How To Survive...

...Growing up in a Christian family.

Jon here. Hopefully this blog will be practical, relevant and helpful.

Many of us at True come from families that go to church regularly, we know what it’s like to be brought up in a Christian family. This is my experience too and although I count it as a huge privilege now, I haven’t always done so.

I’ve grown up in several churches and from what I’ve noticed, there are three things that can happen to teenagers raised in Christian homes.

1. They discover God for themselves accept it, pursue it, and grows in faith through the work of God in their lives, amazing.

2. A young person discovers God, accepts the good news, but is caught in the tension of living in the world and the pressures that come with that. They live a kind of double life for a few years before eventually deciding which way they want to go.

3. The teenager sees the gospel as irrelevant, something that their parents believe and therefore not cool and so they reject it. Perhaps they keep coming to church because they have to.

I love coming across people in the first category, you guys are a massive encouragement and it’s great to see God at work in you and through you - keep going!

To the second group I want to say ‘I’ve spent a good few years in this group.’ In today’s culture I think your teenage years are the most difficult as a Christian. Everything’s new and untried: sex drugs alcohol. On top of that people are bullid for even the smallest of things in their lives; hair colour, family background, preferences, faith etc.
As you get older personal beliefs are more acceptable and individualism is encouraged so this becomes perhaps less of an issue.

To the last group: I have also been here, and can empathise with you as well. My encouragement is that, even if you are not interested, by coming here it honours your parents (which in turn makes life easier at home).

My testimony…
Like I said. I grew up in a Christian home, made a vague commitment when I was about 7 and didn’t think too much more of it. In fact it went out the window almost straight away.
When I got into my teens I made a really good friend with a lad in the same position, we rebelled together and started bullying the members of a youth group. I got into a serious relationship with a girl and made some very silly mistakes, which I regret.

When I was 16 my family moved to Dorset to join a small church plant. At college I got into more relationships and started drugs, m life wasn’t going where I wanted it to. Things were getting quite uncomfortable in the church. My brothers and I were the youth group so I had very little support and no where to hide. My parents had said I had to carry on going till I was 18, so I longed for that day t come. When I was 18 I was persuaded to go to Newday 2004 where I finally committed my life to God, I met with him powerfully and had my life changed by him. I discovered his grace, and kindness to me and have been obsessed with living for him ever since.

From where I am now, I can see there are three reasons why I failed to survive in my teenage years as a Christian.

1. I did not discover/encounter God for myself. BIG ONE

2. I did not have any Christian friends

3. I was not discipled.

So let me just say a bit about each one of them.

1. Discovering God. (THE BIG ONE) Bible reading, Matt 16v13-18.

• You cannot grow as a Christian without your own personal encounter with God.

• You don’t have to have a powerful experience with God, but you do need to be in love with Jesus. If you’re a guy who thinks he’s too manly for that - get over it this is your creator and saviour not some girl from college!

• I’d been to every Christian festival going. Been there, done that, got loads of t-shirts. It wasn’t ‘til 2004 where I found it required a personal application, I needed to do something about it myself.

• Without discovering God for yourself, you will lose interest. Jesus didn’t just die for everyone. He died for you personally.

• God doesn’t want to know what your friends and family believe. He wants to know what you believe. Jesus said to Peter “but who do you say I am” It’s personal!

• Your parents might be un-cool, but that doesn’t make their beliefs irrelevant.

2. Friendships.

• Most teenagers are influenced more by what their friends do and think, than their parents, so here’s some tips on how to be influenced well:
o Spend time with some Christian friends.
o You guys and girls are part of a huge youth group with a lot of, socially, really cool guys and girls in, get to know them.There is also a larger proportion of ‘on fire’ Christians than in any other youth group I have been in.

• Don’t fall into the trap of only hanging out with Christians though.

3. Discipleship.

• What is it? Followers together helping each other on in God.
• In both my previous churches I was not disciple and I wish I was. Discipleship is something we believe strongly in
at Kings. Jesus had 12 Disciples. Spent three years, teaching, eating and spending time with them. Timothy spent many years under the discipleship of Paul and was all the better for it.
• Being discipled by someone you admire, respect or are friends with, is beneficial to your growth as a Christian.
• A discipler should encourage you to grow in all areas of life, challenging you and teaching you.
• Discipleship helps to prevent you falling into bad habits.

