On my way to church God was speaking to me about youth and the state of youth groups today. Our pastor starts chapter 37 of Genesis with: Joseph, a young man of seventeen.
And he started in with (paraphrased): "teens you do not have to wait til you are older to get your act together...."
Immediately I thought of the scripture in 1 Timothy (which the pastor then referred to)
Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. 1 Timothy 4:12
The issue of today is that we see the "youth" as just an older group of kids that need to be cared for and entertained for 90 minutes on Sunday morning and a couple of hours during a midweek session.
What would the youth groups look like if we really taught them to live out 1 Timothy 4:12?
What if they started running the youth group with this verse as a backdrop.
What if we started today having youth group time be church and Sunday school time mimicked after "big church" and "adult Sunday School" classes?
Not about the bigger Lazer tag outing and pizza party. Or who has the cooler hangout for teens.
You see teaching in jails gives me a glimpse of where we as a society have failed teens. We first are hypocritical. We teach the parents that it's about relationship: turn off the TV, computer, all electronics and play a board game or just talk..... But what do we fill our youth rooms with? The biggest baddest stero system and gaming system....of course all done in the name of "outreach".
Why don't we get back to the basics....the BIBLE and that's it. A real life BOOK with paper to take notes.
So if we actually taught the youth to live out a Godly life today in their youth...
How different would the youth be when they took off to go to a College that wasn't Christian based?
How different would their work ethic be in the workplace?
How different would "boyfriend/girlfriend relationships be?
