This morning I taught on the Parable of the Weeds (Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43). It's seriously one of my favorite stories in the Bible - about good and bad in the world, which makes pain inevitable. Alot of the bad people in the world I would say are people who call themselves "Christians". I shared a story from when I was a teen in youth group and I thought I'd share it with you because it's kinda funny. Talk about blast to the past. Ugh, High School days...
So one Sunday night in High School I went to youth group like normal. We had our crazy game (probably Amazon Woman Warriors or Crazy Relays or something) and then we all went in to hear our youth pastor’s message.
He talked about forgiveness. It's funny how I remember this night and the theme because I couldn't tell you the Scripture he used or even any stories he shared. All I remember is what happened after he preached. By the end of his message, he told us that during worship if we had anyone that we needed to ask forgiveness from in that room, we needed to do it NOW and not wait. I thought about it a little bit and couldn’t think of anyone that I had hurt in the group, so I started singing.
Then all of a sudden 2 girls giggling tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to if they could talk to me. I didn't know them very well because they never tried to hang out with me (I was newer), but I followed them into the hallway. The first girl starts talking…
“So… we wanted to talk to you and ask for your forgiveness tonight.” They both were giggling.
“Because we hate you,” the other girl said.
“Yeah, because you hang out with all of our guys in our group (Jeremy, John, Joe, Kyle, Richard). So we want to ask you to forgive us for hating you.”
I was shocked and didn’t know what to say. “Ok.”
They went off giggling and never spoke to me again. I guess they felt like they had done their “Christian duty”. What jerks! That was seriously mean - and it hurt. What should I have done in that situation? Ran to the rest of my friends and told them about how those girls made me feel so that they hated them too? Started a fight? Got depressed over it? Had thoughts or even plans to hurt them back or make them feel dumb? (Don't you hate those what-if's you get after someone has hurt you?) How do you guys react when people have hurt you? Share at your tables.
Isn't High School sucky? Jk I don't know why I kept coming back to youth group. Sometimes I just hate Christians, or people who call themselves Christians but don't live it. I've seen so much damage happen to my family and friends because of people in their lives who have hurt them and haven't portrayed who God really is - loving, accepting, kind, generous, selfless. I want my teens to be better than that. I want them to look out for others and to love and accept others. I'm sick and tired of "Christians" in the world hurting other people. It is my passion to help turn this around in this new generation. I really think these kids better at it than we were.
3 comments:
high school was so gross!!!! you're doing good work!
oh my gosh...I never knew that happened to you!! High school is way sucky! Ugh, well, I think you're amazing and just the way you handled the situation shows that! You rock my friend!
man their were some mean kids in our group!! how in the heck did we survive?? thanks for sharing!
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