Whatever happens, be true to who you are and don't think of God as some religious control freak with a desire to make your life hard. That's a big fat lie that is a million miles off who God really is.

Remember - God loves you, is passionate about you and wants your good; he has a plan for your life.

Peace.

Don't waste your teen years...

Did you know that the word 'teenager' was first used in a Reader's Digest article in 1941.

1941! That was only 70 years ago. Believe it or not, the concept of being a 'teenager' and enjoying a prolonged period of adolescence is a relatively new idea. Before, and for nearly all of history, people were categorized as 'child' or 'adult' and as a result when you switched from being a child to being an adult, people's expectations of you changed accordingly.

A problem these days, you may or may not agree, is that people have very low expectations of what the teenage years should be used for. Type the word 'teen' into Google and it'll suggest a whole host of things for you to look up: 'teen sex,' 'teen drugs,' 'teen gangs' where's the 'teen leaders, 'teen success', 'teen champions,' 'teen entrepreneurs'?

We always meet the expectations that people set for us. Teenagers are expected to be amazing with technology and obsessed with sex. On both these fronts, they supersede all expectations, they win big! The best person to help with technical issues and to understand technology is a teenager and the most common age of someone looking up porn on the internet is 12-17 years.

We're out to change that. We want to set high expectations for great roaring successes in the teenage years. Let's make Kings a place that has high expectations for teenagers and let's watch them reach those heights. Teens who value purity and treat members of the opposite sex with the upmost respect and honour, teens who take responsibility, who manage their diaries, sort out their personal finances and fight for more than control of the TV remote. I know young people in Kings who have started their own businesses (www.invertapparel.co.uk), spoken up for Jesus in difficult and dangerous places, and who are highly skilled musicians, dependable and reliable servants and compelling leaders. This should be the norm, not the exception.

The following link for a thought provoking blog and insight into life as a teenager as God intends it:

We'd also recommend the following book for all and any teens tired of low expectations.

Making out with your sister? Gross!

Hi guys, Mary here from True.

So, as you know, this week at True we are talking about sex and relationships. The bible has a lot to say about this subject, and one of the verses that I’ve found really interesting is 1 Timothy 5:2 – “treat younger men as brothers… and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.”

When you think about it, this is quite a challenging bit of scripture! It means that we need to treat all members of the opposite sex as our brothers/sisters, the only exception to this rule being our future/husbands wives! Would you flirt with your brother? Or make out with your sister? The world takes the opposite view to the bible on this subject; we’re constantly being told by our friends and by the media that we should push the boundaries, go as far as we possibly can with the opposite sex, that our purity means nothing, even that it’s something we should be embarrassed of.

But in this verse God’s telling us we should do the opposite to the world’s view and live in “absolute purity”, it’s something to think about.

Truth? Are you serious?

Truth.

We’re all concerned with it aren’t we? We might not all sit around for hours on end wondering about truth and the meaning of life but we all live according to the answers in the world as we see it. We listen to music, we watch movies and we enjoy the TV shows that most reemphasise what we believe about the world, and we hang around with people who have a like mind to ours. ‘Truth’ is a grand word that we don’t use too much, it sounds far too unreachable and ever so slightly arrogant, who are we after all, to say what’s true and what’s not? A few years ago a popular band released an album called ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’. It got to #1 in the charts. I like the title, it’s catchy and I can relate to it. I don’t like being preached at any more than you do but I can appreciate someone else’s version of the truth, I like a good discussion every now and then.

I wonder what you think when someone says the word ‘God’ around you. What kind of response does it provoke in you? Anger? Guilt? Boredom? Interest? What about the word ‘church’? Or ‘Jesus’? These are all words that are loaded with opinion and peoples reactions range hugely.

