Character matters/How being a Christian teen is harder than anything else...

Well, I was thinking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit earlier and was looking at some of my old friends through different internet social sites and was taking a look at their character. And since they have called themselves Christians in the past, I was interested to see where they are a; let me just say it is anything BUT about Christ, in fact they do not even believe in him. Than there are other friends I have had that also say they are Christians and for all purposes do say the right things, but do not necessarily lead a life that show it. Than I have had friends who say they are Christians, who truly within my heart I know are saved; but all of this can be determined by one thing. Character.

Character is the way you act when your parents are not around, your pastor or some other authority figure is not around, but it is how you act when you are with friends and by yourself. It is how you treat people when no one is looking, it is how you value your relationship with Christ, how seriously you take it and how much it influences you; how you act, think, move, breathe, live and ultimately are. I have found the best way to indicate this is by being alone with that person, or looking them up online, believe it or not you can determine a lot about somebody you know by visiting their blogs/Myspace pages. Good character ultimately comes from God, through the Holy Spirit, yes people that do not believe in God may have "good character," but God tells us in his Word that, "No man is Righteous, no not one," and that our good deeds are like "filthy rags." Real character though comes from one's spiritual maturity, it is those fruit from the Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control.

If we truly love others, we will not put ourselves first our always take a narcissistic or egotistical attitude and think it is always about us, because it's not, it is about Christ. Joy, that even when we are in trouble, we can always rejoice in our salvation; peace, that even if we are faced with death, we can always know where we are going. Patience, to be able to wait on God and not rush him to do something or carelessly act on our own; kindness, which is the attitude of caring for the lost and hungry. Goodness, that we would always try to do what is good, even when everyone else says it is not good; Faithfulness, that we always put our trust in God and never walk away from the Truth because of false doctrine and false Christianity. Gentleness to always be slow to anger and not be quick to become offended when Christ tries to teach us and convict us through many lessons; and self-control, the big one that I know many people (including myself) lack, to be able to resist temptation and resist things that would turn our eyes away from Christ. If you allow the Holy Spirit to move in your life and plant the seeds for these fruit, you will become wiser than any rocket scientist, for as Solomon said, "the beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord." So learn to fear Him, that even when you are by yourself, thinking to yourself or doing stuff by yourself, you are never alone. He is always watching over us, and sees both the good and bad. I have had to learn these lessons the hard way, unfortunately I had made it difficult for both my parents and God to teach me anything because I was so resistant and was so into my own thing that I did not learn; so my lessons were learned through punishment and personal pain and loss.

So if you are out there, maybe you want to know more about Christ, but feel that you have to be some theologian able to quote the entire Bible forward and back in order to serve him. Well maybe you are called, maybe not; what Christ DOES want is a heart that WANTS to serve Him, he wants us to grow as Christians. Not to sit their and enjoy our life and say to ourselves, "yeah I have time to do that, so I will do that later. For now I will watch TV, go to see the latest movie, listen to my new CD, play my new game; my Bible is always there, it can wait." This is the wrong heart to have, unfortunately for a few years in my life that was my heart to a t, over the past year I have REALLY started to take my life and relationship with Christ seriously, I started to listen to different sermons on my own, read different sound books on my own, and started to read my Bible for myself and increased my prayer life. Let me tell you all, it really has helped me as a person, It says in the Scriptures to "seek and ye shall find," and "draw near to God and he shall draw near to you."

"Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, before the difficult days come, and the years draw near when you say 'I have no pleasure in them.'" Ecclesiastes 12:1

This is so important for myself, my family and friends of mine to remember; we need to learn to serve Christ NOW! Not later, not next month, not when it is more convenient for us but now. Because, as Christians, if we are not striving to grow, but continue to be stuck in our complacency that enveloped me for so long. The Bible says in Revelation that we are like the church of Laodicea, that was neither hot nor cold, and Jesus said that he will; according to Scripture vomit us up because we are disgusting to him. Because we would take no sides, but stayed in the middle in the "comfy corner," and Jesus said that if you are not for Him you are against Him. It is one or the other, you cannot stay in the middle forever, eventually you will take sides. Unfortunately, most Christian teens are deciding they would rather be cold; only 4% of the teens out their who call themselves Christians are truly saved, in Britain it is 2%; if that does not scare you for your Christian friends and not make you think "whoa, wait a minute, what is going on? Where am I at?" Than you really should, it is BECAUSE of that statistic that I made a pro-active change in my life, and I hope it will do the same for anyone browsing around jumping blog to blog just reading stuff, please if you are not saved, or think you are but are not living as you should be. Please, repent of your sins and turn around your life and start serving Christ, He did so much for us on that cross, the only logical thing is to devote your life to the one who saved you through His blood; and if you think your saved, but may not live like you should, please pray to God honestly and intently and seek for the Holy Spirit to come and change your heart, because even if you may be honestly trying to serve Christ, If your lifestyle is spiritually risky, you may be on the path of danger. Just pray to Jesus and ask Him where your heart is and if you need to change or get rid of some stuff in your life; also be in Gods Word, when we pray that is our way of communicating with God, when we read the Bible, that is His way of responding to us, so please just seek Him on this.


Everytime I go to a Christian concert, go to different youth groups, or do different things where I am interacting with different Christian teens. I always wonder that if Jesus came back at that moment, how many of my fellow peers would be gone? I would hope it would be everyone, but as of lately I have been doing a lot of research on stuff and have found so many Christian teens in this country embracing so many bad teachings and so many false Christianities that I have become so concerned and so saddened for them. Originally, this blog was a way for me to share my own personal stuff, and it still is, but lately God has been really moving me to start sharing my own personal testimony and some of the things He has shown me as a kind of "micro-ministry," and so that is what I am doing right now. I hope to be a good influence to my friends and family, because I love them all so much I want to see them grow and mature, and If I can help with that I will; It is also a good way for me to look back and remember where God has taken me, so It serves a journal like purpose as well.

So my friends/family, please do not take offense to anything I write, I am only trying to serve Christ and share bits and pieces of my story. I do not want anybody to feel intimidated or think that I am somehow better than everyone else, I am not, I just want to show that if you seek Christ, you can find wisdom. I struggled with pornography for 4 1/2 years before Christ delivered me from it, [so do not think I am some holy rolling teen that has not struggled, I have had my walk to get to the place where I am now in Christ, it has been shed with much spiritual pain, agony and blood.] and it is a fight everyday to keep myself from allowing this sin to overtake me and pervert me once more. It is difficult though when everywhere you turn it is nothing but sex and skin, praise be to Christ that he has the strength to carry me when I have none and he CAN deliver anyone from anything if they repent and cry out to him. So people, please, do not be a statistic, turn to Christ and serve him, it is time we start acting different from the world and start serving Him. Jesus is coming again VERY soon, and there will be a whole lot of false christians left behind when he comes, so let us work to not be one of those but to work for eternity; the time is very short and we need to realize that... If we really care about the lost and the falsely converted like we say we do, than let us try and reach out to them with the time we have, for the cruelest thing we can do as human beings is to know the way to Heaven, and not share it with someone who is looking for it.

It boils down to this: Repent of your sins, serve Christ, live for Him, and share Him with everyone you can (of course as Christ brings the opportunity,) even professing Christians. You do this, you are living for Him and you will earn your rewards in Heaven; trust me, I have a feeling those rewards are SOOOO much better than any dumb video game I can play. ^_^