Tag Archives: faith

Spotify Wrapped

Featured

Posted on by
Reply

. 

Well if you have been paying attention this week something huge has happened in the life of your teens. Spotify Wrapped. If you have no idea what that means, it is a report from Spotify giving you your top  most listened to 5 artist and songs and some other data. (Apple Music does something similar) It is pretty interesting look at our listening habits. Why do I bring that up? Because music is a strong influence that effects our faith. But if we are honest with ourselves we like what we like and don’t want to be told by anyone what to listen too. Especially teens. 

Have you ever wondered what they are listening too with their headphones on? Spotify wrapped is a great window into what your teen spends a great deal of time doing. Does it matter what your teen or what any of us listen to? Does music effect our faith?  

I have found two schools of thought in teens when it comes to music.

  1. It doesn’t matter what I listen to. Regardless of the explicit language or the content of the song it doesn’t effect my faith. 
  2. It absolutely matters what I listen to and music absolutely effects my faith. 

I would say teens are pretty split on these two views but perhaps more embrace the first view. Even when they know the music they listen to may be something they shouldn’t they believe it is something they can handle. What does the Bible say about? Does God care what we listen too? Here are just a few. 

Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals. 1 Cor. 15:33

Get rid of all moral filth and every expression of evil, and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save your souls.” James 1:21

Music keeps us all company. We spend a great deal of time listening to it. I spent 45,363 minutes listening to it last year. (More than 90% of people in the US) And unlike anything else we play it on repeat until we memorize it. And then it stays with us for decades. That alone should make us cautious of what kind of company we keep. If our teens had a friend who constantly cursed and encouraged them to be sexually active or celebrate things God calls evil, how long would we allow them to spend in their company? Especially when God warns that bad company corrupts good morals. You have spent your whole life instilling good morals in them. It is worth the effort to help them see the difference between good and bad company. It is a fight worth having. You are the most influential person in their life. 

God’s second piece of advice is to get rid of all “moral filth & every expression of evil”. Remove it from your life. So many in scripture have been given similar warnings by God and ignored them thinking they could handle it and what God called moral filth they called entertainment. If there is someone or something the mainly Godless culture around us widely accepts that should pause to examine if we should too.

Here is my advice when it comes to music. 

  1. Find out what they listen too. It may be a kind of music you don’t like. That is ok. Look up and read the lyrics of the songs. Read it together with them. If they are embarrassed to have you read the lyrics of the songs out loud then that is a good indication that is a song they should not continue to listen too. Block it on their listening app. 
  1. Keep up with what their favorite artist are doing. May times your teen will promote this on their social media. Do they have a new album coming out? Look up the lyrics and read them together before listening to them and becoming attached to the music. It is easier to give up something you have never heard than a song you love how it sounds. Artist change over time. Some you were ok with and approved have now moved to putting out very different and explicit music. 
  1. Talk to them about the importance of holiness, which means purity, and how music can erode our purity. Ultimately, they need to learn to make their own decisions about the company they keep. Including music. Teach them walking through the process together. Show them how to find better, even Godly music influences. There are SO many good ones out there in ever area of music. We don’t have to settle at all. They need to understand the why. 
  1. Take advantage of the time you spend together to promote good music choices. Many teens adopt the music their parents listen too. My teens Spotify wrapped summary looks a lot like mine because I have spent time influencing her songs choices whether she admits it or not. I see her pull her phone out and add a song we are listening to her playlist to go back and listen to later. Introduce them to good bands and talk about the words of songs together. 

Stay involved in all the things they spend a great deal of time with. Our time with them is short but what we instill in them last a lifetime. 

FAITH IN THE JUNGLE

Posted on by
Reply

We have just finished a study we have been involved in since the end of school called “Faith in the Jungle”. How do we make sure our faith survives in the environments we are in? We will never answer this question if we are not living with spiritual eyes. How do we see our faith?  How do we see the environments we are in? We will never take the time to see the tools God has given us in our faith as resources if we do not believe these two things. 

  1. Faith is important to us & worth protecting. 
  2. The environment we are in can harmful to our faith. 

What do you miss when you look at your environment? If survival is on your mind, you probably are looking for all the things you can’t see. If survival of your faith is on your mind, you have to start seeing the unseen. What is seen is temporary, what is unseen is eternal. 

1 Peter 5:8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 

What if I told you there was a spider on the loose in your room. Or a snake. Would that change how you behaved? Would it change how cautious you are? If you saw a roaring lion, of course we would be cautious. But since we don’t see him working through our culture, our music, our friends even, we let our guard down and our faith is devoured.

If faith is not important to us, we will not take any measures to protect it. There will be no struggle within us between the flesh and the spirit if the flesh is the only one we are listening to. But if we believe these things, then we will use the tools that God has given us to protect our faith in the environment we live in. Jesus is at the core of our faith and faith is at the core of our identity. It is a believe based on action. 

