Today I had not planned on blogging, but I really felt God lay something on my mind this afternoon...

I was listening to itunes when a song by Sanctus Real started playing called "Lay Down My Guns." 

It caught my ear and I started listening to the cries for relief present in the lyrics, and I started to think of all our students we see here at Fannin...

A few weeks ago I asked the students to answer 11 questions about their life; such things as their happiest moment, greatest struggle, worst moment, who God is to them, and their greatest dreams. 

As I read over their responses that night, I just began to feel numb when looking at everything these teenagers are having to deal with.  It became not only shocking, but almost unbearable to see what they have had to endure.

I will not reveal names or information over the Internet, but suffice it to say they struggle with family, friends, personal battles, school, pressure, uncertainty, and to see how many of them find life as something to endure rather than enjoy was most painful of all.

I see how our society has viewed teens as this plague on society and as more trouble than what they are worth for a while now.  It is heartbreaking to think our society simply pushes aside the youth of today until they survive teenage years and become adults.

The problem with this philosophy is that when teens are simply asked to survive teenage years, what kind of adults do they become?  Do they become productive, contributing members of our church body and society, or are they callous, self-serving, immature "adults" simply surviving the rest of life...

...after all that is how they were left to survive teen years right?

I don't just want survival of their youth, I want to see them thrive, develop, grow, and care about the generations both ahead of them and behind them! 

If we Crave to follow after Christ and serve him and his Kingdom, maybe we should serve one another...

teen or adult, child or infant, Christian or non-Christian, male or female, black, white, hispanic, or asian, Baptists or Catholics...

My life and yours is no more valuable than the one we see beside us, and this song depicts the struggles we all face to fight our own battles; all the while forgetting, as followers of Jesus Christ, that we have One greater than ourselves to fight on our behalf.

Let us join together in this joy called life.  Lifting up one another in the name of Christ...

Let us pray that our youth are no longer left by parents, peers, churches, and ministers to simply survive...Instead let us help them thrive and find the Truth in their lives.