Peer Pressure

Peer pressure is a nasty concept every teen has to deal with. It eats away at us every time we are around our friends. We wish to be accepted by our friends. What are we to do when people pressure us or tell us we should do something. Well three things come to mind for me.
 1.Consider is it glorifying to God.
2.Is.it what our parents would want?
3.Is it really who we are. Or are we changing for others.

 Number 3. Describes what comes from giving into peer pressure. We change who we are and become different. Staying true to yourself will make life far less confusing because if you give into different pressures your bound to have split personalities. Split personalities are both good and bad. The good kind is when you are changing to be respectful to someone. The bad kind is when you are changing to impress someone. 2.Is a good point of reference for situations. 9/10 times if your parents say its wrong it probably is. Just ask the question if mom or dad was standing right here would I do or say to this? 1.Is the most important of them all. Is it glorifying to God. This one is by far the hardest to follow. We all know this from our life walks. I don't feel that I need to go into anymore detail. Except to those who don't believe. I say this is hard because we all know that we sin. We will always fall short of God. Because He is perfect and we are imperfect. But don't let this discourage you. We should still try to model our lives like God tells us to.

 Now that you know what you should be thinking when your feeling pressured what exactly do you say. Well when it comes to things such as drugs. My dad always said tell them that if my dad or mom ever caught me doing this I would be in so much trouble you have no idea I'm not even going to risk it. My dad always told me to blame it on him and to walk away. The best advice I can give to you is that you need to talk to your parents about what you should say. I know that many of you are worried about what others think about you and I am too. But remember that real friends will stick by you to the end no matter how different from the average crowd you are. Real friends will stick by you to the end. Those friends that abandon you for being different from the rest of the crowd aren't your real friends. To end this post I just wanna say remember the 3things I told you about. Talk to your parents about what to do when your feeling peer pressured and lastly remember your real friends will stick with you to the end. It's a rough world out there that pressures you to do so many things that are wrong. Do not give into their lies stay true to yourself!

The Great Unknown

  Your life....is the great unknown. This is especially true during the teen years. You have no idea what lies ahead of you. You may think you know...but trust me something won't play out the way you planned it.

  Our lives are not meant to be planned out by us. Our plans are not perfect, our plans frequently fail. There is only One who can plan out your life and trust me He has everything perfectly laid out.

  In times of pain and sorrow you may feel alone...and question why God has this for you. A very common statement is "Lord why did you do this to me." Or more briefly "Why Lord Why." This is a very common question that I can pretend to have an answer to but I don't. I'm not the Lord so I don't even have business answering this. However I'm not going to leave you with that. My silly excuse for an answer to this impossible question is "God has a perfect reason for this, but we are imperfect therefore we cannot see it" That may not seem encouraging but trust me it is. It may sound strange to hear but death of loved ones happens for a reason. Trials happen for a reason. All of the things you experience in your life happen to grow you as a person. You mature each step of the way. God does things to make you stop think and grow. That to me is encouraging.

  For those of you who don't believe in God or for those of you who currently don't think God is helping you by presenting a trial. I ask that you go back to all the trials in your life and you figure out something good that you can learn from it. Then for those that don't believe I ask please tell me why you think the trial wasn't planned by Someone of higher knowledge. If you cannot learn anything from your own trials then your not trying hard enough. I can assure you that you can find something to learn.

I'm going to use an example.to back up my theory. As a child we all do naughty things. When our parents catch us we get in trouble. What happens when we get in trouble for the first time? We learn. There are multiple things we can learn.

A.Mom and Dad don't like what I did.
B.If I do it I get in trouble.
C.Much much more.

See even something as simple as that we still learn things. All of this to say God plans out your life to us it is the great unknown. But take comfort in the fact that it will play out exactly as its suppose to. That to me is all the encouragement I need to press on.

Forgiveness (Random Personal Thought)

Forgiveness usually comes when someone has been wronged. Forgiving someone comes after they say sorry, right? Well not exactly. For me anyways, forgiveness should always be given despite what the person says. For example if someone wrongs you but doesn't say sorry or ask for forgiveness. You should still go back and forgive them. Personally if I am wronged, and the situation has cooled down I will go back and say I know what happened ,but I just want you to know I forgive you.

There is a good kind of forgiveness without sorry or asking, and there is a bad kind. Let me give you an example.

"I forgive you even though you won't say sorry to me"
-This is one of the many bad ways. Do not make yourself look superior. Because then you become the jerk and just fuel the already tense relationship with said person.

"I know what happened, and I just want to tell you I'm sorry for when I was mad. I want you to know I'm not mad anymore and I forgive you for what was done will you forgive me for my anger?"
-This in my opinion is a good way of forgiving someone without them saying sorry. It doesn't make you look better. You admit you were wrong too, and you still forgave them in a loving way.

Forgiveness can be hard to give. But Jesus commands us to, even if we don't want to.How can we ask God to forgive us when we won't forgive our brothers and sisters.Matthew 6:14-16 
For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins

 We are to forgive again and again. Matthew 18:21-22 
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. 

This is saying that we need to forgive them again and again till this life on earth ends. We are to forgive them until it is settled in our hearts. We must remember that as God forgave us we must forgive them no matter what. Just as God forgave us by His Son's death on the cross.

Gold (Personal Thoughts)

Men, young men, old men I don't care. Single or not, look I'm noticing a trend. Guys just aren't all that respectful to women anymore. I mean don't get me wrong, some men are, to those of you I speak of, I give you man points. However I am talking to many, teenage guys. Girls become toys, how many girls and how hot they are seems to be what makes you cool. I don't agree with this at all! (Just as a side note, girls we aren't toys either so don't think your off the hook)

We need to treat girls/women like they are gold, because really they are. Think about it, gold is valuable, special, rare, and beautiful. If you think about it this very basically sums up certain girls. The right girls will be valuable to you, special, rare and beautiful. Don't be fooled by all the fools gold out there, it is without value, it isn't special, its certainly not rare, and while it may appear beautiful, deep down its worthless.

So when you find your gold, what should you do? Well for me I would treat my gold with great respect. Remember the gold and land isn't yours until you have staked your claim, or in other words until you have married her. So be respectful of the beautiful gold you have.

I would also be sure to keep the gold and not go searching for other gold nuggets. Guys do not cheat on your girlfriends, don't flirt with other girls, it isn't right. You need to keep to your gold nugget. Don't even look at them. You may have heard you can look but don't touch. Well if you really love your gold, you won't need to look at the other gold floating in the stream.

Smelt your gold, into a gold bar. This is my cheesy way of leading into gifts. Make your gold nugget a gold bar. Make her happy guys, give her gifts. I would personally frequently send flowers! I mean girls love flowers guys its a proven fact, every day its proven.

I'm still looking for my gold nugget. One day I will find her, and she will be treated like gold, this isn't meant to make me look good though. This is meant for men to have a reminder of how we should treat women. So I'm going to treat mine like gold? How bout you hmm?

(Note to the girls: Please treat us guys very much like this too. Especially if we are being respectful like started above. Don't take advantage of us, or else I would classify you in the fools gold, department. All the foolish men will love you, the wise man will turn from you. Plus we treat you with respect its only right you give it to us back)