The Real You. A lesson in identity for teen girls youth groups.

Thought I’d share this teen girls activity for any of you who work with teens.

I’ve done a variation of this lesson over the last 20+ years with our teen girls,(including this variation/Valentines lesson )and wanted to share the idea to lighten your load if you are in youth ministry.  I’m sharing a printable that goes along in the lesson that you are free to use with your youth group.

Thoughts behind this lesson:

Every day, in many ways, teen girls are being fed messages about their own identity and self worth, through social media, peers, and self-condemning thoughts.

With every click through social media, our kids are measuring themselves against impossible standards of highly curated and altered images—fairy tales— which become the measuring stick to which they can never attain. 

“Never enough” is the driving message marketers use to embed dissatisfaction into their hearts and minds. 

Peers can lunge words that stick straight into the heart of your teen, cruel labels they internalize for years to come: dumb, ugly, fat, loser, teachers pet, trouble maker, worthless and worse. Cyber bullying/shaming is a true concern for modern parents because kids can be cruel.

Self-condemning thoughts from within can also haunt our teens: I’m NOT pretty enough, thin enough, rich enough, loved enough, popular enough, smart enough, athletic enough, etc…

We need to take the initiative to speak truth over and over again into their lives to combat these lies we tend to believe. These lies can be self-deprecating or self-aggrandizing, but they need to be confronted with the reality of God’s Word.

Our teens need to know that in Christ, we are not the sum total of our labels, our past, our accomplishments or mistakes, or anything we might believe about ourself. 

And this might take some work because old thought patterns die hard and morph over time.

• For instance, the girl who has been told that she’s a “pain” or who has been talked down to/brushed off by her parents who are all set with her “drama” might believe she’s not worthy of someone’s time and attention or care, or that perhaps something about her is unlovable. 
• She may remedy this by looking for love anywhere she can find it, (peer approval, over achieving, non-stop relationships, co-dependence on a friend) or she might withdraw all together and isolate herself. 
• The girl who has been told that she is “the good girl” might cover up any struggle under the surface, and lie so that her “image” isn’t shattered. She may go underground with her need, and put up walls so she can carefully control her “facade” of having it all together, isolating herself from real help in the attempt.
• The “musical girl” may practice her instrument obsessively to find her worth in that label. When she’s overlooked for a performance or when she bombs an audition, she may find herself depressed.

This lesson is a visual/gentle way to talk through some of these issues using Ephesians 1 as the core text about our identity.

The Real You.

You’ll need:

• A variety of paper cups: styrofoam, plastic, paper, coffee in a variety of colors and sizes.
• “Hello” labels
• Neon dot stickers
• Coffee Mug Sleeve printable, printed on card stock,  cut out.
• Pens for each girl and tape.

1. Gather the girls at your kitchen table or around a large table in the youth room. 

2. Place all the cups in the middle of the table.

3. Give each girl a “Hello” label and a pen and tell them to write five words on the label that describe them as a person. It can be something they are, they love, or aspire to.  (They might write Hello I am—so-and-so’s best friend, a pianist, painter, student, book lover, happy, freshman, etc…any answer is ok.)

4. Tell them each to choose a cup from all the different cups.

5. Have them stick the “Hello label” on the cup.

6. Now give them the neon labels, and ask them to write down five words that others have used to describe them. (They can be encouraging things or mean things.)

7. Have them stick the neon labels all over the cup.

8. Explain to them that the cup represents them.

• Each cup is different. 
• Some are small, some are big. 
• Some are bright and colorful, others are plain. 
• Some are paper, others plastic, others styrofoam. 
• Some are used for hot drinks, and others for punch. Some are flimsy and others sturdy. But each was designed a specific way for a particular purpose. 

A cup is a cup. No matter how much I try to convince you that this cup is a hat, or a pair of stilts if you just stand on them, or a pair of binoculars if you cut the bottoms out, it’s still a cup because the manufacturer made it so. 

In the same way, 

God has made each of us to be “vessels” for Him, and he made us with different capacities, with differing gifts for differing tasks, and He knew exactly what He intended for us when He made us.

