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We have no control over what God allows or the hurtful things that others choose to do to us, but we have full control over how we choose to respond to them.
The environment of the teen-aged years provide ample opportunities to learn and appropriately respond to such things as we begin to define who and what we are going to be in life.
Unresolved issues or relentless teasing can torture a soul until the stress is relieved through either implosive or explosive destructive behaviors. For some, the teenage years are a living hell that brings some to the extremes of suicide and/or mass homicide.
Most of us handle the tumultuous teenaged years without putting too many skeletons in our closets that will rattle from time to time in the course of our adult lives. Perhaps God allows some to be there as a reminder of what it was like to be a teen when we get to the stage in life that we have teens of our own.
As we go through life, we will subconsciously or deliberately choose how we are going to respond to everything that happens in life. Since it is we who develop our subconscious minds by what we allow to be stored there, we are just as accountable for our subconscious reactions as we are for the conscious decisions we make on a daily basis.
How we respond to the events of life will contribute to making us either better or bitter persons. We will inevitably choose to see adversity as the cause or excuse for our failures or as opportunities for our ultimate success.
With the increasing degrees of freedom afforded to teens comes the accompanying accountability and responsibility. The more challenging it is to do the “right” thing, the greater the opportunity to spiritually and mentally mature.
The “right” decisions are always consistent with the principles of Scripture and the “wrong” decisions are not.
There are only two basic schools of thought in the entire universe. One reflects the thinking of Christ while the other reflects the mind of Satan. There is no third option, only human rationalization of the two schools of thought that existed before Man was even created.
Satan is wise enough never to promote something with his trademark exposed. What Satan does, is to produce counterfeit alternatives to what God has created or ordained that appeals to the fallen nature in Man.
Choosing to develop and apply “the mind of Christ (1Cor. 2: 16 NIV)” in our teenage years not only glorifies God at a time when most believers the same age are going the other way, but can spare the teen and others much grief.
Satan knows the weakness of the fallen nature in all of us. He’s been deceiving Man from the very beginning.
Peer pressure does not begin or end in the teenage years. Never the less, Satan doesn’t miss the opportunity that the tumultuous environment of the teenaged years affords him, as the teen begins to personally define who and what he/she is going to be in life.
Jesus Christ was a teenager. In His humanity, He could have sinned, but did not in order to fulfill the plan of God for His life. Otherwise His times of temptation would have been a farce. Hebrews 4:15 (NIV) tells us that “…. we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet without sin.”
It is not unusual to feel confused or misunderstood during the teenage years, but there is a Friend who knows all things and knows you better than you know yourself. Unlike many secular “friends”, He really will stay by your side no matter often you fail or offend Him.
The number one question that searching teens inevitably have is the purpose for their being born into this world. The answer is that the human race was created to glorify God. Once born again, a believer has the opportunity to bring the maximum glory to God by learning and applying the Word of God to the daily events of his/her life that God engineers and to develop and exercise his/her specific spiritual gift selected by God.
While this is true at ANY age, it is a beautiful thing to see it in the life of a teenager in the world and times in which we live.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
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