Welcome to my blog, new LDub students!

Another school year.  Holy smokes!  

Welcome to my blog!  I love talking at school about how to make relating to God a natural part of real life for teens and young adults.  That was really lacking for me when I was an early teen.  A few years ago I was wanting a place to talk about these things more frequently and so I decided to start this blog.  I want it to be a place where you can read some reflections about working through issues that you are dealing with in this era of your life. 

I try hard to be relevant and honest, and address everything from fun topics to ones that are difficult to talk about.  I'm also not interested in throwing around rules.  I believe Father wants us to have a free, gut-honest relationship with Him, not a list of commands to keep Him from whacking us.  I believe He wants a connection with you and that it will look different from mine.


Occasionally I use this blog for school-related stuff, but I intend it mostly for your own personal encouragement and a place to grapple through what it means to be a follower of Jesus and a teen and live a life of meaning.  

I try to write about one to two blogs a week.  I also write them on my board in my classroom so you know what the newest topic is.  

Below are some samples sections you can check out.  At the bottom right of the screen there are even more topics you can use to search for stuff you might like.

Thanks for visiting!

Anxiety
Movie Reviews
God and Teens
Dating
Sex
Book Thoughts & Reviews
Depression

You disgust me, but I love you! Yay!

Imagine hearing this from someone you are dating:

Your lips are as red as wine

Your eyes sparkle with life

The flow of your hair is like a river of enchantment

You’re a little fat

You fill the room with grace when you enter

Just your presence brings joy to my heart

Out of the list, what do you most remember?

Yep, the criticism.

Do you ever feel like this in church or other Christian environments?  You're told repeatedly: Jesus loves you!  Jesus forgives you!

But inserted between those lines are these other parts:

You're despicable in his eyes because of your sin.

You're a miserable sinner.

God can't be near you when you sin because He's perfect.  His presence can't bear sin.

Your heart is deceitful above all things.

You're a wretch!

Oh, but God is wild about you...yeah, right.

It's like saying to my wife, "You're my soulmate, but you disgust me. I love you!"

Well, of course, in Christianese, we tag on, "God loves you because Jesus covers you."  So, apparently, you're still disgusting, but God threw a pretty blanket called Jesus over you.  Now that he can't really see you, He loves you.

But if "God is love" as John wrote, then surely He knows love better than we do.  Could it be that the Father can see into the depths of you and sees the true you?  

Could it be that His heart longs for the one he created?

Could it be that He is grieved by what sin has done to you?  How it has marred your true self?  Even the sin you yourself chose.

Could it be that instead of being offended by sin, that He instead moves towards that which is killing your soul, because He wants to destroy it.  Unlike the claim that God can't have sinners in His presence, we see Jesus, God in human form, going t o w a r d sinners, spending time with them, loving them, challenging them, and saying, "Follow me."

If you are in Christ, you are not a sinner anymore.  You're a saint.  You are "holy"-meaning set apart as special to Him and "dearly loved."  You're not just "loved" but "dearly," affectionately, tenderly, voraciously loved.  

And just like I love my wife regardless of her lack of perfection, your Father loves you, His beloved.  

Is It Arrogant to be Patriotic?

Take 5 Minutes to Consider:

The Bachelorette

No, I don't watch the Bachelorette, but I couldn't help but comment on this article that I saw on the Yahoo home page.  I often think I would like to choose a new home page, but then I think it's helpful for me to see what is being pumped out to the public as "news."  

In actuality, Yahoo 'news' is really a propaganda machine for Leftist values, but, see, no one realizes that because it's under the guise of 'news.'  If you differ with their attitudes on any number of subjects you must think you're a bigoted loser who is out of touch with reality because they rarely present other perspectives.

Ok, ok.  I'll move on.  

So here's the deal: apparently, "Bachelorette fans and spectators collectively freaked out last month after it was revealed that the show’s star had sex with a contestant early on in the show...Bachelorette Kaitlyn Bristowe was immediately labeled as “'sleazy'” and “'low-rent' (among other harsh adjectives)."

The article goes on to explain how Bristowe was annoyed that she was 'shamed' and 'judged' because she slept with this guy so early.  

The guy Nick Viall tweeted: "Both men and women have a right to have sex without judgment."  

Bristowe said in an interview: “I don’t think that’s a crazy thing to sleep with somebody when you’re trying to be in a relationship with them.” 

The article then muses over why people were so bothered by all of this (Does any normal person with

common sense need any insight here?).  So they turn to a psychologist who explains that "casual sex is 'rule-breaking behavior in society.'"  Another psychologist explains, "'Sexual shaming is usually about some sort of fear and concern about powerlessness.  Because sexuality is fluid and impressionable, there is a worry that it will catch on and get ‘out of control.’ The panic that it can ignite in people is ultimately an attempt to regain control over the status quo, he says."

Finally, one more "expert" is quoted as saying, “Certainly, attitudes toward sex have shifted over the years, but the topic itself seems to always be one in which people have always had wildly different opinions as to what is OK and what’s not OK.  As long as these differences exist, there will always be people who judge and criticize the acts of others.”

What all these experts, and apparently the authors of the article, are missing is what all of us with common sense have known for thousands of years: sex is not merely a physical act, but an emotional and spiritual one.  People who engage in it bond in powerful ways.  This is by design, God's design I would add.  

