A Teens Bible

Christian Retreat

Im going do to something a little bit different today :) Instead of doing a verse im gonna talk about a little something I was learning at a Christian retreat this weekend.

So this weekend, I went to this Christian campsite, and a bunch of churches went all together and we had an amazing speaker come talk to us.

The one thing she talked about that really stuck to me was the topic "cleaning out your house." This wasnt a literal topic like clean your house, it was like clean up your daily routine and make it more for God. Some examples of things to clean out are music with bad meanings, books with inappropriate topics, foul language. All this stuff displeases our lord. You need to pray to God and tell him to show you what you need to "clean out of your house."

Another thing she talked about was self harm. Its a touchy subject. She was saying there are 2 types of people. People who take their anger out on other people, by hitting and kicking, or verbally too. The other people are people who take their anger out on themselves. A lot of people start doing self harm at a young age like 12 or so, and personally I can tell you its not a healthy way to deal with stress and stuff. You need to take your issues to God. If your problems are big enough that your actually cutting yourself, then you need to give it to God to handle. You cant cary that burden yourself. Although on the other hand if your a friend watching another friend have these issues and your trying to be good by helping them, she was saying stop, thats not your job. Of course encourage your friends and stuff but leave it to God to fix. Imagine this, you fall into a fast moving river and your drowning becuase its sucking you under (like how stress feels in our lives sometimes) but then you see a log up ahead and you manage to grab a hold of it and its keeping your head up and alive (this is representing self harm, "helping you feel better") and your friends and family are on the shore telling you to come to them but you cant cause the weight of the log is too heavy for you to get to the other side. And your too afraid to let go of the log because you think you'll start to drown again, so your stuck in the river because you wont let go of the thing that is supposedly "keeping you alive." You need to let go, to get to the other side and make it through. You need to find an alternate option. For me, I play guitar and piano and I sing along to deal with my stress. I dont know how many of you reading this are going through this, but even if its just 1, I hope this helps. Going back to the friends on the shore, if a friend of yours is going through this and its putting stress on you too, its an "adult sized" problem meaning you need to talk to an adult. I know your friends may be really mad, I know how that feels, but its for their own good. If your still feeling stressed after that its a "God sized probelm" you need to give it to God to fix.

If we go back to the river analogy, the rivers moving too fast for the friends and family on the shore to go in and help the one suffering, theyre just on the shore encouraging them, But God can make it through the currents. So let God save them.

I know this is a longer post than usual. But i felt like this was a very important subject to talk about, now a days its become a problem more, and if any of you need to talk, we are here and we will not tell anyone if you tell us something, we keep things private.

I hope you all had a great weekend :)

-Megan