Normally, when I go to a youth conference or a ladies’ meeting of some kind, I return feeling revived and steady: I return feeling prepared to face whatever battles I may need to. I normally feel ready to take up my sword and forge forth for my faith with renewed power and strength. But this past weekend, I returned feeling broken. I looked around at so many girls who I could see were hurting and lonely and trying so desperately to just fit in and belong and I realized I cannot help them all. But God can.

Often there are words I wish I could speak to the girls just in my youth group, but the timing’s wrong or the moments I spent with them didn’t lead into discussing what I want so badly to help them learn before it’s too late. I’ve been at my post here in Kansas for less than a year: I’m still working and praying towards having the trust in place for my girls to even approach me with the hard stuff I already know they’re going through. I’ve researched and experienced and heard and listened to enough to know the battles that my girls are facing are [big], even when it seems small at the time. The choices they’re making right now deeply affect their near and distant futures as servants for Christ.

These past few days since leaving the teen girl conference, I’ve been considering and praying about what I would say if I could say whatever I wanted to every Christian teen girl who attended there. With God’s help, I’ve narrowed it to 5:

1. You and your choices matter. Your worth is not found in any person beyond the Lord Jesus Christ. No matter what your dad says, no matter what your mom says, no matter what your brother says, no matter what your sister says, no matter what your grandparents say, no matter what your teacher says, no matter what your church says, no matter what your friend says, no matter what the stranger who walks by says, you are valuable. Wanted. Loved beyond measure. Because you are valuable, your choices make a difference. The choices you make today can and will affect the person you become tomorrow. If you make wrong choices today, you will be cheapening the person you’re becoming tomorrow. If you made wrong choices yesterday, you can make right choices today to become a more valuable version of yourself tomorrow. The Bible calls it living new. 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us, Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” Be the newest new girl you can be [because] you are loved AND valued AND wanted AND loved beyond measure. 
2. Love is not wrong. It hurts my heart quite a bit when I heard girls knock on love, relationships, and marriage. I know the world has this mentality that the purpose of love is to be broken and that love never lasts, but in the context of God’s will, God’s methods and God’s timing, love is so beautiful and it is right (not wrong). The problem is that we get this idea that if we help God’s hand move in our love life long before we’re ready as a girl/woman for it, then everything can still work out great without any hurt or pain. Because of feelings. And the desire to belong to a person. Let me give you an example: Proverbs 31 describes the ideal woman/wife/mother for us. In this passage, we find that she is virtuous, hard-working, steady, trustworthy, kind, diligent, honorable, strong, has good guidance, and is charitable. If you’ve never worked on any of those character traits, how can you say that you’re even ready for a relationship? Broken hearts are not the end goal of love: don’t take even a step in that direction before you know that God’s ready for you to do so. Don’t convince yourself to fall for the cheap, knock-off version that passes for dating these days. Love, real love, is so right and so worth waiting to be ready for. 
3. It’s going to be okay. Whatever you’re going through right now, God has provided you the strength to get through it. I know it seems hard: I mean, it will seem absolutely impossible sometimes that you’ll be okay on the other end of what you’re going through. There’s going to be some serious sadness, some serious hardship, some serious anger and bitterness that you’re going to need to work through. But you don’t have to do it alone. Psalms 139:3 tells us that God “compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.” He knows the way you’re going and He knows where you’re headed: He’s well acquainted with your ups and downs, your crazy life turns, and every hard thing that happens to you. And He’s got your back. He’ll help you through if you’ll ask Him to. Your life will be okay again. Just hold on, my dear friend. I wish so badly that I could just hug away all the tears I’ve seen, but all I can do is pray that you’ll remember the words, “It’s going to be okay,” the next time you’re ready to give up when it’s a really low time in your life.
4. Sin is never acceptable. We find a list in Ephesians 4 that tells us to stop choosing to sin like our old selves (before Christ) and to start choosing better, godly things as our new nature lends itself to do (after Christ). God hates sin and really does not care what excuse you or I may have for choosing to sin. He hates lying, He hates pride, He hates cheating, He hates disobedience. And you as His child should be learning to hate the things He hates and not learning to excuse the choice to do wrong. I’m not going to point out every person’s sin to them and I would never expect you to do that either, but you should keep a pretty short list of sins you’ve asked Him to forgive you for. You should also be aware of the choices that you’re making throughout your day. Sin is incredibly socially acceptable in this modern day: it’s not just cool to be a rebel anymore. You have to be uniquely rebellious in a new and shocking away. It’s considered cool to have that shock factor. That’s why it’s so pervasive in Hollywood. Just look at the popularity of shows like Game of Thrones. But I digress… hate what God hates, love what God loves. Since God hates sin, it therefore is never acceptable to keep sinning the same sins without any effort to grow away from them and towards holiness in Him. Sin is a big deal: don’t let it go.
5. Seeking Him will bring you to your purpose here on earth. The big question as a young teenager becomes and older teenager becomes a young adult who must make very adulting decisions is this: why am I on earth here for? Or a more “churchy/philisophical” way of saying it is, “What is my purpose in life?” We make it seem like it’s so impossible to tell what our calling is, but really it’s very simple: do the next right thing. Hebrews 13: 20-21 tells us, “Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” When we choose to do the next right thing and leave the big stuff in God’s hands (and not in our worry zone), we find our purpose and His will for our life. Let’s give an example: Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers who HATED him enough to consider murdering him, then he got lied about and accused of adultery, thrown into prison for years, and only after a couple of decades of all this misery does he even start to see God work out some good stuff in his life. But even then, Joseph is away from his family and his home and endures severe drought in the land he’s living in. Throughout all this time, God never records telling Joseph why he had to endure all of these hard times. Yet Joseph continues with each step and stage of his life to choose to do the next right thing and always honor God with his choices. By choosing the next right thing, he fufills God’s great will and desire for his life and Joseph finds supreme purpose in living. We really make out God’s will for our lives to be this GIANT UNATTAINABLE HUGE BIG THING: I worry that we make it into a bigger deal than honoring God Himself. There’s no good purpose and no good will found in placing importance of finding God’s will though if we forget the day to day steps of finding God. If we seek Him, we’ll have no choice but to find want He wants us to do. Honestly, there’s more I would try to say. I sometimes wish I could just give all that I’ve learned in the past twenty years and give it to girls I meet by diffusion… just let them soak it up and move on with their lives knowing more before they make the big mistakes that they could regret so much. But for today, we’ll keep it at the 5 things. I pray for any girl that made it to these words here at the bottom that you’ll take the advice offered and avoid a the regret and heartache that you don’t need to endure if you’ll simply follow His advice in making good choices. I’m praying for you every day.

Love, Meghan