3C Youth - Devotions

In high school, no one wants to talk about “honoring your parents.” It just doesn’t come up in conversation. Everyone talks about how annoying their parents are and how many restrictions they have to deal with. There’s always something to complain about.

A friend of mine (we’ll call her Leah) recently called to inform me that she had smoked marijuana the night before. Leah is seventeen, a state-ranked swimmer and a struggling Christian. And you know what? Even though she could get away with whatever she wanted to do, she still hated her mom for being too much in her business.

Leah really didn’t see a need to honor her parents in her actions and decisions. She only cared about her life. She didn’t understand that her actions reflected on her parents, that they hurt her parents and that she was putting up giant walls in those relationships.

A few weeks later, after she and I had engaged in several difficult conversations, she finally decided to talk to her mom about the stuff that was going on with her. Of course her mom cried. A lot. And Leah felt even more horrible because she could see just how much her lifestyle of selfishness hurt her mom.

I talked with Leah and let her know that even though this time of healing in the relationship with her mom was painful, it was worth it in the long run. She needed someone “in her corner,” and I knew that her mom was the perfect person for that job. Things weren’t easy. They still aren’t. But at least Leah is now on the right track toward honoring her parents.

Are you like Leah? Even though you believe in God, do you still do things that don’t honor your parents? Do you need to sit down and have a serious talk with your parents about some of the things that have been less-than-honoring in your life lately?

It’s not an easy task to start really honoring your parents, but God promises that when we honor them, it will “go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth” (Ephesians 6:3 NIV).

XP3: THE GOOD FIGHT
Student Devotional #2

(follow-up for Session 2)

Fighting For

by Jessica Synan

Have you ever felt like you’re just fighting, like you’re swinging your fists blindly in the dark at some monster you can’t really see? That’s what it’s like to be fighting against. Most of the people you know are fighting against. They’re not sure what exactly they’re fighting, but it’s out there somewhere. They’re just fighting because they don’t know what else to do.

Sometimes we do the same thing with our families. We know that there are some things beyond our control, so we start fighting. We fight because we are dissatisfied with our lives, our relationships, and ultimately because we are not really happy with ourselves. However, no matter how hard we fight against, we will never fix all those things that are wrong with our lives.

In the movie Cinderella Man, Russell Crowe plays Jimmy Braddock, a dogged Irish boxer during the Great Depression. When he breaks his hand and loses his ability to fight, his family doesn’t have enough money to heat their house or pay for food. But his old manager gets him a fight when another fighter backed out, and somehow he wins. And he keeps winning fights that he’s supposed to lose.

When reporters ask Braddock how he’s able to win fights, when in the past he had been just a mediocre fighter at best, he replied, “This time around, I know what I’m fighting for.”

You see, before, he had just been fighting against other fighters. But he had found something greater to fight for—his family’s future and freedom.

All of us fight against a lot of things, but what are fighting for? Is it our families and God’s will for our relationships?

Are you willing to commit to start fighting for something greater than yourself? Are you willing to give up those battles you’re fighting because you don’t know what else to do? Start fighting for things that really matter, and you’ll be surprised at how much God will do.

XP3: THE GOOD FIGHT
Student Devotional #3

(follow-up for Session 3)

Common Ground

by Jessica Synan

Do you feel like your parents live on another planet? Or maybe like they’re walking around in an alternate dimension and occasionally come to visit you here?

Well, here’s some news for you--they lived in a different time. A time long, long ago . . . when the Bee Gees ruled the discos and Pink Floyd refused to become “another brick in the wall.” When acid-wash jeans were cool (the first time) and when everyone wore the Top Gun Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses. Or when the ozone layer was depleted due to poofy hair in the front. Oh, yeah, and mullets (enough said).

But instead of just writing off your parents as idiots stuck in the 70s and 80s, why not try to find something to help you relate to them? Anything will do, really.

My sister is fourteen, and she really gets this. She decided that she was going to have to make an effort to relate to our dad. And believe me, it takes some effort. But dad likes baseball. Scratch that. Dad loves baseball. He actually is an umpire, and calls a lot of high-school baseball games.

So my sister started asking him if she could go with him to some of his games. She would sit in the stands while he called the games; paying close attention to all the controversial calls he made and all the angry mothers who would shout obscenities at him. On the way home from the game, they would discuss how the games went, and have really amazing conversations . . . which sometimes were not only about baseball.