Therefore, we all can recognize that treating sex as "casual" is an oxymoron.  It's like wearing a suit to eat at McDonald's.  You can do it, but it's dumb (meaning 'unwise' considering the gravity of the act).  

Now, as a Christ-follower, I believe that God's ideal is to save the beauty and power of sex for the marriage bed.  There all that potency is safe and protected for each other.  

But even people who don't follow Christ understand that casual sex or in Bristowe's words, "sleep[ing] with someone when you're trying to be in a relationship with them" is problematic.

But apparently, to say so means that I am judging and criticizing.

Are we judging and criticizing the guy who killed those people at a church recently?

Were we judging and criticizing when former President Bill Clinton had an affair with a White House intern?

Were we judging and criticizing when we were bothered by the anti-semitic remarks Mel Gibson made when pulled over for a DUI?

Yes.  This is how we collectively challenge each other to honor values.

On the flip side, there is no good in calling Kaitlyn Bristowe nasty names.  She is a person, a real person deserving respect and honor and she is loved by friends, family, and God.  Nor is it honorable that she receives most of the name-calling and not, to my knowledge, Nick Viall.  

Who is guiltless?  Not me.  Not you.  Not anyone.  But to blow off important values in an article by arguing that our reactions are coming from "fear and concern about powerlessness" is, well, "shaming" to those of us with values.

Why can't I find happiness?

When I was a kid there were so many rusty cars on the road.  It was just normal.  Today, though, it's

really odd to see a rusty jalopy.

We live in a world where everything is new.  Old, at least in the tech world, is like what, 1 year old?

I was thinking about this sentence that Paul wrote back in the first century AD, "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

It's so hard to remember that the really meaningful things and the most powerful things are really invisible.  We have so much flashy stuff and it's so hard to not get caught up in the newness of it all.

Paul, though, is writing to people who didn't have a Home Depot and therefore had homes that perpetually crumbled before them.  I wonder if it was easier for them to fix their eyes on what is unseen.  Maybe not, considering Paul wrote to them the above words.

So, you're a teen and the commercial world wants to convince you that your happiness resides in the newest whatever: iPhone, outfit from Forever21, video game, shoes.

Let Paul's lines call to your invisible self to place your vision, your hope, your desires in what is unseen.  I think you'll find that the order of the world will fall into place.

God is not a helicopter parent

When a guy marries a girl, he's all in.  There's no separation between his married life and his 'other' life.  However, as the years go by, there is a temptation to do what is called "compartmentalization."  The idea is that, in order to maintain some value, but not supreme value, towards something, in this case a relationship, you have to put it into a compartment.  That way you can ignore it at times and bring it out when you want it.

This is what happens to many people when it comes to God.  They compartmentalize.  People have their religious life and then the rest of life.

This leads to a dual world for people.

Instead, I'd recommend seeing your relationship to your Father and your life in general as one whole thing.

It's a beautiful thing when you're all in.  When I made this switch in high school, my life was never the same.  Suddenly, I had purpose, and a unity to what I was all about.

One key, though, is to not view God as a helicopter parent.

The term helicopter parent is used to describe parents who are constantly hovering over their kids, watching their every move, sticking their hands into their lives incessantly and never allowing them to make their choices.

Many of us view God this way, just as I did many years ago.  If you see God like this you will have to compartmentalize, because you can't deal with people like that 24-7.

Instead, God wants to be your companion, a friend who walks through life with you.  Jesus said, "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business.  Instead I have called you friends." -John 15:15

As you develop a friendship with God, you'll find a well of strength to make tough choices, and heart that can help bear your burdens, and an encourager to enable you to dare great and good thing.

watch play listen-how does it look to others?

I spent a couple of posts looking at how to make choices as a Jesus-follower about what we watch,

play, or listen to.  There's another point that I think is worth mentioning and it is really essential to the section in Paul's letter to the Romans that I quoted in this post.

While the Father does lead each of us very individually on things like this, we have to keep in mind the needs of others.  Here's a very basic modern day example for older people.  Let's say you have no problem drinking alcohol (after you're 21).  You drink responsibly and simply enjoy it.  It only makes sense, then, when your friend, who once had a drinking problem but is now sober, comes over not to offer him a beer. 

Jesus gave us a "new commandment" and it was simply: "love one another."  In the situation above you are loving your friend by being sensitive to his weakness.  So, you restrict your freedom for his sake. 

This is essentially why I don't swear around people.  I don't personally feel that swearing in and of itself is sinful, but I know it would only hurt the people around me.  Plus, if I did swear around others they would immediately question the validity of my spiritual life.  They would be wrong to do so, but that doesn't change the fact that they would.

So, you may have freedom in some areas when it comes to video games, music, or movies, but ask the Spirit to give you sensitivity toward others.  If you have a friend over and you want to watch a horror flick, ask yourself (or ideally ask them), "Is this a good idea?"  Or just give them an option.

The same can go for video games.  Maybe you want to play one that's pretty bloody.  Offer your friend, "Wanna play this one (a violent one) or this one (a non-violent one)?"  Then they can choose with out feeling funny if they're uncomfortable saying that they don't really like violent ones.

The key in all this is love.  Don't judge the convictions one person has, but also don't feel like you have to have the same one.  Follow the Spirit and trust that you know his voice (John 10).  God promises to communicate with us, though we have to learn how to recognize it.