Let me tell you about a 15-year-old girl named Avah. She started attending our church and Youth for Christ club a year ago. She just walked in on her own. For a while, her parents were bringing her. Then she started coming on her own. We noticed that she was using Uber to get to church, so we arranged rides for her.

Her hunger for the Word of God is insatiable. She constantly shares what she is reading and learning in the Bible. Her enthusiasm is contagious, and she shows a level of spiritual maturity that is well beyond her years.

Every week, she asks me deep questions like, “How can I feel God’s presence when I’m not reading his Word? How do you know that you’re doing God’s will? And what else can I do to get closer to God?” I am always taken off guard by such deeply profound questions, particularly from a teenager. It has been a long time since I have pondered those kinds of questions, but, then again, I’ve been walking with God for decades. But when I look back to early on in my walk with the Lord, I am reminded of a time when I did not have years of experience to bolster my faith. Avah’s faith is brand new. It is like a freshly sprouted seed. 

This is how I typically respond: “Avah, you have the same Bible that I do. You have a relationship with the same God who loves you, the same Savior who died for you, and the same Holy Spirit who lives in you. The only difference between you and me is time. You just need to keep walking in the Spirit and trust God to take care of the rest.”

Instead of reading large portions of Scripture, I encouraged her to meditate more on God’s Word. For every one minute spent reading, spend two minutes sitting and thinking about the text. This has prompted a short hand, “Read less, think more.” 

I recently had the opportunity to baptize Avah. In preparation, I asked her to write out her testimony. I would like to share it with you as a witness of what God is doing to reach the next generation: 

AVAH TESTIMONY

Growing up, I didn’t know anything about God until I was 11 or 12 years old. Like many Gen Z kids, I was always on my phone. One day, while scrolling through TikTok, I came across a video about God. That was the first time I heard the gospel, and my journey began.

I wanted to learn more about Jesus. Older members of my family who had passed away believed in Him, so we had several old Bibles in our home. I began reading one of them, and I remember the words feeling almost electric. For the first time, I realized that I felt truly satisfied. Around that time, my mother was given a devotional from a client. I began reading it, and through it, I truly felt God’s love. I will never forget that moment. It was the first time in my life that I cried without feeling pain. 

This all happened during the summer of 2022, as I was preparing to enter sixth grade. Unfortunately, that was also when I began to drift away from God. I tried to hold on, but the ways and conditions of the world began to affect me because I wasn’t firmly grounded in the Word. These became the hardest years of my life. From seventh through eighth grade, I was living for the world and surrounded myself with the wrong group of people. This led me into a very dark place, and depression began to take hold of me. I struggled with severe depression and anxiety until the summer of eighth grade.

That was also the summer when Christ began calling me back to Him. One night, I had an alarming dream. I woke up convicted that I needed to seek out God. That experience led me to slowly return to my Bible and begin studying it. During that time, God softened my heart through His Word and His presence.

Eventually, this led to my repentance. I put my trust in Jesus as my Savior. I surrendered fully. I gave my life to Christ and came back home to Him. That was when my journey with God truly began, and I am still on that journey today. Praise God—He is faithful.

God is doing remarkable things to reach the next generation. Avah didn’t have anyone in her life to point her to Christ. She saw a video online, and found an old dusty Bible and a devotional. All of that happened by chance. She may not remember, but I first met her as a substitute teacher in a math class at the middle school when she was twelve, right around the time she was first encountering Christ. I could tell, even back then, that she was troubled. Little did I know that as I prayed over the students that day, I would be baptizing one of them a few years later. 

As Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:37-38, ESV). Please pray for and support all the volunteers and youth workers in the field as they reach the next generation. Be a witness to the faithfulness of God in your own lives. And remember, “Read less, think more.”