I might be a coffee cup and you might be a plastic party cup, but the Creator values us the same and gave us one purpose though we serve different functions: to bring Him glory.

Our identity—our true self—is who we are in Him, because He made us and we belong to Him.

Though we may believe things to be true about ourselves,

and though we might fill various roles during different seasons of life (like student, daughter, mother, wife, basketball player, violinist, artist) these things are not WHO we are at our core. 

The neon stickers represent labels that stick on us, good or bad, flattering or condemning. We are not the sum total of our labels, our roles, or abilities or disabilities. We are not worth something because we produce or fill a role. We are worth something because of our Creator made us in His image and we are His masterpiece.

Ephesians is just one place that tells us about our identity in Christ. (Read Ephesians 1:1-14)

Note what God says we are in Him, because this is the truth about us.

• blessed (1:3)
• chosen (1:3)
• adopted into God’s family as a son/heir (1:5)
• redeemed by the precious blood of Christ (1:7)
• forgiven of all my sin (1:7)
• lavishly given God’s grace (1:8)
• sealed and secure through the Holy Spirit (1:13, 14)

9. Place the coffee sleeve over all the other labels on the cup. Tape it in place, so that it is all that is left showing. Explain that the truth of WHAT God says about us covers our past, and any of the labels that others give us, and this is our reality, our true identity in Christ.

So, who are you at your core?

You are a first and foremost a person–a blessed, chosen, loved, redeemed, forgiven, gifted, secure person– and your God wants a personal relationship with you. You can lose everything—every title, every position, every ability— and still never lose the love of God or your standing as His child. 

You are a person with a future and a hope and God has plans for you and good works that He wants you to do. 

He doesn’t want the “tea cup” He created to try to fill the role of the one gallon jug. He doesn’t want the coffee cup to insist on being a vase that holds flowers. 

We just wants you to be clean on the inside and available when He has a job for you to do. This frees us up from comparing our “vessels” and should give us contentment as we serve Him with the opportunities and gifts He gives us.

Keeping your “vessel” clean and Christ central in our consciousness, love, heart, mind is  essential to fulfilling your other roles in a godly manner. <3 

The world does not honor Christ, and they are pumping out messages promising you satisfaction in everything and anything apart from God. Messages like:

• You have to flaunt it to be noticed. 
• You’ll never be anything if you don’t look like this. 
• Follow your heart, forget the rest. 
• To be popular, you need to _____, and the more popular you are the better.
• “Likes” matter.
• You need to InstaFamous.
• You need to be extraordinary. 
• The pretty girls are the thin ones. 
• You need Botox. 
• You need to wear this brand to be popular. 
• You need, you need, you need.

The world is peddling you worldliness, covetousness in disguise, by bombarding you with messages meant to make you dissatisfied and unhappy with what you don’t have, and to make you ready to do whatever it takes to get it. *

Again, God’s Word is reality and the truth about who we are in Christ. 

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((If time permits further discussion:

Read James 4:1-5

Note that the the need for more–covetousness… and worldliness are connected.

1. First, that covetousness is the very essence of worldliness. (James 4:4)

James 4 tells us that we crave, and strive, and war because our worldly passions are driving us to seek satisfaction in all the wrong places. “You desire and do not have, so you…war.” (James 4:4)

2. Also, note that satisfaction is elusive. “You covet and cannot obtain so you fight and quarrel.” (4:2)

3. And that  mercifully, God is not willing to give us our covetous desires. “You ask and do not receive,  because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.” James 4:3 (envy, covetous motives.)

4. Why won’t God give us what we want? Because God is jealous for your heart and wants to dwell in it exclusively. “Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us.” James 4:5,

It all comes back to you and God.

God wants your wholehearted devotion. 

He doesn’t want you to do great things for Him or be great things for Him. He wants you to love Him.

He wants you to love Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and He wants you to know the truth about WHO you are in Him, and HOW He feels about you, and what EXTREME MEASURES he took for you because He loved you. ))