, doesn’t have much money because she has to pay a big part of her own school tuition and because she’s not able to take a job during the school months, since her parents want her to spend all her time concentrating on school. At first, Melody begins to take a few things at the store without paying for them. After a while, even though you don’t...

Barrett L. Gritters is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. I am writing to the young people only. All of the older folks ought just to turn to the next page; unless, of course, they are considering taking up smoking. You young people might think that it is a little presumptuous to write about smoking. For one thing, there are many who are not going to like to see this article in print. For another, you may have seen me with a smoke in my hand a time or two (we’ll talk about that later). Besides, there has...

Barrett L. Gritters is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. Before you turn the page, because you know you are not nearly close enough to marriage even to think about preparing for it, stick around a bit. This iswritten for you. It is not written for those close to marriage. In fact, if you are engaged, and marriage is around the corner, it is almost too late to think about preparing for marriage in the sense that I am speaking of it. This article is written for all of you who would like to be married some...

Barrett L. Gritters is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. I ended last time showing the differences between the decisions the young men and young women make regarding what to do after high school. To summarize, we could say that the decision of what to do after high school has to be made in the light of these questions: First, what abilities has God given me? What are my God-given skills? Second, what does God tell me in His Word as to what is proper and what not? And third, what can I do that best...

Barrett L. Gritters is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. Believing that God has a place for each of His children, we are encouraged in our search for work after we finish school. God’s place for each of us is our “divine office and calling.” In trying to determine what to do after high school, the old Latin phrase “Ora et labora” (pray and work!) sends us on our way. We pray with Paul, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” and we work with all our might trying to find the answer of the...

Barrett L. Gritters is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. To say that young people wring their hands over the question of what to do after high school is to say something to which every young person grimly nods. The rare bird that knows from the third grade on what he/she is going to do is enough to make the other 99.9% of the flock a bit jealous and perhaps all the more troubled besides. “Why don’t I know what I need to do for the rest of my life? Now that I’m 18 years old...