I've been thinking about this subject a lot lately: What does life look like for teenagers who will risk anything to follow Jesus?
Here's my piece on eight things everyone should know about teenagers who follow Jesus.
Dear world, let me introduce myself.
My name is Jaquelle. I follow Jesus. I’m a teenager. And I’m not alone.
God is moving in my generation and building an army of young people who love Jesus and will risk everything to obey Him. But there are a lot of misconceptions about us.
That’s why I’ve made a list of a few things I want you to know about us.
1. We are different.
Don’t let the world tell you otherwise.
American culture has adopted the pseudo-spiritual myth that you can love Jesus and not act like it. Celebrities who sing songs about passionately pursuing and delighting in sin get up at award speeches and thank God with gusto.
“See,” culture says. “This is what following Jesus looks like. It’s cool, it’s hip, it’s non-intrusive, it’s what everybody’s doing.”
That’s a lie.
Following Jesus changes everything about life, and true spirituality makes us weird to the world. We stand out from our peers. We lose friends. We have crucified coolness and we will never be popular.
But since we follow Jesus, we’re okay with that. It still stings, but we live for a better, bigger, eternal kingdom. We know that we’re shining lights in a dark world and loud voices in a quiet culture.
2. We are sinners (and we know it).
Key phrase: “we know it.”
We are not the pious hypocrites you see on TV, the teenagers who look down on everybody else and act with an aura of perceived perfection. We know all too well that we lust and lie and doubt God and laugh at jokes we shouldn’t and disrespect our parents and gossip and slander.
We wrestle with temptation and we struggle with sin, but we arm ourselves for the fight. That’s because we don’t want to be sinners.
3. We want to be holy.
We know that holiness is the key to happiness. We want to be like Jesus. So as much as we mess up, we repent.
We move forward with a desire to chase holiness at all costs.
That’s why we skip that party and haven’t seen that television show and spend time reading books about Jesus. We don’t want to be stagnant in our faith. We want to grow and thrive and mature – every day.
Read the rest here.