Faith is not lived in a bubble, but in a real environment. 

Once we have added Jesus to our life, why do we let so many things separate us from Him? 

The actions that move us away from sin and closer to God, because our belief that sin destroys our relationship with God. 

1 John 1:5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 

The actions to choose our environments, to play defense because we want to protect our relationship with God. We spent many weeks looking at each tool and direction God provides to us in the jungle.

We are not left defenseless. Our faith has a point. What is the outcome of your faith? Why do we fight to protect it? Use all the tools God has given you to protect it. We need a game plan.

1 Peter 1:3-9  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

THE COMMON INSIDER

Posted on by
1

Deep into 2020, we had one teen class that was unlike the rest. It was a rough year. I had been teaching on zoom, and through YouTube for months. At best, we had class 6ft apart with masks and I wasn’t sure if anything had gotten through to them in a while. I was worried that they had lost the desire to remain close to God. I didn’t know how their faith was really doing. I gave them all a post-it note and read them a made up scenario of a teen in the church. I simply wanted them to listen and at the end write “yes or no” if that described them or not. Here is the scenario I read to them.

Micheal grew up in the church and was baptized at the age of 9 years old. He had always heard that baptism was the right thing to do if he wanted to be saved. But when his uncle studied the Bible with him about baptism, he never mentioned evangelism. He heard that word from time to time in a sermon or in class but he didn’t really know it was referring to something he was expected to do. As the years went by, he grew up but never really grew much in his faith. He was always at church but the Bible always sounded so confusing and complicated. He never really felt close to God. He didn’t want to tell anyone, especially those in the church because he didn’t want to be judged. So he did what he did in school when he didn’t understand something or wasn’t interested; he pretended. If someone asked if he was ok, or if it made sense he always said, “fine” and “yes”. He sat in the back and tried to blend in, he read if called on, bowed his head when it was time to pray but he didn’t really feel  any of this in his heart. He knew in his head that he was supposed to go to church. He did believe that there was a God and he wanted to go to heaven, but was mainly at church because some of his friends were there. The youth group did fun things and went on exciting trips some times and he didn’t mind those because he got to spend time with his friends. Micheal had other friends though too at school. Most of his other friends didn’t go to church and would probably make fun of him if they knew he did. He did have some friends at school who went to church but were mostly there because their parents made them go like him. Micheal fit in where he was, doing whatever those around him where doing. Faith felt foreign. 

Their answers

A number of teens there that night said they either felt like this or somewhat like this person. Teens today live in a real world and virtual world they are trying to fit in with and manage. Faith is a part of their life but it is often so intangible and hard to see when everything else is in full color around them. How do we help them follow the right path? How do we help them become more committed to Jesus than they are to their sport teams? How do we help them value a relationship with God more than any other relationship they have? How do we help their faith become real and not something they choose to fake? These are all questions I wrestle with and we all should as we encourage them to grow in their faith. But they are also questions we need to ask ourselves as well.

https://feed.bible

We only get to do this once. As a Youth Minister, I have spent over 15 years begging parents to bring their teens to things, Bible classes and retreats & devos, things they miss to instead be at other places that are not in the presence of God. When we look at how teens view the church and the Bible, why are we not making every effort and moving everything we can out of the way to be at anything that can build faith among a community of people trying to do the same? Do we put as much effort and value on building relationships inside the church as we do building them in communities outside the church? If our time with our teens is not intentional, we should not be surprised when they walk away from the church because they have no real connection to it, the people in it, and no relationship with Jesus who joins it all together.

These sticky notes hang in my office and always will. But they will always worry me. I do not know which teens wrote “yes or no”. We are all really good at pretending and saying the right things to the right people, showing up just enough to appear interested. But God wants fully committed followers not causal fans. The cycles I have watched in the lives of teens, I have seen happen over and over again. And I am convinced that the teens who develop a faith that is real and lasts have parents who have not made excuses but have made a way to be involved in the church, and model faith with their teens. If faith isn’t real for you, if it’s not a priority for you, it never will be for them. They will come when you make them, until they don’t have too. Would they still practice faith if was solely up to them? Is their faith real?

I want more than anything for my kids and yours to enter heaven. I want my kids and yours to know Jesus and learn what it means to follow him. I don’t know about you, but nothing else even compares to that investment. This effort should eclipse all others. This is the partnership we share together.

