I write for the release of teenagers. Do I write to encourage teenagers to live?Like free people? (1 Peter 2:16). To be wise, strong, and free from the bondage of culture?In other words, I ask teenagers to have a radical lifestyle during the war.
As a teenager, it’s important that you know the idea of Adolescence?it was created only seventy years ago, Word?Teen?it did not exist before the second Mundial. No there was a category for humans between childhood and adulthood. You were a kid, then you were a young adult.
- Just a hundred years ago.
- Would you have had a decisive responsibility at the age of thirteen on your father’s farm or business?Or in your mother’s kitchen and knitting room.
- Would you be formed for a paid job or family business until you were seventeen?.
- Married at twenty.
- And would you be a responsible husband and father?Or a woman and a mother.
- Until the early 1920s.
It can be hard for you to imagine this scenario, and I’m not saying that we can go back to that time or that we should want to go back, my goal is for you to be freed by the truth. you’re free. The truth is that you don’t have to meet the contemporary expectations imposed by your culture or your peers.
Very few teenagers know the story. This ignorance leads to a type of slavery, most teenagers are slaves to the expectations of their peers and the large industries that sell their clothes, music, technology and entertainment.
Is this slavery so pleasurable? And so regularly rewarded? That the ability to free yourself from conformity with adolescent culture rarely crosses your mind. Realizing historically that there are other possibilities can free you into a radical wartime lifestyle in the name of Jesus.
In 1944, Life magazine covered the new phenomenon of adolescence. The article read:
There is a time in every American’s life when the most important thing in the world is to be part of the crowd and act and talk like her. It’s adolescence.
This is not a very enviable principle for the meaning of the term “teen”. Things haven’t changed much in the last sixty years. A teenager wrote for my hometown newspaper:
Most of my friends don’t feel comfortable with the most popular clothes, but they still wear it. It’s not always worth getting attention. Society says it’s different and, at the same time, the same.
How do you dress to please yourself, your parents and your peers?That’s not possible. Teenagers end up abandoning their values to integrate. If we intend to survive high school or even elementary school without interruption, we must dress to please our peers.
We will be the next leaders of this nation. We need to see what we have become and what we are changing into (Minneapolis StarTribune, November 16, 2002; A23).
It is not easy to be a Christian teenager; you desperately want people to love you; being rejected by your friends can be devastating. But as a young woman, you know in your heart that living to make people like you is slavery, and if you belong to Jesus, this slavery can be worse than rejection.
For many, being great is everything. But what’s great?Is this really the phone you have or the movies you’ve seen?Or if you’re strong, fast or handsome, or how does your hair move and the shape of your body?You’re not stupid. You know that living for these things is superficial and meaningless.
What is legal for a young catoreze? I think what I’m going to say now is hundreds of times cooler than phones, clothes, movies and games. It’s 1945, World War II was still in full swing, thousands of teenagers wanted to fight. Was the battle of Iwo Jima one of the deadliest?On this small island, 6,800 American soldiers were buried, many of whom were teenagers.
Jack Lucas managed to persuade the United States Marine Corps to accept it at the age of four [in 1942], deceiving recruits with his muscular complexion?He traveled clandestinely on a ship that left Honolulu and survived thanks to food he received from other members of the Marine Corps.
At the age of ten and seven, he landed at Iwo Jima on D-Day without a rifle. He took one that was on the beach and fought until he reached the center of the island. Now, a day after D-Day, Jack and three companions were crawling through the trenches when eight Japanese appeared before them. Jack shot one in the head.
Then his gun jammed. While trying to fix the problem, a grenade fell at his feet, he warned others and slid the grenade under the volcanic ash, immediately after another grenade landed near him, 17-year-old Jack Lucas threw himself on both grenades. “Lucas, are you going to die?” remember thinking?
On the Samaritan twin ship, doctors couldn’t believe it. One of them said, “Maybe I was too young and too hard to die. “Have you endured 21 reconstruction operations and become the youngest in the country to win the Medal of Honor?And receive it in the first year of high school (James Bradley, Flags of our Fathers, 174-175).
Knowing that you’re participating in a war changes the definition of legal. If your family is attacked, you no longer care about your clothes or hair. And we’re at war. The enemy is stronger than the Axis of Germany, Japan and Italy. In fact, the combination of all human forces is stronger than all. The battle is daily. It happens everywhere. And your victories and defeats lead you to heaven or hell.
“Take all the armor of God, that you may oppose the tricks of the devil” (Ephesians 6. 11).
“Fight the good battle of faith. ” (1 Timothy 6. 12)
“Fight the good fight. ” (1 Timothy 1:18)
“For the weapons of our militia are not carnal” (2 Corinthians 10. 4).
“Participate in my suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2. 3).
? I beg you to refrain from the carnal passions that make war on the soul (1 Stone 2. 11).
Don’t be part of the crowd of blind teenagers who don’t know what’s going on. They think that knowing what the latest movie is, the latest iPhone app, or what songs are on the charts means knowing what’s going on. cut flowers. Today they shine, but tomorrow they discard. They are completely insignificant compared to the events that shape the course of eternity.
What really happens is that people and nations are enslaved by Satan or liberated by Christ, and Christ is fighting in this war for freedom through Christians, including Christian teenagers.
