Growing Up (Take Your Faith Seriously)

Questions This Sermon Answers:

1. How can a young man cleanse his way?

Psalm 119:9 gives the answer directly: "By taking heed according to Your word." Cleansing comes not through religious activity, good intentions, or godly relatives, but through personal attention to Scripture. Dr. Holt notes that God sent us "like sheep into a dark world" and armed us with two things — His indwelling Spirit and His Word. The Westminster Confession (1.10) makes Scripture the supreme judge by which every spiritual matter is settled, so taking heed to the Word is the appointed path of growth.

2. What does Psalm 119:9 mean?

It poses a question every generation faces and answers it in one line: a young person stays pure by heeding God's Word. Holt observes that the verse is addressed to the youth, not the parents — "at the end of the day, you alone are responsible for your own spiritual growth." The cleansing is ongoing and active, requiring that the Word be known, read, and studied rather than merely encountered at intervals on a Sunday.

3. How do I take my faith seriously and take ownership of it?

A time comes when your faith must be "between you and God alone," not routed through a parent or grandparent. Holt warns against treating relatives as "intermediaries between us and God," thinking, "as long as dad is in Scripture, it is not so important whether I am." Ownership means at minimum reading Scripture daily — "the lowest bar in kingdom growth" — and refusing to measure yourself against immature friends who set the bar "through the floor."

4. Why are twenty-somethings often the least religiously active people in a church?

Holt points to an observed pattern: teenagers are frequently a church's most active members because of abundant programs — a "veneer of religiosity" — while those same people grow least active in their twenties, as if maturity "goes into hibernation." His diagnosis is that religious activity was never the same as building a foundation. Where Scripture, prayer, and worship were treated as extracurricular, the lesson took, and many "depart in their twenties."

5. What were phylacteries, and what do they teach about God's Word?

Phylacteries were tiny boxes holding a small scroll of Scripture, bound on the forehead and arm, worn because passages like Deuteronomy 6 command binding God's word "as frontlets between your eyes." Holt uses them to illustrate Psalm 119:11 — "Your word I have hidden in my heart." The Word is not meant to "gather dust on a shelf" but to be as near as a box on the forehead, "written in ink on the chambers of the heart."

6. Do I really need to study the Bible and theology, or is that just for pastors and elders?

Holt answers with two pictures: a builder who says he likes blueprints but leaves them "over there," and a lawyer who loves the law but never studies it. In both cases "the chance of a catastrophic error goes through the ceiling." So it is with a Christian who keeps God's Word at arm's length — "a bad one, uneducated, weak, perhaps self-deceived." The Westminster Confession (1.7) teaches that the things necessary for salvation are plain enough for ordinary believers to grasp through diligent use of the means.

7. The billion dollars or the Bible — which would you choose?

Asked which he would keep for life, every believer "knows the right answer; the question is your answer, in your own conscience." The psalmist rejoices in God's testimonies "as much as in all riches" (Psalm 119:14). Holt explains that we choose the billion because spiritually "we have trouble with valuation" — like a toddler who takes the cookie over the gold brick because "the child cannot properly appraise value."

8. Why do I value God's Word so little, and how can that change?

Holt tells of a man adrift at sea whose GPS "beeped every ninety seconds"; he found it annoying until a storm left him lost — and then "what sound did he most want to hear? The beep." We tune out "read the Bible more, pray, come to church" until hardship comes. "God often appoints hard seasons because we learn best when things are difficult," and better still is to know His Word so well that "when the challenge comes, His word is already written on your heart."

9. What does it mean to meditate on God's Word, and can I grow by osmosis?

Psalm 119:15-16 records three "I will" promises — "I will meditate... I will delight... I will not forget." Holt frames these as intentionality: "I am going to take action based on what I believe to be true," and keep at it rather than "try the Bible and quit after a week." Osmosis, he says, "is wonderful for plants and bad for Christians"; you are not called to "incidentally become godly" but to pursue the Word on purpose, which the Confession (1.6) ties to the Spirit's inward work.

10. What does it mean to put away childish things?

Holt closes with 1 Corinthians 13: "When I was a child, I spoke as a child... but when I became a man, I put away childish things." Paul, who once "would have chosen the cookie," put the cookie away — so Holt asks, "What are you doing with the cookie in your life?" Taking ownership today means reading at least a few verses or a chapter daily: "take baby steps if you must, but take steps; be consistent and habitual... Start today."