Teenage Treasure

I don't know about you, but I'm now finding that there are fewer family challenges as stressful and perplexing today, than being a Christian, trying to parent a teenager (or teenagers) in a secular and heathen world.

Two recent news reports are confirming that the culture of Satan is alive and well and continuing to hold sway over so many of our young people, as evidenced by the teenage trends of "tech sex" and "self-embedding." According to one press report, "One in five US teens has sent nude or partially-clothed images of themselves to someone by email or mobile phone and twice as many have sent sexually suggestive electronic messages, a survey shows. American youngsters aged 13 to 19 are having tech-sex despite a majority of them saying it can have "serious negative consequences."

Here's a news flash: freedom is not unlimited folks and IPods, cell-phones, facebook, AIM and My Space are not to my knowledge, a constitutional right for adults, much less immature minors, struggling with self-esteem and identity issues. Our jobs as Christian parents are not succumb to every whim and passing cultural fancy and toy that kids clamor for, but to protect them, provide for them and prepare them for adulthood. "No" is not a dirty word.

"Self-embedding?" We've all known kids that struggled with bullemia and anorexia right? A new form of self-injury among teens and adolescents is the behavior of inserting objects - from chunks of crayons to unfolded paper clips under the skin. Researchers found that the majority of patients who harmed themselves in this way did so more than once -"the average recurrence was three times” and that the materials embedded under the skin varied dramatically in size, from several unfolded staples embedded into a hand to an unfolded paper clip inserted into a bicep. Why this self-injury? One author on the subject noted, "People self-injure to distract themselves from other emotional pain, to counter feelings of numbness or to let people know that they're suffering. "

This is not very different from the person who drinks or drugs him or herself as a means of escape from pain and loneliness. The antitode? Blood actually. It begins with the great exchange of our old life with the new one found in Jesus Christ. Our kids must learn to take into account that they have an all-sufficient, trust-worthy, loving Father who can give them more - today and tomorrow, than the fleeting pleasures of teen sex and popularity today. We must teach them what Jesus taught all of us to do when seeking treasure- make an exchange - the exchange of kingdoms, " “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it (Mt. 13:44-46). "

Does your teenager know about this treasure? Do they know that at His hand, "there are pleasures forever more (Psa. 16:11)?"