I spent the weekend with my family. Yes, my immediate family of Kearsdad, Kat, and Banana as well as our extended Solid Ground family. It was Winter Retreat weekend, and our whole family got to participate for the first time. This was Banana's first Student Retreat, and her first trip with the whole student ministry AS a student and not as a tag-a-long! What a blessing to watch my girls learn and worship and play with their friends and church family.
An added blessing was that I got to be small group leader to Kat and her group of bffs. These were mostly girls that I have watched grow up together. How precious it was to listen to them share their hearts and grow in God's love. We ended out small group time together by allowing some of them to share their testimonies with each other. INCREDIBLE!
Our Bible Study title was Sequence, and it was a study of the blueprint for the Christian walk as described by Jesus: "Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me." How do you teach 14 year old girls to deny themselves? How do you teach adults to deny ourselves? We are by nature selfish people. The good news is that if we know Christ, we have a NEW nature and through Christ we have the power to do what it takes to deny ourselves. Jesus left his will in the Garden of Gethsemane when he said, "Not my will, but yours be done." While salvation is free, discipleship has a cost. The call to personal holiness is going to mean sacrifice on our part.
The issue of holiness was an interesting part of our discussion. It seems most people, teenagers included think that holiness means being perfect. That, I think, is why so many people think that holiness is impossible to attain. But God would not call us to do something impossible. "Be holy because I am holy." Holiness isn't perfection, it is "other-ness". God is holy, that is, he is totally different and separate from anyone else. He calls us to be different, separate. The more we look like Christ, the more we act and think and walk like Christ, the more we become different from the world. If we are real disciples, others will see it in our lives and in our different-ness. If we aren't different enough to be noticed, then I daresay we are not living in holiness and are not attaining discipleship.
The next step in the sequence is taking up our cross. If you think teaching the idea of denying self is hard, try explaining what it means to take up a cross! One way I tried to approach this was by explaining that denying self is "not doing what you want to do", and taking up your cross is "doing what God wants you to do". Our cross is our identification with Christ. But as Americans, we have little understanding of real suffering. One would think teenagers who have never encountered anything harder than having to wait until they are 13 for a cell phone, or having to wait until their birthday for a new iPod, have no idea how to understand real suffering. But they are dealing with real issues. They attend school and interact with kids who have no Christian context at all. They deal with parents who fight, friends who see nothing wrong with alcohol or sex. They feel the pressure to fit in. They are inundated with images of the world on tv and in the movies and in their video games. To live for Christ in that environment is hard. But understanding the extreme suffering of Christ on our behalf makes our difficulties seem petty. On Saturday night, the kids came face to face with that idea as they participated in an interactive worship service that included a clip of The Passion of the Christ.
Finally, we talked about following Christ. Denying self and taking up a cross is hard stuff. But following Jesus brings real joy and peace. Not that it is easy. The path we follow is rocky and narrow. But life in Christ is full to overflowing. It is fun. It is beautiful. One of the things I pointed out to the girls is that Jesus wants to use them and their talents and abilities to glorify Himself. Following Jesus isn't something for adults only. I want teenagers to understand that Jesus wants to use them now, as they are, with their skills and talents, for His Kingdom.
Following Christ is the third step in the sequence. But it is not the last. As we move along the path of following Jesus, we will find ourselves-over and over-having to deny self and take up the cross. So the pattern is...Deny Yourself, Take Up Your Cross, Follow Jesus, Repeat.