Take, for example, the battlefield of money. The trumpet sounded. You’re the soldier. The battle has begun. You may not feel rich, but you have many things; the things you have threatened to strangle your soul, lie about its importance, and bring you satisfaction (Mark 4. 19); and money you don’t have threatens to hurt yourself by creating a passion to make you rich.
The Grand General sent you a personal message on the battlefield and says:
But those who want to enrich themselves fall into temptations, traps, and many foolish and pernicious lusts that plunge men into ruin and doom. For love of money is the root of all evils; and some, in this greed, have strayed from the faith and tormented themselves with great pain?(1 Timothy 6: 9-10)
Then, with the warning, he sent the great promise that he will never let you go alone in this war.
Be your life without greed. Be happy with what you have; because he said. There’s no way I’m going to leave you, I’ll never leave you. So let’s say with confidence: the Lord is my help, I will not fear; What can man do for me?(Hebrews 13: 5-6)
This trust frees you from fear and greed: the supreme commander will not let me die on the battlefield. Then look your enemy in the eye. Look at greed and desire and kill them with the Sword of the Spirit and the superior pleasures of Christ:?Yes, I consider it a loss, by the sublime knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord; Why have I lost everything and consider it a rejection, to win Christ?(Philippians 3. 8).
Or consider the battlefield of comfort and tranquility. Almost every force of your life requires you to maximize your comfort with the ease and tranquility of our time. But the Grand General sent you a message as the enemy surrounds you. Remember the great warrior Moses. ! Fight like him!
By faith Moses, when he was already a man, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, preferring to be mistreated with God’s people without enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin; because he considered Christ’s oprobrium for the riches greater than The Treasures of Egypt, why did he contemplate the reward?(Hebrews 11:24-26)
Ah, victories in this war will be rewarded!More than you can imagine! But the enemy wants you to think that all the rewards are in this life. He threw fliers with fake ads that read, “Paradise is a fairy tale. Are you a fool to live for the reward of heaven and not for the reward of comfort?and ease in this life?
But the Supreme Commander continually contradicts these false announcements with his spectacular promises. Doesn’t it matter how hard it is to fight?he will resurrect you and give you the greatest pleasures forever.
Blessed art thou when for my sake they insult you, persecute you and, lying, say all evil against you. Rejoice and rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven; So you persecuted the prophets who lived before you?(Matthew 5:11-12)
“For our slight and momentary tribulation gives us an eternal weight of glory, especially comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17).
“You will make me see the way of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy, in your right hand, delights forever?(Psalm 16. 11)
With this sword in hand, we push back the lying hordes of safety, comfort, and comfort and offer to serve Christ in the riskiest missions.
Or consider the battlefield of the ego and the need to be approved by colleagues. Ah, how powerful this enemy is! He has already swallowed more teenagers than any other opponent, even more than greed. It comes with terrible stories about the pain you’ll feel if you don’t settle for this world. He will lie to you and tell you that the only alternative to the mood, fashion, music, movies and sexual pleasures of this world is complete shame and humiliation.
The Grand General sees everything. His walkie-talkie offers messages for his combat-ready teens. Don’t be disappointed. They say you’ll feel avergonzado. No. They are the ones who will play the useless game of trying to turn your shame into glory. But you see reality as it is. They don’t. They walk [like] enemies of the cross of Cristo. Su fate is doomed, their god is the womb, and their glory is in their infamy, for they are only interested in earthly things?(Philippians 3:18). -19).
They think all that’s fun is with them. Is it a lot of fun, like a roller coaster where, at the most exciting moment, the car derails.
You know what lasts?Which really satisfies. For them, everything is like grass and like the flower of grass.
For all flesh is like grass, and all its glory as a flower of grass; the grass dries and its flower falls; The word of the Lord, however, remains forever; Now, is that the word that has been evangelized to you?(1 Stone 1: 24-25)
Internalize the commander’s messages. His identity is deeper, stronger, more lasting, and more glorious than any superficiality his enemies try to force him to accept, don’t you know that your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, which is in you, that you have God?and that you’re not yourself, because you were bought by price. Now, then, do you glorify God in your body? (1 Corinthians 6. 19-20). Are you, however, people who belong exclusively to God?(1 Peter 2. 9). You are the sons and daughters of the Creator of the universe (Romans 8. 16).
We could keep talking about the different types of battlefields you have to fight on, but you get an idea. The enemy lies, the supreme commander responds with the truth. ?And the truth will set you free? (John 8. 32).
When the Great General said, “Does no one despise your youth? (1 Timothy 4:12), what it means is: Do not conform to the stereotype of the carefree, aimless, shallow young man. Break the mold. You belong to Christ. ” Show the world there’s another kind of teenager on earth.
This teenager is not a leaf carried by cultural trends, it is not a jellyfish carried by the current of our time, it is a tree that stands firm in the midst of the biggest storms, it is a dolphin that advances against the waves and nothing against the current. He’s going somewhere.
He dreams of being some kind of teenager that the world can’t explain. Who knows, if one day, if there are many like you, they will invent a new name and “Teen”?It’ll be a footnote in the history books.