“For to this end we toil and strive, because we have set our hope on the living God, who is the savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” 1 Timothy 4:10

Along the way

Featured

Posted on by
Reply

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

When we read this key point in the history of Israel we find God teaching parents who are coming out of years of slavery who are now living under the commandments of God, how to be parents. What tips does God give us as parents to train, instruct, and disciple our kids? First, he starts with us as parents. He says if you are going to lead your kids in faith something must be on your heart. In our hearts as parents we need to have a love for “the Lord your God.” He doesn’t just want us to believe He exist but he wants us to love him! God is love. He treats us and responds to us in love. He wants our kids to see us live and act with a love for God. It is how they will learn to love him. Through us. Our actions and conversations with them will answer the question of why do we love God and why should they? It is that important. So much so that he says, do it “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

Secondly, He says, as parents, that we need to have His commandments on our hearts. We can’t something to anyone, including our children, that we don’t know. This one follows the first one. If we love God, we will love His word. And here is the awesome part, the more of His word we study, the more we will love God. And then the more we are able to teach about who God is and why we our children should come to love Him too. Love for the word of God is not just key to passing on faith to our children, it can’t be done without it.

When you love God and love His commandments, sharing it with your kids will be easy and natural. When does that sharing happen? God gives multiple suggestions on the when and how for us as parents. “Talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” (vs 7) That covers it all, doesn’t it? Anytime you are awake with your kids is a time to pass on a love for God and His commandments. I ask this of myself, are we as parents, prioritizing our time with our kids to discuss God and His word? What questions do they have? What do they need to understand about God and his word to grow to maturity? Are we taking the time to get them there?

“Bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (vs 8) Beyond the time frame of when we should be teaching our kids, God tells us how. God’s word should be seen, carried with us, and displayed as a visual reminder that is every before us. These specific things mentioned related directly too instructions given to the Jews in the way God wanted them to remember and carry His word but we can definitely see God desire that His word should go with us and seen in our homes and lives. We do this today in a number of ways. We have bracelets with scripture, art work, clothing, stickers, ways to share it on social media, and more. We are certainly living in a time where is it easier than ever to carry scripture and make it a visual part of our lives and our kids’ lives.

So parents, my encouragement to you is to really absorb the words of Deuteronomy 6. Read them over and over again to discover the desire of God to teach your children. Find creative ways to share and discuss the word of God. Scriptures in lunch boxes, texting scripture to your older kids with not only the verse but what does it mean to your faith. There are a number of great Bible apps, to listen to scripture and explore the meaning of scripture. Listen to a chapter of the Bible in the car, pause it and discuss it with your kids. In our house, we have an age range of 12-3yrs old. We have begun to post on a letter board, one verse a week. Every night at dinner, we recite it to help memorize it, but then just ask simple questions about this verse. There are so many ways to bring a love for God and His word in your home and ever before your kids. The point is, that we love God with all we are, so that our kids will as well.

GROWTH

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday we returned from a Mission Trip to New Mexico. We woke up one day while there and one of our teens was noticeably an inch taller. Every time I come home to my own kids, I feel like that doubled in size. We planted some grass seed outside in the front yard. A few days ago, it was just a mound of dirt, and now grass is up and growing. There is something amazing about growth.

When it comes to growth, we, as parents, want it to slow down. And while we know it is always ongoing, there are times it comes in large burst. It is the same with the growth of faith in the lives of our kids. Faith is action based on belief. Sometimes we carry faith around, live in it, trust God through one normal day after another and it doesn’t produce much noticeable growth in our faith. We still need these days. We still need to be consistent in our devotion to God. It should be easier in these average mundane days absent of major trails. These days add up. They still produce growth. Faith is built one day at time.

But then there are days you look at your faith and there is a noticeable growth in your faith. In my experience with teens these growth spurts happen when they participate in something that pushes them to be a part of something out of the ordinary. Something uncomfortable. Something hard. Something they did not think they could do. Something that requires trusting God more than they ever have. For some, maybe this is leading a prayer or a song, or reading scripture. Maybe it is going to a friend and sharing how God has lead them out of something they struggled with that their friend is now drowning in. It might be confessing something they struggle with to someone they know can help them. Maybe it is putting their faith into words and answering a question in class. For others, it may being willing to go to New Mexico or Honduras to walk into unknown situations where they find themselves serving others in ways they did not think possible through conditions they did not think they could endure. These big steps are crucible moments. Growing our faith is a choice. And if you want to see huge change we have to chose to trust God in big ways. Those big things are scary but when we allow God to take us through them we will be changed. We will have grown. People will notice. And when the next opportunity comes to trust God we will be much more likely to trust His track record.

Parents, this means we have to trust God to let them participate in big things that we know will produce growth. The truth is, our kids have and always will be in God’s hands. We have to constantly seek ways to let their faith be challenged.  Lead them through these opportunities with them. Let them see your faith as they growth theirs. This is our main role as parents. They need to know you trust God in big ways so they will learn how. They need to hear you share about the times that grew your faith. If we believe what we say we believe then will seek to live it out in big ways. Our kids need their own deep faith. It defines their identity, solidifies their confidence and purpose, and brings immense worth to their lives. Celebrate their growth. Look for the next time they can grow even deeper. The storms are coming. Faith is the anchor.