This is how you need to approach your relationship with your parents. As a matter of fact, instead of finding reasons to dislike them, maybe you could try to reconcile, or bring back together, your relationship with your parents.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, “God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”

There you have it. God wants us to have good relationships with people (especially our parents) because He’s in the business of reconciliation Himself. He’s bringing the world back to Him, and if you’re going to follow Him, you need to be reconciling some relationships, too.

So give peace a chance . . . well at least give peace with your parents a chance. Try something new. Do something out of the ordinary. Look for ways to find common ground with your parents and start reconciling those relationships. You won’t regret it.

ONLY HUMAN
By Sarah Anderson

(Read Acts 15:36-40 before reading this devotional.)

Have you ever been really good friends with someone, maybe even best friends? Maybe this
friendship was rooted in similar interests or personalities, or common goals in life. You and this person were as close as two friends could possibly be. But then, one day, out of nowhere, you get in a disagreement. It started as a simple difference in opinion, but it didn’t take long before things got heated. What started out as a simple preference over something became much bigger, something where your convictions were involved. Before too long, it became obvious. No one was going to budge. And a simple argument, a simple tiff became the thing that undid your whole friendship. Years lost. Experiences overlooked. Memories forgotten. None of it mattered anymore. The friendship you thought had the longevity to last a lifetime is brought to an abrupt end.

I have been there before. Have you? Would it surprise you to hear that even the apostle Paul
has been there? Is that weird for you to think that the apostle Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament Bible, was in such a sharp conflict with someone, that the friendship was ended over it? It surprises me. In fact, I remember the first time I read the story in Acts that told what happened between Paul and Barnabas. I remember furiously skipping ahead in the book to see where the reconciliation was, to see when one of them finally swallowed their pride, got over themselves and made things right between them. But I couldn’t find that story. I couldn’t find the verses that told me it all worked out in the end.

As far as we know, when Barnabas and Paul parted ways in Acts 15 that was the end. Things never quite got back to how they were before. Maybe harsh words had been said that could not be overlooked, maybe demeaning comments had been made that could not be forgotten. Whatever happened, it was big enough, shocking enough, far-reaching enough that a deep, profound and personal friendship could not survive the fallout.

The story of Paul and Barnabas is like a black stain on the reputation of one of the most noted Christian missionaries in all time. It reminds me of Paul’s humanity, but honestly, I am not sure I want the reminder. I would rather think of Paul as perfect than read about what seemed like a petty disagreement that caused friends to part ways. And the fact that Acts stays relatively quiet about what happens later kind of annoys me. Were they sorry? Did they regret what happened? If they had to do it all over again, would they?

I think they would. And while Acts doesn’t dish on the weeks, months and years that follow the split between Paul and Barnabas, Paul himself has so much to say about relationships, that I can’t help but think he was speaking from some experience.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it
is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs . . . It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres (1 Corinthians 13:4-5, 7 NIV).

Get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you (Ephesians 4:31-32 NIV).

Make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and
purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others (Philippians 2:2-4 NIV).

These sound like the words of a man who has been broken. A man who has tried to navigate
the tumultuous waters of relationships and friendships, and undoubtedly failed from time to time. These sound like the words of a man who can only speak as wise and as confidently as he does because of the mistakes he made in the past. Read these verses again and see if you can’t hear a hint of regret, a taste of remorse, a sense of, if only I could go back. Paul never claimed to be perfect. He knew he was human, just like all of us know we are—and as a result, he knew he was prone to failure and making mistakes that came back to haunt him. Paul’s story is no different than ours, except we get a front row seat to the drama in his relationships that all of history doesn’t get to see in ours.

The truth is when it comes to our friendships and our relationships, we are going to have conflict. We will have disagreements, and sometimes because of our pride, because of our stubborn nature, conflict not handled well and disagreements not treated rightly will result in the end of a relationship. But you and I both know, and Paul knows, that when a friendship ends the story doesn’t end there. There is a lot of time for wondering why it had to go the way it did, what would happen if you could do it all over again, a lot of regret.

When we read the letters of Paul, when we hear the words communicated about relationships, about how to treat other people, about how to love as Christ would have us love, the significance of his words become a lot clearer once we understand the history of the man who penned the words to begin with. Paul lost a good friend. A companion. A partner. And he didn’t forget it. Not when he wrote to the churches years later, not when he taught them how to move beyond a disagreement, not when communicated the hard to swallow words about loving a friend, no matter what the cost.

