I am grateful to have been taught the Gospel while in my youth. The years when you just start to 'grow up' are so pivotal to what our future will have in store for us. My parents taught me to have good friends, and I am so thankful that the Lord blessed me with tremendous friends who have been strong examples for how I can live life to the fullest.
The importance of righteous teaching at a young age is made very evident in the Book of Mormon with the story of Helaman and the Stripling Warriors.
There was a bloody war amongst the two nations of the Book of Mormon. The Nephites were defending their freedom, liberty, families and religion against the assaulting Lamanites. In need of strength, two thousand of the sons of the Ammonites (who left the Lamanites to join the Nephites) volunteered to defend their brethren and go to war.
In there many battles, these young warrior's commander, Helaman recorded that while all of his youthful army received many wounds in the fierceness of battle, "not one soul of them... did perish... (Alma 57:25)."
Not only were these young warriors made mighty in war, but in his epistle to the chief commander Moroni, Helaman recounts:
"...they were all young men, and they were exceedingly valiant for courage, and also for strength and activity; but behold, this was not all—they were men who were true at all times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted. Yea, they were men of truth and soberness, for they had been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him. (Alma 53:20-21)"
Though the world diminishes and demeans the value of our youth, our Father in Heaven knows the strength and potential the young of the world have. They are so precious to Him! Think about the worth these youth have in the eyes of God, and how they are "examples of the believers."
"Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity (1 Timothy 4:12)."
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