I wonder also how you’d answer the question ‘What’s wrong with the world?’ What would be in your top 5? Would religion? We’ve all seen the horrors of what can happen when religious people get hold of something that they believe to be ‘the truth’ and then use it to justify all kinds of horrible things from blowing themselves (and others) up to waving banners that read ‘God hates… insert here’

My guess is that that’s why we don’t talk too much about ‘truth’ it’s too easy to make enemies without even trying. If we’re honest I think that most of us want to just keep our heads down and have fun/make money/get married/all three.

What if there is more to life than simply what we make of it? What if there is a bigger, higher purpose and plan for our lives? Wouldn’t you hate to get to the end of your life and find that you missed it? It’d be like Frodo arriving at the Crack of Doom only to realise he’d left the ring at home in the shire on his bed side table – oops, you can’t go back now!

For what it’s worth, here’s my truth, the one that works for me and makes life make sense.

Consider this:

The reason you have a longing for meaning and significance and the reason you have a desire for love and adventure is because God wired you that way. In the same way that hunger can be satisfied by food, thirst by water and tiredness by sleep, so these desires can be satisfied by God.

It would be a cruel world if there was nothing in it to remove my hunger. Imagine a world where no amount of food took away your hunger pains and yet that’s how some people seem to see the world. We all have these deep desires in our heart and nothing it seems can ever fully satisfy or quench them. That’s a cruel existence. We try to stuff ourselves with as much as we can hoping that something will stick, something will make us feel complete. We so often go from relationship to relationship (maybe this boyfriend’s the one, or this one, or this one…), or from gadget to gadget, from job to job, from one pay day to the next never fully experiencing the kind of peace and excitement that we want.

Here’s where I mention the ‘J’ word.

Jesus’ life & death are recorded for us in the Bible, a remarkably accurate and historically verifiable book, and in it he is recorded as saying to a group of people just like us: ‘if anyone is thirsty, or heavy burdened and in need of rest, come to me.’

In fact it’s been said before that as a species we are always restless until we find our rest in God and my own experience has shown me that that’s true.

The Christian faith is good news. It’s not good advice on how to live your life but it’s good news that changes the way you live you life. The news is this ‘Jesus has come to rescue you, God is passionate about you, he isn’t angry with you, he doesn’t expect you to climb a ladder of good behaviour and brownie points, he’s come down to meet you.’

Jesus forgives you and Jesus can transform you. Jesus can equip you for a life full of satisfaction, delight and hope for the age to come.
Essentially that’s why this church exists, that’s why this youth group meets, that’s what we’re so excited about. Around us there are loads of people who all claim to know a deep joy and enthusiasm as a result of knowing we’re accepted and loved by our creator.

I’ve found this to be true, having tried and tested the claims of Christianity and having seen and experienced things that are, quite simply, inexplicable without what Jesus said being true.

You’re so welcome at True and at Kings. You don’t have to believe the same things as us to be a part of us and there’s no membership form for you to fill in or written test for you to pass. Just simply, kick back and enjoy the friendship and fun that we have at True.

If you’d like to find out more about what goes on each week then drop us an email to: jez.field@kingschurch.eu, become a fan of our facebook page (search ‘Storm Kings youth’) or visit our blog for more thought provoking topics on the claims of Christianity.

Training pt2

Putting God first is a decision of the will. Amy shares some helpful tips on how to prioritise your growth in God.

Now this is a huge area and there could be loads that I could say but I want to pick four areas that we can get focussed. Over the next couple of days we’ll look at a different area each day. Up for this New Year Challenge? Ready…Set…GO!


1. Getting to know God more. I don’t know if you’re like me but sometimes I can feel that I know God; there’s nothing more to know. I’ve been a Christian for years surely I know it all. End of… WRONG. God is knowable yet unknowable at the same time! He is so much bigger than I can imagine, my teeny brain can only comprehend the little that I know about God- and that’s still mind blowing! Although there’s so much that we won’t know about God or understand him fully that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t bother learning more. In Colossians 1:10 it says that we should spend our lives ‘increasing in the knowledge of God’.
Putting it into practice: Read about God. The Bible is probably the best place to start! Reading stories in the Old Testament are really good for learning about God’s character.

Alongside the Bible why not read a book about God. I’d totally recommend ‘Incomparable’ by Andrew Wilson to learn more about our awesome God.