I am come that they might have life, and . . . have it more abundantly. John 10:10.

Youth want a religion that offers life to the fullest. To them such religion is vital. As breathing is vital to physical life, so Jesus Christ is vital to the Christian religion. How young people regard the life, death, and mission of Jesus determines whether or not Christianity is vital for them.

Christ said, "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life" (John 5:40). We must not argue indifferently about God and life. God is not known by aimless forums, debates, and dialogs. Jesus is no legalistic code. He is the restorer of life, the regenerator of us all.

We need genuine freedom, not blind conformity or slavery. Youth are confronted with the responsibility to ask for the truth that really matters and that sets men free. No freedom exists where there is self-complacency about truth. Freedom comes with the development of the inner life that makes it impossible to desire the cheap, the ugly, the unclean, and the dishonorable.

Indifference to the truth from God makes genuine religion impossible. Too many do not care to live by the truth. They live with a mixture of truth and error. Jesus is the truth, not because the church's teachings are true but because He changes and transforms us and leads to the complete fulfillment of our lives.

True freedom is part of the Christian faith. Life is not going to turn out right unless we experience that freedom. There is no use claiming to be free while leaving Christ out of our lives. Bondage to self or to sin is an utterly futile program for any life. It simply will not work. There has to be a fundamental change in our lives. Only Christ guarantees the kind of program we can live by. The springs of our lives must be clean if we want freedom. Then our life forces of body and mind flow like a river, boundless and free.

God created us with a marvelous potential and unlimited capacities. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" Gen. 1:26). Jesus Christ seeks to make that design a reality in our lives.