Luke 3 1-22
Luke 3 1-22

Luke 3 1-22
Teen Perspective "Who You Are" Part 1
For the most part, your normal, average person would agree that stealing is out of bounds for anyone, but especially for a Christian. So, if you told your Christian friends that you had broken into your neighbor’s house and taken your neighbor’s possessions, they’d never invite you over again and wonder if you were saved. If you told your Christian friends that you had no problem stealing cars, they’d keep a tight reign on their keys and never let you near their vehicles...and again, wonder if y...
For the most part, your normal, average person would agree that stealing is out of bounds for anyone, but especially for a Christian. So, if you told your Christian friends that you had broken into your neighbor’s house and taken your neighbor’s possessions, they’d never invite you over again and wonder if you were saved. If you told your Christian friends that you had no problem stealing cars, they’d keep a tight reign on their keys and never let you near their vehicles...and again, wonder if y...
4. Trusted The Art of Civility really comes down to the valuing of others over and above the valuing of our own opinions as we interact with them. If we engage in conversation with the goal to win, be right, be heard and get our point across, then in many ways we have already lost. We have lost the Art of Civility and traded it for pride of an opinion. We want people to feel heard, understood, respected and trusted with who they are and what they have to say. When someone does not feel one of th...
We live in a world where vitriolic rhetoric is the norm, not the exception. It’s disturbingly sad the way so many in our world speak hatefully about other people. Often, even worse, what they are saying is at the very least a half-truth if not an outright lie. Unfortunately, this isn’t some benign thing that happens between people half a world away, it also happens between people who are so-called friends. Furthermore, and far more troubling, it sometimes comes from the mouths and the pens and t...
We live in a world where vitriolic rhetoric is the norm, not the exception. It’s disturbingly sad the way so many in our world speak hatefully about other people. Often, even worse, what they are saying is at the very least a half-truth if not an outright lie. Unfortunately, this isn’t some benign thing that happens between people half a world away, it also happens between people who are so-called friends. Furthermore, and far more troubling, it sometimes comes from the mouths and the pens and t...
3. Respected “If people respect you, respect them back, if they disrespect, you respect them back. They represent their ideology, you represent yours.” Mohammad Zeyara We all have a need to be respected, to be taken seriously, to feel relevant, to be considered worthy, to be noticed, to be valued. Along with these is the need we all have to sense our own identities. Our identity is how we define who we are in the world. A way that this happens is in the way that others acknowledge and treat us. ...
One of the greatest gifts God has given us is found in the most intimate of emotional and physical connection given to a husband and wife. Because it’s one of God’s greatest gifts to us, it becomes one of satan’s sharpest weapons against us. The old evil foe uses our God-given desire for one another in the worst of ways and destroys marriages, families and lives in the process. When it comes to our sexuality then, how do we defeat satan, push this world away, and live for Jesus with all of our h...
One of the greatest gifts God has given us is found in the most intimate of emotional and physical connection given to a husband and wife. Because it’s one of God’s greatest gifts to us, it becomes one of satan’s sharpest weapons against us. The old evil foe uses our God-given desire for one another in the worst of ways and destroys marriages, families and lives in the process. When it comes to our sexuality then, how do we defeat satan, push this world away, and live for Jesus with all of our h...
2 {UNDERSTOOD} “Please understand and love me” ~ Ernest Hemingway One of our deepest longings, deeper than we even perhaps recognize day-to-day, is the desire to have other people understand aspects of how we are feeling. We don’t want others necessarily to agree with all our feelings, but what we crave is that they at least validate them. This is why people will feel hurt when they do not feel they are being understood or that someone doesn’t care to find out. Ernest Hemingway correctly connect...
When we are small, we are prone to grab at control in our lives by saying that word “Mine” and doing so forcefully. As we get older...we may not say it...but the sentiment is still in our heart...“Mine!” Today, as we look at the very important Fifth Commandment, we’re reminded that actually nothing is “Mine!” but everything, including my very life, belongs to God. To be sure, it has been given to us...more like loaned to us...but it nonetheless belongs to the God who “knit us together in our mot...
When we are small, we are prone to grab at control in our lives by saying that word “Mine” and doing so forcefully. As we get older...we may not say it...but the sentiment is still in our heart...“Mine!” Today, as we look at the very important Fifth Commandment, we’re reminded that actually nothing is “Mine!” but everything, including my very life, belongs to God. To be sure, it has been given to us...more like loaned to us...but it nonetheless belongs to the God who “knit us together in our mot...