Have you ever lost a friendship? Have you ever truly gotten over the wounds it leaves? Paul
doesn’t seem to have. And I think if he had his way, he wouldn’t have us get over it either. He
would want us to learn from our mistakes, from our missteps when it comes to our friendships, and then, and this is the most important part, change because of them. Learn from them. Fix our behavior and our actions so it doesn’t happen again. Or as Paul himself would say, be patient, persevere, love them through it, be compassionate, forgive, think of everyone as better than you.

We may not be able to change the relationship failures we have caused in the past. But we can learn not to repeat them—to become people who forgive so quickly, who love so completely, who persevere so thoroughly that our present and our future relationships are reshaped and remolded to look like Jesus would want them to.

NO CLONES
By Tim Walker

If you’re anything like me, I usually walk into a room of strangers and start looking for the people who look like me. Okay, not exactly like me—I’m not that vain. But I tend to find people who seem to dress similar to me, who are around my same age, who seem to be a “similar status” as me. But the ironic thing is that most of the time, once I start a conversation with those people; I’m bored out of my mind. Or the conversation just is strained, awkward, and we’re done talking after about a minute.

It’s “comfortable” to seek out people who are like me, but if I’m honest with myself, most of the people who are closest to me are nothing like me. And that’s a good thing. King Solomon was the wisest man—ever. He wrote things like: “He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm” (Proverbs 13:20 NIV). And from his son Rehoboam’s decisions, one just might think he wasn’t listening to his dad’s advice.

Then King Rehoboam consulted the elders who had served his father Solomon during his lifetime. “How would you advise me to answer these people?” he asked.
They replied, “If today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them a favorable answer, they will always be your servants.”
But Rehoboam rejected the advice the elders gave him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and were serving him. He asked them, “What is your advice? How should we answer these people who say to me, ‘Lighten the yoke your father put on us’?”
The young men who had grown up with him replied, “Tell these people who have said to you, ‘Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter’—tell them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist. My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.’”
Three days later Jeroboam and all the people returned to Rehoboam, as the king had said, “Come back to me in three days.”
The king answered the people harshly. Rejecting the advice given him by the elders, he followed the advice of the young men and said, “My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.”
So the king did not listen to the people, for this turn of events was from the LORD, to fulfill the word the LORD had spoken to Jeroboam son of Nebat through Ahijah the Shilonite.
When all Israel saw that the king refused to listen to them, they answered the king: “What share do we have in David, what part in Jesse’s son? To your tents, O Israel! Look after your own house, O David!” So the Israelites went home (1 Kings 12:6-16 NIV).

Rehoboam chose to ignore the people who were different than him, in order to follow the advice of those who were just like him. And the advice of his friends, the ones he grew up, turned out to be very bad.

There are people in your life now, people who are so different from you, that you may be completely oblivious to because you have this picture of what your friends should look like, how they should dress, what kind of financial status they should have. And there may be someone in your life or someone you know who doesn’t fit any of those criteria, but could be someone who brings a different perspective, teaches you new things and even inspires you to be more like Christ.

When we don’t allow people into our lives who look and act differently than we do, we end up less. Too much time in the company of people exactly like you starts to affect you—just ask Rehoboam. It starts to make you think that if someone isn’t like you, than they aren’t good enough. We start to judge people and their worth based on how closely they resemble us, and we think that God is on board with it. But don’t be fooled—He’s not. God isn’t only like me. He isn’t only like you. And, God didn’t make a world full of clones. But when we begin to act like we, and people like us, are the only people worth investing in, we start to shrink God. We start to undermine His creativity and the pleasure He finds in the diversity among us. God is much bigger than that. And He wants us to be bigger than our sometimes narrow view of other people.

There is one thing in common you definitely want in a good friend—you want to have people close to you who have an active relationship with Jesus Christ. People who love Him, not only with their words, but with their lives. But their interests, their perspectives can be completely different than yours.

The world is much bigger than us. It is much bigger than people like us. Do you believe that there is more to you and more to me than just who we already are right now? What if there was this incredible untapped potential to become so much bigger than we even thought possible if we just began to entertain this idea that there are people out there who are going to shake our lives up, maybe push our buttons every once in awhile, but who will expand our world in ways we could never do on our own?

What if someone different from you wasn’t bad, but was just what you needed to become the person God has in mind? Would you choose them, pick them, accept them as friends as different as they be from you—even if no one around you, including yourself, understood “why them”?