3 Things to Remember as a High School Student

Being a student at any level of school brings about a number of emotions and challenges, but high school is unique in it's own way. It is more than likely going to be the best and worst time of your life, because of the many ups and downs. Football games, backstabbing "friends", supporting friends, hours of study, weekend hangouts, and more tests than you can possibly fathom will take up almost all of your time. This may sound like an insanely crazy time mixed in with some fun things, but don't be too afraid. Even in the midst of all of this, there is a chance that you can learn and grow from the experience if you remember these three things.


1) He Formed Us

Genesis 2:7 says " Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." So what in the world does this have to do with high school? Take a look at the rest of creation first. Everything else that God created in Genesis was simply spoken into existence. God spoke, and it was. Simple, right? However, with us, God took extra care and time. He FORMED us and breathed life into us. This means that he values and loves us above all the rest of His creation! So when the hardships of being a student in high school get you down remember that you were formed with care, love, and time, and that God created you with a purpose in mind. You are not useless, and you are not trash. God is the ultimate artist, and everything He creates is a masterpiece, including you.

2) Your Foundation

My prayer is that by the time you arrive in high school you have a good biblical foundation and you know who you are and whose you are. For those parents reading this, make sure you're doing your part too. It is not just the church's responsibility to disciple your kids. That is first and foremost your job! If you as students know that you are special and unique (who you are) and that you are God's children and are in His hands (whose you are) then you're able to handle the difficult situations at school much easier.

3) Your goals

Sometimes we can have such broad goals that it becomes easy to lose focus of what we want to achieve. If I were to ask you in church what your goals in life were, a lot of us would probably say something like "to share the gospel" or "to love like Jesus". These are awesome goals and things we definitely should do, but it's also important to have specific goals and steps to reach them. Do you want to be a doctor, a policeman, a teacher, or something else? Write down the steps needed to reach these goals. In Genesis chapter 2 God gave man the responsibility of caring and nurturing for the garden of Eden. I believe that He is saying to us through that action that work is good and necessary. It's not something we should dread. Reaching our goals takes guts, and hard work. If we keep those goals and the steps to reach them in front of us, it's much easier to stick to the right path.

I truly am enjoying my blogging journey thus far and I pray that my words have helped or encouraged some of you. However, by no means do I pretend to know everything, so your feedback is greatly appreciated in the form of encouragement or criticism. If you could tell your high school self one thing, what would it be? Comment your answer below, and share this post. As always, God bless you all!

Exactly How Good is God?

This week has been a struggle for me mentally and emotionally. This past Sunday I stood in front of the congregation of Smith Street Baptist Church and asked my girlfriend to become my wife, and she actually said yes! Now, this struggle is in no way related to me popping the question so let me make that clear ( before I get in trouble). But life tends to get you down and out sometimes and you start to think yourself into a depression of sorts. This is happens to a lot of us I would say, and it's definitely no fun. But I was reminded this week exactly how good God is in a number of ways.

God has given me a beautiful fiancé. This woman is so kindhearted and selfless, always putting others before herself, sometimes even to a fault. She holds me accountable to the work I'm doing for the Lord, which I truly appreciate. She always respects my decisions and is a true biblical helpmate. But above all, she loves the Lord, more than she loves me. All these things that God has provided for me through my future wife are so abundantly good, that I should never complain about the trivial things that I go through.

I was also reminded of God's goodness through a student of mine in the 4Twelve Student ministry. This week this student sent me a text with a picture on it. The picture was of a paper for school that she had to read. The title of the paper was "Why God does not Exist". This student was a little upset, feeling that her teacher was unfairly teaching the students there that there is no God. Her assignment was to write a response to this paper. We both later found out that the teacher is a firm believer in Christ, and was trying to get the students to tap into their passionate side of writing, and it worked! I was given the opportunity to read my student's response to that paper, and it is simply amazing. In the paper, she explains exactly how good God has been to her, how no one can ever take that away, and how her faith will never be shaken because God is her rock and salvation. Reading the paper brought tears to my eyes because it reminded me how blessed I really am to have students like this in my ministry.

This week's post isn't 5 steps to accomplish this, or the top three ways of doing that. But, it's a post that I want to remind you of exactly how blessed we are, regardless of our situation. Because no matter the circumstance, we have a God that loves us and sent his son to die for our sins, the things WE have done, Even if I wasn't blessed with a great job, or an amazing fiancé, or great students, I still have reason to celebrate because of what Jesus did for me and for you. So when life gets you down this week, keep in mind just how blessed we really are! See you next time!

3 Things in Life Christians Should Never Take Chances With

Life is full of ups and downs, certainty and uncertainty, and encouragements and disappointments. Along the road we tend to take chances on a few things, some of which we really should've put a bit more thought in to before making the decision that we made. It's true that we must take chances on some things in life, but we need to be careful what we actually gamble on.

