02/15/2025
WHY YOUNG PEOPLE OFTEN LEAVE THE CHURCH
Many young people whom I have counseled in my Christian counseling practice over the last 25 years are those who have left the church. When I ask why, I discover often that they falsely believed that that had experienced true Christian faith.
But in actuality, they had merely been exposed to, or took away from their church, an intellectual, emotional, or legalistic perversion of the Christian faith that they discovered had no power. Makes sense to me! As I understand it, there is never any spiritual fruit without supernaturally experiencing God and His power flowing through us by abiding in Christ. There is no other way. There is no other true Christianity.
Why did they never discover this biblical truth? I suspect it is because of enormous opposition to the beautiful simplicity of abiding in Christ (2 Corinthians 11:2-3), not only from the devil, but the Christ-rejecting world, and the rebellion of the flesh. That’s why abiding in Christ is so difficult. Even for those of us who know what it means to abide in Jesus! It is simple but that does not mean it is easy!
As G. K. Chesterton put it: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and untried” “What’s Wrong with the World, Adamant Media, 2004, p. 48). Even as I write this I recognize that I myself have not been abiding fruitfully over the last hour, due to my succumbing to the powers of the unholy triad: flesh, world, devil.
But the cool thing about abiding in Christ is that we can always hit the reset button and begin all over again. The last hour was lost, but can be redeemed. And the next hour can be more fruitful than this one. That’s supernatural! That’s spiritual power. That’s true Christianity. Not being “perfect” but being perfected in Christ, as we learn painfully, and humbly, that we cannot do life without Him fruitfully for one minute on our own.
He is the True Vine. I am His branch, incomplete and imperfect with Him. “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). But with Him, all things are possible (Mark 10:27).
