Words Are Powerful, By Julianna O.

Words Are Powerful

By Julianna O.

"Words can build you up, words can break you down. Start a fire in your heart or put it out. Let my words be life, let my words be truth. 'Cause I don't want to say a word unless it points to you." That is the chorus to "Words," by Hawk Nelson.

What the chorus means is that words can hurt or make you happy. When words build you up, you laugh and are happy. When words break you down, you get mad or angry. So be careful of what you say to each other. Think before you speak. This is the truth!

1 Thessalonians 5:11 says, "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing." 

So, let your words speak life and truth. Remember, whatever you say, make sure it pleases God. I hope you know now how powerful the song "Words," is. Whatever you may say might break people down or build them up.

Colossians 4:6 says, "Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone."

Missions, By Kaitlyn F.

Missions

By Kaitlyn F.

Many of us know that missionaries are people who go around sharing the love of Jesus Christ.  We also see missionaries as being people who travel all over the world to share the gospel with people who might not get another chance to hear it.  What would you say that we can all be missionaries and we don't have to spend thousands of dollars on airfare and hotels. Casting Crowns has a song, "Heroes", that goes,
He walks the halls,
Against the flow.
He sees his high school as his mission field.
He's broken cause he knows,
The hopeless roads that they are taking,
The empty feelings they are chasing,
Only lead to futures wasted,
So he's willing to stand alone.
He lives what he believes when they all say it's not worth believing.
Every night on his knees he prays God won't you please help me reach them.
This part of the song, talks about a boy seeing that his mission field is his high school. Most the kids that you go to school with, don't have a relationship with Jesus. Their only chance that they might have to get to know Jesus is through you. You are a missionary in your school, or where you work, or where ever else God has you. If you are sharing the love of Jesus Christ with people, than you are a missionary. Matthew 28:19 says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." The verse doesn't say to  go to foreign lands to share the gospel. It says to go out and share the gospel. Sure it does say of all nations, but if everyone for their home nation, like USA, and goes somewhere else to share the gospel, than the USA will feel left out because no one was left to share the gospel. Also, there are many different nationalities living in a country in modern society. Share the gospel with those nationalities, and they can take what you shared with them back to their nation. You just don't know what happens after you share the gospel with one person. So go out in your daily live and share the gospel. God has placed you right where he needs you, and you need to take advantage of every opportunity you can to share the gospel.

The World Hates GG's, By Sarah K.

The World Hates GG's
By Sarah K.

Recently, this verse has been on my mind: "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you." John 15:18-19.  Let’s admit; as teenage girls, we often feel out of place.  I have never met anyone who has not – at some time or another – felt inferior, like they don’t fit…like a "weirdo."

But as Christians, that feeling gets multiplied exponentially. If you want desperately to fit in, it’s hard to realize that you’re never going to. When God saves us, He transforms us radically from the inside out: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17). After salvation, the old part of us: our old desires, lusts, motives, etc. are taken away and replaced with a heart that wants what God wants – and what He wants completely differs from what the world wants. 

What does this mean for us girls as individuals? We’re still going to have problems fitting in, sometimes just because that experience is part of being a teenager. But at other times, it should not come as a surprise to us when our desire to follow God and His commands clashes spectacularly with what the world thinks we should do and say. When that happens, instead of feeling sorry for ourselves that we can’t have or do what everybody else has or does, we should rejoice. When our path leads away from the world, we are pointed back to Our Savior.   

After all, we are “aliens and strangers in the world” (1 Peter 2:11-12).

Our time in this world is astoundingly short, and also very transient. That means that "all men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall" (1 Peter 1:24-25). So when we don’t fit in, or find ourselves on the outside looking in, and just wishing that we could have that kind of fun too…we need God to remind us to not despair. This world is dying, and as His Children, we really are strangers. If we loved as the world does, then we wouldn’t understand the joy awaiting us in our true home after death. So when the world and its ways hate us, remember that it hated Jesus first. And if it hates us – either passively or aggressively – then we are following in His footsteps: all the way home.

"Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus…who, for the joy set before him endured the cross…Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart" (Hebrews 12:2-3).

How We Use Our Freedom By Kaitlyn F.

How We Use Our Freedom

By Kaitlyn F.

Many of us have heard that once we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, then nothing can separate us for God. When I tell some people this, they assume that they can keep sinning, because they are forgiven, and nothing can separate them for God, no matter how much they sin. T

he thing is, God didn’t save us to let us keep our old lives. Galatians 5:13 “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” People who have accepted Jesus, and they stay in their old ways, they are using the opportunity that they have been giving to serve the flesh. 

This Bible verse calls us to love for others and serve them, which comes from God.  God has set us free from our burdens and our sins, we are to use our freedom to serve others and not our earthly desires.

4th of July, By Nina L.

4^th of July,

By Nina L.

Every year my family goes to a fair around the 4^th of July. We go on rides and play games. Every year my family gets closer and closer. I feel God pulling though the good and bad. The 4^th of July is not just a celebration for our freedom to me it is also a time for families to bond.

Nina L.

But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. Joshua 24:15