Lovin' my girls

Tonight was such a great night with the Jr high girls. We are doing a talk on purity with them, which can be a bit touchy at times, and sometimes I wonder if they are mature enough to handle. However, I know that they hear more about it at school and with friends than I care to imagine, so anything positive we can give them will be good.

Tonight, I talked with them about the true meaning of love. First, I had them talk about what they think love is, and then we talked about lust. I found most of the answers they gave for "love" fell under the "lust" category. This provided a great opportunity to share with them what true love is and of course, we looked at I Corinthians 13. The discussion ended up going another direction than I had planned, but was still really good. One of the girls asked about where it says "Love never fails", saying that isn't it possible that you stop loving someone and leave them...wow... great way to bring in God's perfect example of love and how He doesn't stop loving us, no matter what we do!!

Then we started to talk about how to deal with enemies, and those at school who want to get into fights. This discussion seems to come up a lot in discussion time with both jr and sr high ages. Of course it is something they deal with everyday and I don't always know how to answer. Of course, there is always the cookie-cutter-Bible answer...but lets be real, it's not what they want to hear and to live it out day to day, well, it seems almost impossble. And it is really. But as I got thinking about it while they were talking I realized that if they truly want to follow Christ, He calls us to live the impossible, in His strength. I shared with them that I want them to be above the "norm" of their culture. God wants more of them, and can give them the strength to do what is right. Being a Christian is living different. I've struggled with just teaching them "do's and "don'ts"...cause then you run into just trying to find the strength to do what is right with out a changed life. I want them to full understand living in God's grace and by His strength, to understand having a real relationship with Him...something He is continuing to teach me! I want them to understand TRUE salvation, which results in a changed life.

Overall, it was such an encouraging night. Not only do we get into great discussions, they are also so much fun!!