Students, this post is for your parents. If they don’t read the blog very often, make sure they at least see this.

Parents, Vince and I recently taught a few Sunday School classes called True Conversion. Through the class we heard from some parents who are all for meeting with their kids regularly but just aren’t sure what questions to ask.

So here’s good news: Vince and I have both collected lists of questions that parents can ask their teens. I think most parents would be overwhelmed if I just dumped the entire master list on them. So over the next few weeks (or months), I’m going to post a series of Thursday Thoughts for Parents from this list of questions. Keep the ones that are helpful. Toss the ones that aren’t.

Parents, as you check these out over the next few weeks, I would be grateful if you would 1) let me know about which questions are more helpful and which ones are less so and 2) send me any lists of questions you have.

Here we go:

QUESTIONS TO ASK OFTEN
John Piper (who credits Rick Gamache)
From Justin Taylor’s Blog

• How are your devotions?
• What is God teaching you?
• In your own words, what is the gospel?
• Is there a specific sin you’re aware of that you need my help defeating?
• Are you more aware of my encouragement or my criticism?
• What’s dad/mom most passionate about?
• Do I act the same at church as I do when I’m at home?
• Are you aware of my love for you?
• Is there any way I’ve sinned against you that I’ve not repented of?
• Do you have any observations for me?
• How am I doing as a dad/mom?
• How have Sunday’s sermons affected you?
• Does my relationship with mom make you excited to be married?
• (On top of these things, with my older kids, I’m always inquiring about their relationship with their friends and making sure God and his gospel are the center of those relationship. And I look for every opportunity to praise their mother and increase their appreciation and love for her.)

Categories: Discussion Questions, Thursday Thoughts For Parents
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five15 BIG MEETING Saturday night.

Tune in for Push Back, Part 2: Media.

See you Saturday night.

Categories: five15 blog
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To all my amigos who are coming to Mexico in March:

By my calculations, it is 108 days until we leave for the border.

Our first meeting will be this Saturday evening, before the five15 BIG MEETING:

December 1, at 5pm in room 102.

We’re having three of these meetings to cover all the essential details for traveling to Mexico. Over these three meetings, we will talk about our itinerary, travel arrangements, job assignments, fundraising, and more.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Meetings. All our team meetings are mandatory, unless you’ve made other arrangements with me first. We have some important stuff to cover! So we’ll see you there!
• Solo teens. If you are a teen who is traveling to Mexico without a parent, please know that you need to bring at least one parent to these meetings. And you and your parent will need to designate a parent who is going to be responsible for you while on the trip.
• Funds. Your first installment of $200 will be due at this meeting. Please bring a check made to Sovereign Grace Church. At this meeting, I’ll give you a report from our Fall Clean Fundraising and we’ll discuss some other fundraising ideas.

I can’t wait to go to Mexico with you all, and I can’t wait to get started talking about our trip! See you on Saturday.

Hasta luego,
Esteban

Categories: Mx08
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CJ served us wonderfully yesterday with his message, Deflating a Puffed Up Church from 1 Corinthians 4:6-13. He made two simple points:

1. Grace produces humility.
2. Grace prepares us for suffering.

I thought the humility section of the message may be most important for us, for the temptations to pride abound. We need “rare, unguarded moments of total honesty” in which re recognize that everything we have is a gift from God. Through the apostle Paul we have these three divinely-inspired questions:

1. Who sees anything different in you? (In other words, what makes you different from anyone else?)
2. What do you have that you did not receive?
3. If you received it, why do you boast as though you did not receive it?

We will do well to take these questions into our week. If you can identify a specific area in which you are tempted to be proud (athletics, academics, opinions, etc.), these questions will serve to deflate our pride and help us to grow in humility.

If you are interested, here are the quotations from the message:

“This is an invitation to experience one of those rare, unguarded moments of total honesty, where in the presence of the eternal God one recognizes that everything – absolutely everything – that one ‘has’ is a gift.” Gordon Fee

“O believer, learn to reject pride, seeing that you have no ground for it. Whatever you are, you have nothing to make you proud. The more you have, the more you are in debt to God; and you should not be proud of that which renders you a debtor. Consider your origin; look back to what you were. Consider what you will have been but for divine grace. Look upon yourself as you are now. Doesn’t your conscience reproach you? Don’t your thousand wanderings stand before you, and tell you that you are unworthy to be called His son or daughter? And if He has made you anything, aren’t you taught thereby that it is grace which has made you to differ? Great believer, you would have been a great sinner if God had not made you to differ. O you who are valiant for truth, you would have been as valiant for error if grace had not laid hold upon you. Therefore, don’t be proud, though you have a large estate – a wide domain of grace, once you did not have a single thing to call your own except your sin and misery. Oh! strange infatuation, that you, who have borrowed everything, should think of exalting yourself….” Charles Spurgeon

“One cannot boast about being a worthy recipient of grace.” David Garland

“The Christian life is not a fast track to glory but a slow, arduous path that takes one through suffering. The suffering so visible in the lives of the apostles is not some tedious detour for an elite volunteer corps but the main highway for all Christians. By contrasting the cross-centered lifestyles of the apostles with the Corinthians vainglory. Paul hopes to supplant their egotism with the wisdom of the cross.” David Garland

Categories: Monday Matters
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If you were at the last five15 BIG MEETING, you heard me announce that we are doing our five15 Christmas Party differently this year. Rather than putting on a big party that serves ourselves, we going to “live not for ourselves but for Christ” by serving others.

