My wife and I have been in counseling, both individually and together, quite often over the past seven years. The first thing that sent us to awkwardly sitting on that couch was my addiction to ministry.
I led Young Life as a single guy for seven years before getting married. During those years I didn’t set many boundaries.
I found my worth in
how MANY kids I brought to camp,
in how GOOD my club talks were,
in how BAD my high school friends were.
The worse off the kid, the better leader I was for hanging out with him. I needed to be needed.
The discouraging reality is that I fight those same battles in my head every single day.
While often painful, counseling has been a refining fire in our lives, consistently bringing the impurities to the surface, the darkness to the light. One of the most helpful practices I’ve learned in counseling is to identify the lies I believe.
Recently I read a couple blog posts entitled 10 Lies Women Believe and 10 Lies Men Believe that offered some potentially helpful insights for campaigner discussions.
I’ve taken those list and slightly adjusted them to specifically fit teenagers.
You can download a printable copy below to be used in campaigners. The idea would be to pass out these sheets to your high school friends and ask them to rank 1-10 the lies they believe, #1 being the lie that screams loudest in their heads, #10 being a lie they don’t hear too often.
After talking about the lies, discuss the importance of daily reminding ourselves of the truth of the Gospel. Use Psalm 103.
I’m in a small group of guys my age who recently decided we wanted to get serious about hiding God’s Word in our hearts. We each bet $50 we could memorize all 22 verses of Psalm 103 in a month. D-day came and everyone had learned it, everyone except yours truly. They gave me a week of grace and then put me on the spot in front of all our wives to recite the whole chapter. Thankfully, I got my ‘fiddy’ back.
As I read the words of Psalm 103 over and over…and over, it struck me how the Psalmist was reminding his soul of Gospel. He was speaking truth into the lies he believed.
1 Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!
2 Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
3 who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
5 who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
I’m no Eugene Peterson,
but here’s how I interpret
A Modern Day Teenager Writing Psalm 103.
YO! LISTEN UP SOUL!
Why are you so freakin’ hard headed?
Praise God with all you got dawg!
He is Holy!
YO! LISTEN UP SOUL!
Don’t forget how good He is! Don’t you do it.
Don’t forget that He forgives ALL your sin.
Yeah, even that one.
YO! LISTEN UP SOUL!
Don’t forget that He heals you, from everything.
From all your addictions…
and all the painful crap that’s been done to you.
He’s the one who does it, not your will power.
YO! LISTEN UP SOUL!
Your life was a wreck. You were a bum.
And he went and made you a prince (princess).
He wore thorns on His head on the cross
so on your head, you could wear a crown of His love.
YO! LISTEN UP SOUL!
You looked for life in places
that left you empty and unsatisfied.
He is the only one who satisfies.
You traded your childhood for regret
and grew up too fast,
but guess what?
God is good. He loves you so much
that He lets you become a child AGAIN,
HIS child.
Don’t forget that, soul. Don’t forget it.
Or I’ll punch you in the face. What other lies do you think teenagers believe? Please comment below.
