Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Don't Believe the Lies! (Genesis 18:1-15)


Last Sunday was different than most for our high school youth group.

I jokingly (sort of) made the statement that most of the time, whether it be a church, youth group, or school, guys/men always seem to get beat up more by the Bible. Gods word seems to outline the failures of men on a much larger scale than women. This is seen in Adam, Lamech, Noah, Abram, David, ect.

Tonight was different in the sense that in Genesis 18 get a close up look into Sarah's sin that causes her to laugh at Jesus when he promises her a son. Sarah, along with many other fall into the sin of not believing in the promises of God. The reason that Sarah laughed at Jesus was because she thought Jesus made a promise that he couldn't deliver.

In I Timothy 2:12-14 Paul states that the reason that women aren't to teach was because just like Eve was deceived by Satan in the garden, women are more easily deceived. This is one of the areas of God's word that flies dead in the face of our culture and we have the choice: believe in God's Word and His promises, or like Sarah. choose to reject it.

After establishing this principle that women are more likely to be deceived than men, I took the rest of the night looking at 3 specific lies that high school girls tend to believe and how we can trust God when we are approached with these lies.

Lie #1: It is not fair that I have to submit.

Submission is something that women struggle with ever since Genesis 3:16 where God says that women are going to desire to rule over their husbands. We looked at how even high school girls struggle with submission, and what they do in order to control things are to use gossip, slander, and moodiness to almost scare others into submission so they wont mess with the girls. I have grown up in a house with a lot of women and I can personally attest that all young girls do this!

Lie #2: God is not in control of my future.

While guys are often lazy and don't have a care in the world, most young Christian women really plan out, fear, and struggle with what will happen to them in the future.

Girls like to have a step by step plan that looks like this:

I need this GPA, to get into this college, i need to find Mr. Right, he needs to be 6'4, have blue eyes, great skin, and have a good job that will allow me to stay home and have 3.5 babies, live in a certain type of house, in a certain type of community.

The problem is if that plan doesn't go exactly according to plan, girls freak out and claim that God doesn't love them or that he isn't in control, so instead of trusting in the promises of God they try to make things happen on their own. This inevitably leads to bad choices with guys, and bitterness and anger set root in their hearts and often times girls walk away from the faith altogether.

Lie #3: God isn't in control of the timing.

What we saw in Sarah in Genesis 18 was that she thought her time to have children had passed and that God hadn't worked soon enough. It is very easy for all girls to feel the same way regarding different things in their lives. "I should have a boyfriend by now", "I should be done with acne", "I should be done with school by now".....

When girls get so caught up with their circumstances and don't trust God, they are overtaken by stress, anger, and bitterness which leads to sin and can often have negative emotional and physical on girls.

It was a great night, covered a lot, and was worn out by the end of it!


cal

1 comment:

  1. Great post Cal, I just finished a study with your mom on Genesis, this fits right in with her teachings...

    ReplyDelete