This year, we’ll be meeting here at the church building at 12:30pm on Saturday, December 15 and heading out to several local retirement homes to sing Christmas Carols and spend time talking to the residents there. I think this is such a great opportunity to demonstrate the difference the gospel makes, by devoting part of our Saturday to serving this often-neglected, seldom-appreciated segment of our community.

We’re asking everyone to register for this event. Here’s something new: you can easily do it online!

Registration is now closed.

Categories: Announcements
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Yesterday I got to preach a sermon on David and Jonathan, one of the greatest stories of friendship in the Bible. We saw that:

1. True friendship starts with love
2. True friendship is cultivated through sacrifice
3. True friendship points to Christ

We started the message with a friendship quiz. Here are the five true/false questions that made it on the quiz, plus a bunch of other myths that I compiled but wasn’t able to use.

1. The most important thing about a friend is that we have a good time together.
2. I should have a “best” friend.
3. Virtual friendship is the same as face-to-face friendship.
4. I don’t have friends because no one has befriended with me.
5. My friends don’t influence me.
6. You know you’ve found a friend because you “click”.
7. It’s ok that most of my friends are of the opposite sex because they really understand me and I relate to them better.
8. Most men don’t need close friendships with other men.
9. My friends really care about me, so I can tell them things I don’t tell my parents.
10. For parents: My friends are not in my caregroup so I don’t need to get help from my caregroup.
11. A friend is someone who is easy to be with. They don’t get on my case about stuff.
12. My friends are not in my caregroup so I don’t have to get help from my caregroup.
13. My friends don’t tell anyone what I’ve told them… Therefore, my secrets are safe with them.
14. My friends don’t gossip… Therefore, my conversations with them about my parents and others are redemptive.
15. My friends advice is good, even though they are the same age as me

What friendship myths would you add to this list?

Categories: Monday Matters
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I’ve posted on the history of the Gettysburg Address before, but it’s worth repeating.

Lincoln’s speech, at 272 words, lasted barely more than two minutes. Despite his claim that “the world will little note nor long remember what we say here,” this oration is widely considered one of the finest speeches ever given in the English language.

Here is the complete text. You would be wise to read this carefully; it represents a critical moment in our nation’s history. Sadly, people don’t write like this anymore.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Try reading it aloud. These are powerful words.

Categories: five15 blog
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How was it? Did you guys have fun? My crew had a great time cleaning windows, raking leaves, and picking up acorns.

As soon as I hear how we did, I will let you know.  Got pictures?  Give them to Drew tomorrow.

In the meantime, any funny stories from your group?

Categories: Mx08, five15 blog
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Don’t forget: the Fall Clean fundraiser for Mx08 is THIS SATURDAY! Key things to remember:

• Be at the building before 8:30am! We want to start on time so we can finish on time!
• Dress appropriately: something you can get dirty, and something that you’ll be comfortable in when the temperature only gets up to 48º.
• Bring a lunch! Brownbag it, or bring some money for Mickey D’s.
• Bring water!  It’s not hot but it is dry, and you can dehydrate even in the cold.
• Don’t forget to thank Mr. Peiffer personally when you see him for arranging this for us!

Categories: Announcements, five15 blog
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Saturday night, we started Push Back, a series of messages from Romans 12:1-2 about how to not be conformed to this world but transformed.We learned that Play-Doh was invented in 1956, and in 51 years of production, more than 900 million pounds have been produced. That’s as much as 2000 Statues of Liberty!

More important, we learned that Romans 12:1-2 and everything that follows it (Romans 12-16) is built on Romans 1-11: an very long and detailed explanation of the gospel.   In other words, whatever practical stuff we get in to during the Push Back series (dating, Facebook, piercings, etc.), we need to make sure that we start from the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross.  His life, death, and resurrection provide the motive and power for how we live.

Further, we learned that we are to be the walking dead: a strange word picture that Paul calls, “living sacrifices.” He means that we are called to be dead - to sin, to the world, to our old way of life - and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Like an ancient Israelite sacrificing his best animal, we are called to give up those things we hold most dear to make Christ the one we love the most.

We do that when we Push Back. Most teenagers I know like being non-conformists; as Christians, we just need to be sure that we are non-conformists about the right things. Don’t conform to this world! Don’t play along, don’t blend in! Don’t be like Play-Doh, constantly reshaped as it is squeezed by the world around it.

Instead, we Push Back when we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. That means having Scripture shape all we think, say, and do. We’ll learn more over the next couple months as learn how to Push Back as we think and live biblically with the internet, our music and movies, dating, appearance, and more.

In the meantime, we came up with a list of some of the ways the world is pushing us into its mold. Here is a sampling:

• God
• Church
• Parents
• Movies/TV/Music
• Privacy
• Dating
• Appearance
• Manhood & womanhood
• Money
• Sports
• Stuff
• Time
• Education

We are being tempted to conform to the world in every one of these areas. What are some of the ways we can Push Back?

Here are some questions for further discussion:

• What is the connection between the gospel (Romans 1-11) and Christian behavior (Romans 12-16)?
• What is a living sacrifice?
• What are some of the ways you are being conformed to this world?
• What are some of the ways the world tries to lure you into conformity?
• How has God “renewed your mind” in the last year?  What is one area in which your thinking has become more Biblical?

Categories: Push Back, five15 blog
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