1) Dating
From my own personal experience, I remember in high school I had no particular reason to date a certain girl. The only requirement I had for a girl to date me was to be pretty. Looking back I see now that this was extremely shallow of me. If I could go back and tell my former self some things about dating, I would tell myself to date with a purpose in mind, which is to get married. Now I probably just made some of you parents nervous, and you may be thinking that you don't want your child thinking about marriage in high school, but hear me out. I could've saved myself so much heartache and pain if I would have dated with a purpose of finding the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. I would've asked the hard questions sooner. If I would have known exactly what I was looking for, I wouldn't have wasted my time as much as I did either. The Bible tells us what a godly woman looks like in proverbs. If I would have dated with that purpose in mind, I would have never settled for anything less. So don't take a chance when it comes to finding your future husband or wife.

2) Your Children
I'm not talking about letting them ride in the car without a seat belt, although you shouldn't take a chance with that either. I'm talking about your children's spiritual journey. Many people make the mistake of allowing a majority of their kids discipleship to take place in church. Discipleship in the church is a great thing, but the parents should be doing the majority of this. You are your child's very first role model, and the first people they look to for guidance. Their walk with Christ is the single most important thing in their lives, so why do we take the chance of  letting other people take the lead on this? Don't gamble away the chance to disciple your kids.

3) Your Friends and Family
I believe that we often assume that our friends and family have put their faith and trust in Jesus because they go to church. This is a HUGE gamble. This is putting someone's eternity on a guess. This is something that we need to be sure of. After all, these people are the most important people in our lives, the ones that we do life with every single day. We need to have those hard conversations with them, and be sure that they know Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior.

These gambles are scary and dangerous, but they're all avoidable and correctable. I pray this week that each of us grow closer daily to Jesus, and that other people see His love and grace through us. God bless you all!

Are there any alarms in my life?

Some of us may have a job we have to be at tomorrow or somewhere we need to be by a certain time, and we will set our alarm to wake us up. Sometimes we wake up immediately, other times we hit the snooze button, or occasionally we may not hear the alarm at all. The only thing we can be sure of is that the alarm is meant to be a warning. A warning that says "Hey, it's time to wake up!". Think about your own life and be honest with yourself, are you in need of awakening?

At some point in our lives most of us will go through some type of hardship. It could be a divorce, an addiction,losing a job, or losing a friend. The bible tells us in the parable of the prodigal son of a young man that goes to his father and asks for his share of the inheritance early. The son then gathers all that he has, including his fortune, and heads to a distant land. He spends all of his money on wild living and eventually there is a famine in the land. He hires himself out to a farmer who asks him to feed his pigs. The son had no food and finds himself wishing he could eat the pigs food. Let's pause for a second in the story to clarify a few things. I believe it's safe to say that the son has hit rock bottom. He has lost everything he owned, and has reached a point where he is jealous of the meals of pigs. Jesus also tells us in this parable that the son is in a distant land. I think it's important to realize that the son probably hasn't had any contact whatsoever with his family. It's not like he could pick up the phone and call home to see how the crew is doing. But at this point in the story something extremely important happened. The son came to his senses. He heard the alarm.

The story goes on to say that the son returned home, not to an angry father who was bitter, but to a rejoicing daddy who welcomed his lost son with open arms. I took the time to tell that story in hopes you would notice a few things about the "alarm" the son finally heard. Think about your own alarm clock. Do you set your alarm as a soothing, calm noise? Or, do you make it the most annoying and excruciating sound you can find? The most effective alarms are always the hardest to hear, because they make you want to wake up faster. The same is true in our lives. The alarm goes off the loudest when we have hit rock bottom, and it's often too late to do anything about it. Divorce, addiction, job loss, and loss of friends are just a few of those "rock bottoms". Odds are, that somewhere along the way there were some alarms we didn't hear, and some we hit snooze on. This is the hardest part to hear for most people once they hear the alarm; Hearing the alarm does us no good at all if we don't take the action to get out of the bed.

God sometimes gives us these warnings or alarms in order for us to avoid the rock bottom. We go to church and the pastor begins to speak on a certain sin that we have been dealing with. Maybe your wife has been ignoring you, and you fill that void with pornography. The toxic nature of pornography has poisoned your mind to the point that you no longer find your wife attractive, so you become distant.This leads to a divorce, and a fallout with your children because they resent you and themselves, thinking that the whole thing is their fault. The alarms were there all along, but you ignored them, and it lead to a downward spiral into the deepest pit of your life. You see, the world tells us that we're too far gone for any help. My marriage is too broken, I've been an addict for too long, I'm too big of a sinner for God to love me. All of this stuff is absolute garbage. If God uses the alarm to do a work in your heart, it's time that our lives start matching up with what God is doing. Be honest with yourself about your situation. Don't hit the snooze button on the alarm anymore, make the move and get out of bed. God bless you all!