The Manifestation of the Children of God – Part 2

In today’s post, we will examine the lives of two different sets of teenagers – the ones who manifested the God -nature and those who didn’t.

There are certain notable teenagers in the Bible who, in the depiction of their story, manifested the God-nature. They include the following;

1)             Daniel, Meshach, Shedrach, and Abednego. They were Hebrew teenagers who were taken as slaves from Israel to Babylon. But despite their situation in captivity, they manifested the ‘God-nature’.

“Now at the end of the days, when the king had said that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. Then the king interviewed them, and among them all none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; therefore they served before the king. And in all matters of wisdom and understanding about which the king examined them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers who were in all his realm” (Dan. 1:18-20, NKJV).

2)             Joseph. After suffering cruelty and betrayal in the hands of his brothers and slavery in Egypt as a teenager, he somehow found respite in the house of one of Egypt’s important government officials. But no sooner had Joseph settled down than his master’s wife began to make amorous advances to him. And Joseph, though confused and frightened, manifested his ‘God-character’.

“But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Look, my master does not know what is with me in the house, and he has committed all that he has to my hand. There is no one greater in this house than I, nor has he kept back anything from me but you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” So it was, as she spoke to Joseph day by day, that he did not heed her, to lie with her or to be with her” (Gen. 39:8-10, NKJV).

But there were other teenagers who did not manifest the God-nature. They could not rise above their humanity to achieve their divine calling.

1)             Cain (Gen. 4:1-9). He was the elder son of Adam and Eve, the first family. While he was good as a farmer, his younger brother, Abel, excelled as a shepherd. The bible records that both brothers gave offerings of their vocation to God but God accepted that of Abel and rejected Cain’s. Instead of Cain to engage in deep self-reflection and heed divine counsel, he boiled over in anger and killed his own brother, becoming the first murderer in history.

The scripture tells us, “You shall not murder” (Ex. 20:13, NKJV) and “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). When Cain abdicated the latter and committed the former, he lost all opportunity to manifest the God-nature.

2)             Esau. The first son of Isaac and Rebecca, he was a talented hunter and a shepherd. Unfortunately, he was a man without vision – he allowed his weakness for food to ruin him. He focused on the present instead of the future and this prompted him to give up the ultimate (his right as the first son and leader), for the immediate (one single meal). He was that self-centred. He could not appreciate the responsibility and authority endowed in his position as a first son.

The scripture says of Esau, “looking carefully … lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears” (Heb. 12: 15-17).

“But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15, NIV).