When this article is printed, our Young People’s Convention will not be too far away. Many of us will be busy anticipating the numerous activities that, D.V., will take place at Camp Geneva. We will think back to last year’s convention and remember all of the joyous times spent with friends from far away and those nearby. Then those fond memories will cause us to look forward to the month of August, when once again we can enjoy the Christian fellowship of young people from our churches. We will also take the time to consider the spiritual purpose for taking part in the convention. This brings us to the purpose of our article. Is our Young People’s Convention a living example of God’s love for His people?
The main emphasis of our question, as we can readily see, considers God’s love for His people. Secondary importance considers our Young People’s Convention as a living example of the main emphasis. We must stress the importance of the question in the above manner because we must come to a proper understanding of why we hold a convention at all. Then we can easily understand the importance of all that takes place.
The Holy Scriptures bring to our minds and hearts the truth that God alone is the source of all love. God is Love (I John 4:8). Quoting from “Reformed Dogmatics.” chapter 3, page 106, we find. “Also in His love God is perfectly Self-sufficient. He has no need of men’s hands to be served; He is not in need of a man’s heart to be loved; He needs no object outside of Himself to love…Constantly, eternally, He beholds Himself, contemplates Himself with infinite delight in His own perfections.” The emphasis is that as God does love us, it is because of Himself, and not because of us.
Consider the ninth and tenth verses of I John 4; “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” We, therefore, as the people of God are made spiritually alive through the perfect death of the Son of God upon the accursed tree. That is God’s love for His people.
Now, what about the secondary importance? To simplify our question we will ask another question in its place. How does God love us through our Young People’s Convention? To start, we must be thankful unto God that He brings us together as His young people for His purpose, to love Himself through us. Not only does God love Himself through us but also through our parents. This is true because we can never separate God’s love for us from God’s love for our parents, or for that matter, God’s love for His people. The convention serves the purpose of bringing us together for the love of God.
Again we go to Scripture; this time to the eleventh verse of 1 John 4: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” There is the amazing blessing which Jehovah has given to us. The love, which is of our Father in heaven, is bestowed upon us that we might also love one another, because as God loves us, we are enabled to love one another. We love the brethren in that we would lay down our lives for the brethren. We are brothers in Christ. When we keep His commandments, we love God and thereby love one another.
Our reason for going to this year’s convention must be out of a love of God. This means, too, that we must prepare ourselves spiritually. When we meet old and new friends, the love of God must not only be in our hearts, but upon our lips also. Our conversation and walk must show each one to be a recipient of Jehovah’s love. Consider all of the times we will spend with each other. No doubt we will be excited, concentrating our every thought and effort on winning each game. We do so with a love for God by performing our best and being at peace with one another. That is, we willingly seek the good for our fellow brother in Christ. That doesn’t mean we let the other team win, but we try our best to win. Upon winning or losing we give thanks to God for the strength of our youth.
Just as we concentrated our every effort on winning, so must we concentrate our efforts on hearing in our hearts what God says to us through one another in prayer, through those who will teach us, and from each other during discussion groups. As young people from our many Protestant Reformed Churches, all of our activities must be performed out of a living faith. The faith which is given us by Christ enables us to be humble and to fight against the pride of our youth. Then we know that Jehovah is our Faithful Covenant God.
When our convention is over, we will certainly talk about the many events that occurred. In our hearts will be the joy of having had the fellowship of each other, during which Jehovah was glorified. Then, too, we will more earnestly seek to have our hungry and thirsty souls fed the following Sabbath day by the faithful preaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. All of our daily experiences must cause us by faith to seek the Kingdom of God.