The One Needful Thing To Teach Your Teen

Forgive me if things are a little slow around here this week. We are busy getting ready for our new school year and are savoring our last days of summer before Rebekah goes back to college.

“Life is like a vapor” is a saying I can relate to right now. Childhood slips through your fingers and before you realize it you are trying to catch it and hold on to the tail end of it.

But, watching your kids grow up and spread their wings is a beautiful thing, don’t get me wrong. It is just a different kind of thrill than that of rocking them when they are babies or watching them take their first steps.

I can’t stress this enough: Make sure your child is secure in Christ before they leave home. That their identity is in Him. Make sure that they know that only He satisfies.

When I look around at the landscape of Christian teens, I see one of two scenarios:

Those who think they have to BE SOMETHING BIG for Christ

and

Those who think they have to DO SOMETHING BIG for Christ.

As if.

As if we could ever do or be something big in God’s eyes. He is God after all and I am pretty sure that we are not going to impress him with our big pursuits.

And I wonder why we as parents haven’t figured out that God just wants us to love Him wherever we are and whatever we are doing. Period. There is one thing that catches God’s eye as far as “bigness” goes;

“This is the one to whom I will look…the one who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”

Becoming small is the way to become big. Upside down, I know.

Yes, they should reach their FULL potential and yes, they should walk through the opportunities that God gives them, but NOT because they are looking for fulfillment in things or adventures or positions or ideologies or other people.

And we need to model this for our kids. How? Here’s the answer key: joyful contentment in whatever state we are in.

And mothers are not modeling this for their girls and by default are teaching them that God is not enough, that you need something more: more respect from other people, more influence, more money, health, a better community, or church. Blah, blah, blah. What if all that you cling to was stripped away from you, like Job? What then? Are you left in a stun because God really was never your one pursuit?

I had a girl tell me recently that she never wants to be like her mother. And I have listened to teen girls who tell me that they feel like a nothing and a nobody and I cringe as I see her trying, trying, trying…to be loved, to be something, to be known. She doesn’t realize that she IS loved.

If you have teen girls, read through Ephesians. Note ALL that we have in Christ. Don’t be deluded by Satan into thinking that God is against you or that you are NOT doing enough. Or if you have had a morally sordid past, don’t let Satan cripple you spiritually, leaving you wondering if God looks on you as less than someone else. He doesn’t. When He looks at you, He sees you in Christ. Perfect, holy, finished.

So, embrace it, mother, and teach it to your children. Time is slipping away.