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How To Handle Your Haters – Teen Edition

As a teenager there are enough problems you face. You’ve got teachers who load you up with tons of homework and hardly any explanation. You’ve got coaches who expect you to be a star athlete while you’re just trying to not pass out. You’ve got pimples coming out of nowhere, friendships you’re trying to keep, and a busy schedule that doesn’t involve near enough sleep or down time.

Even with all of this going on (and more) there’s something else that you’ll face at some point as a teen: the haters. That’s right. As wonderful and amazing as you and your momma know you are, there will be some people who don’t like you and let you know it. (more…)

Do You Need To Try It To Know?

We live in a world where there are plenty of websites that can tell us how many stars that restaurant is, how that book rates, or how many rotten tomatoes a movie gets. This generation of teens are more connected to others opinions than ever before. They can avoid a bad game, movie, or even college professor because of the experience and opinions of others.

What is remarkable to me is how so many teens seem to still believe that they need to make moral mistakes for themselves to learn the life lessons. (more…)

17 Things I Wish You Heard More Often

Sometimes you just need some good encouragement. That’s what I hope to give you here today. This isn’t cheap, candy-coated babble that was pulled out of thin air just to make you feel good. There’s enough of that out there. This is my honest attempt to give genuine encouragement to YOU, even if I don’t know you personally. These are truths that I just wish you and I heard more often. I hope they make your day and your life richer! (more…)

An Open Letter to the Senior Class

Senior year is tough and yet it’s full of celebration. It’s a time of incredible change and hope for the future. However, as I’ve watched many senior classes come and go, I see a dark side as well. It’s because of that dark side and the hope I have that my students can rise above the obstacles they face that I write this: (more…)

Pastors, Quit Begging People To Invite

Pastors don’t generally like being told what to do. So that may very well render what I’m about to say as useless. Nevertheless, for the sake of the church it needs to be said: Pastors, it’s time you took a long break from constantly begging and pleading and guilting your people into inviting their friends to come to your church.

There I said it. And I believe it’s something a number of church attendees would secretly love to say to their leaders. (more…)

What Is An Adult, Really?

The media outlets are going crazy talking about Miley Cyrus’ performance at Sunday night’s VMA’s. For the moment, all eyes (most of them pretty wide open when they first see it) are on her. Everyone remembers this little, fun-loving and seemingly innocent Hannah Montana from a couple years ago. She’s gone.

That picture is now replaced with a barely-clothed, booty-shaking, tongue-sticking-out, foam-finger-humping, crotch-caressing, provocative pop star. Miley is still very much a person, let’s never forget that! But, as many have speculated, it seems she wants the world to know she’s no longer the person we remember. She’s not a little girl. She’s an adult. (more…)

How Not To “Find Yourself”

You don’t need to escape to find out who you are. Of course that goes against the common perception these days.

For years and years we’ve seemed to be sold into this idea that to find ourselves we need to go out and explore what we don’t know yet. “I just need to go find myself,” someone would say as they walk out on their life and their commitments.

We need to move west, or move out of our parents’ house, or just go wild and live the rebellious life we’ve wanted to. Basically the message is that to find ourself we need to go escape.

In a sense, I think this argument is true. If you escape your world just to go “find yourself” then you will actually have already found out a bit about who you are. You are an escapist. That’s right. You can join the mass amount of people in the world who look for easy-way-outs and simple answers. (more…)

All Show And No Go

This here is for those dreamers out there. If you’re one, you’ll understand this challenge. One of the biggest struggles I have is that, as a dreamer, I have a much easier time coming up with big ideas than I do in implementing and following through on them.

Visionary folks tend to struggle with how to make that vision fully come to reality. For a long time I thought that was just how it was going to be, and then I realized there were things I could do to keep my visionary spirit but actually be a person who follows through too!

This reminds me of an amazing sight I took in a couple weeks ago while on vacation in North Carolina. It’s called Fort Macon State Park and it’s home to a fort of over nine million bricks that were placed on top of each other way back before the war of 1812. That’s when the fort first saw action. (more…)

Stop Motion Space Invaders & Discipleship

A couple weeks ago I found myself in an amazing coffeehouse that had set up shop 11 years earlier in an old, single-room, historic church building. The decor and atmosphere was kind of playful. And so it shouldn’t have surprised me to see what I did at the table next to me. (more…)

We All Have Blood On Our Hands

Jesus said if we hate someone then we have murdered. So we’re all like Cain with blood on his hands from slaying Abel.

The prophet Nathan told David that blood was on his hands from his adulteress affair with Bathsheba. The Bible tells us that lust is the same as adultery. So I have blood on my hands, don’t you? (more…)