Battling for the truth in this generation

I leave Kampala in a few hours from now for Sudan. It’s been
a great time of ministrations, counseling, praying and preparing. One major challenge I’ve noted here is the
overwhelming need for discipleship among youths in the church.

Truth, fantasy, fiction and deception play a great role in
shaping every generation. I’m seeing less of truth and more of the rest in the
past couple of weeks. As I think and pray of what and how I would engage these
issues among the youths in Sudan and in Uganda, I reminded of this story told
by Dr. Ravi Zacharias, one of my favorite apologetics ministers.

“A young couple who got married some years ago were the mascot
of excellence before the youth of their church. Both were in preparation for
the practice of medicine, and were on sizable scholarships of merit.  

But then like a shattered
dream, only a few months into the marriage there was a dreadful awakening. In
the pre-dawn hours of a wintry night their pastor was aroused by the telephone,
and a voice out of control which begged him to come to their apartment.

 What had happened? What had led to this
pitiful state of affairs?  

Some weeks earlier this
young woman had discovered that she was pregnant. With years of study still
ahead, neither of them had wanted to start a family.

This sudden turn of events
spelled chaos into all their plans, and drove them desperately in search of a
solution. Every option was considered. Finally, one statement escaped from the
young woman’s lips that she had never dreamed she would utter.

“This is completely
devastating,” she said. “There is no other way but to abort this
child if our careers are to survive.”

The very suggestion precipitated
a deep rift between them. They were both known on their campus for their
outspoken conviction on the sanctity of the child’s life in the womb, and that
that life, they fervently believed, had a right all its own.

Now, their controlled contingencies
had invaded their absolutes, and “fate” had threatened their
autonomy. Conviction was in conflict with ambition, and a private decision was
being made that they hoped would never be betrayed in public. Husband and wife
were uncompromisingly on the opposite ends of this dilemma as he pled with her
to reconsider.

That is when her final
solution was proposed. “Then let us do this at home,” she said.

“You bring all the
equipment we need to the apartment and no one need ever know.”

As a young medical student,
he felt this could be accomplished, and so meticulous plans were nervously laid
for that fateful night. Not yet fully trained in the administration of an
anesthetic, he stumbled through the procedure and unwittingly gave her a much
larger dose than he should have.

His greatest fear became a
ghastly deed, and he lost her. In the panicking moments that followed, with
trembling hands and a cry of desperation he reached for the telephone and
uttered those remorse-ridden words, “Pastor, please hurry and come to our
apartment. I think I have killed her.”

Anyone who has experienced the immediate or even delayed
consequences of a tragic act or event, knows the horror of such a feeling, from
which no amount of human ingenuity can bring about an undoing. The most
agonizing effect of such irreversibility is the very humbling fact that it was
human finitude that brought about the consequence in the first place.

As I grapple with the huge responsibility
of coaching youths and pressing them to embrace and live the truth; I shudder at
the consequences of half baked convictions revealed by wrong choices in moments of unrehearsed pressures that may leave eternal scars in the soul of a young disciple.

Youth Ministers tread on delicate grounds and we dare not lose focus. I
desire to raise youths that will stand for and die by the truth at all cost.

I continue to covet your prayers.

Author: Uche Izuora

I'm inspired by God’s passion for His name in every generation, which provokes global worship through Jesus Christ. Becoming an emotionally healthy and transformative disciple, I aim to mobilize the Church to engage in cross-cultural missions and raise other like-minded disciples who discover themselves in Christ and seek to present and represent Him as Savior and Lord among the nations northward of Uganda. View all posts by Uche Izuora