Making It Real: Whose Faith is it Anyway?
May 21, 2008 | Books,Media Interviews
One of my favorite people (and author and speaker) is Lysa TerKeurst. I met her at a Hearts at Home event and then at another women’s conference. She’s honest and open and cares deeply for the women who she meets through P31 Ministries.
Lysa knows my heart for teens. I’ve worked with for nearly two decades, am a youth culture and parenting columnist, and write and speak to teens and parents of teens, and connect 
with teens through Real Teen Faith.
Lysa asked me to share my four faithbusters (things that can trip up a teen in their faith walk) from my book, Making It Real: Whose Faith Is It Anyway?, on her site this week.
This is an excerpt of Day One: Is your teen asking tough questions, like: Why can’t I feel God? What do I really believe? Where is God when things fall apart? If they are asking these questions, they are not alone.
Even the disciples—guys called to hard core ministry—wrestled with these uncertainties. They saw miracles happen right in front of them. They encountered religious people acting anything but godly. They were persecuted for their beliefs. The longer they spent time with Jesus the more they grasped real-life answers and also stumbled onto more questions.
It’s no different today for a believing teen. What your teen hears from his pastor may be vastly different than what they hear from unbelieving friends. They live out their convictions in a world that does not always understand them. In the midst of this complexity, they have to sort out what is truth and what is hype.
Many parents believe that going to church is enough, but can we ignore recent studies that show that college age students and twenty-somethings often leave their Christian faith behind once they leave the nest, in spite of strong levels of spiritual activity during their teen years? Church involvement alone doesn’t often translate into an active, vibrant relationship with God after you leave the nest.
Rather than just creating really great church kids, our prayer can be to encourage a life-long relationship with Christ that will stand on its own.
While you cannot force a relationship with God (defeats the purpose of intimacy), you can help your teen by understanding four things that confuse the issue of faith for your son or daughter.
Today, we’ll explore the first of four faithbusters that get in the way of your teen making his faith his own.
Faithbuster #1 – Living by feelings
Living your faith life by feelings happens when God is only as great or as small as the last experience. A teen experiences God and they swoosh up. They make a mistake and plummet. (Read rest of Day One: Faithbusters: Living by Feelings)
And this is an excerpt of Day Two: Yesterday we talked about one faithbuster: Living by Feelings. Let’s look at three more faithbusters that can cause detours in a teen’s faith walk.
· Living on Borrowed Convictions
Many teens have a check and balance system in place. If they stray too far, a talk with mom or the youth pastor draws them back into the safety zone. A teen may believe in God and accept the Bible as truth, but are those beliefs his or her own? Does your teen’s convictions come from sermons, your example, or their Christian upbringing?
These are all good things, but borrowed convictions aren’t enough when a teen leaves home and is flying solo and is challenged over their principles or convictions. They can rehash what their pastor said or what mom or dad believes, but the key question here is: what does your teen believe?
Make It Real: We need to encourage our teens’ faith walk. We are a society that believes in education. We talk about college from the time that our children can read. We look at potential universities and careers and create savings accounts to invest in them academically, but is our student’s faith encouraged in the same way?
If a teen were to ask a question about physics or algebra, we’d work to help them find answers, especially if they are struggling. But if a teen expresses doubt or questions their faith, a parent may see that as a thr
eat or fear that their teen is walking away from God.
Many times they are asking questions because they want to know God or to be able to clarify what they believe in spite of cultural assumptions about Christianity. Or maybe they’ve made mistakes and they are wondering where God is in the midst of that. Mom and dad, God is big enough for our teens’ questions!
Share resources (great books, magazines, etc.) but also to be open to listen to their doubts or questions. (Listen all the way to the end.) If you don’t know the answer, don’t pretend that you do, but let your teen know that you are willing to dig deeper and search Scripture so that your understanding is enhanced as well.
Understand, that as they carve out their convictions, their faith may not look like yours.
Today, a lot of teens express their faith best out of the pew. That’s not dismissing the importance of church, but this generation wants to express faith in service. They want to travel to Mexico and build houses for those in need, or help the homeless. They also don’t focus on the external. They don’t believe that God cares as much about what they wear as what is in their heart.
· Confusing Faith with Tradition
Confusing faith with tradition is our next faithbuster. It’s the one my children had to sort through. But as they did, it transformed their relationship with God. (Read the rest of this at Lysa’s blog.)
♥
An Offer from Suzie: Many parents are sharing their struggles parenting their teens in the comments on 
Lysa’s blog. May I offer a resource? Real Issues, Real Teens: What Every Parent Needs to Know has a lot of helpful information, but also practical helps for parents who want to connect with their teens.
I interviewed hundreds of teens while writing this book. It offers insightful information from teens themselves on what they struggle with, what they hope for in their relationship with mom or dad, as well as insight and gentle steps to strengthen communication, how to create consistent consequences while improving the relationship with your teen, how to reconnect, how to encourage a teen in their faith, and much, much more.
Eastman Curtis, Sr. Pastor of Destiny Church and Destiny TV for teens says, “Real Issues, Real Teens! addresses the issues facing our youth. A necessity for any parent who desires to connect with and understand this generation.
If you are interested in this resource to strengthen your relationship with your teen, e-mail me (you can mail a check or order with a credit card) or send a check to Suzanne Eller, P.O. Box 861, Tahlequah, OK 74464 or click here to pay by paypal (takes credit cards even if you don’t have a paypal account). Books are $11.99 each plus $2.50 shipping (media mail). Let me know if you want them signed!
A BIGGER OFFER: If you want to buy several copies for a book club, parenting group, or parents in your youth group, etc. and need more than 25, the books are $10 each, plus appropriate shipping (UPS ground).
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[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptMany parents believe that going to church is enough, but can we ignore recent studies that show that college age students and twenty-somethings often leave their Christian faith behind once they leave the nest, in spite of strong levels … [...]
May 21st, 2008 at 10:03 amSuzie,
I love your message. I live it with my own teens, and love to be around them and their friends.
I have the same passion for young adults, 20′s to 30′s, that you have for teens. I speak and blog (www.RobinBryce.com/blog) to the needs of the church to mentor, love and encourage young adults in their personal faith (not borrowed faith).
Grown-up teens need to feel useful in the Kingdom work.
May 21st, 2008 at 2:07 pmBlessings,
Robin
Hi Suzie –
I enjoyed your posts on Lysa’s blog – also saw that you are going to be at She Speaks in a few weeks – me too (a few others from Hearts at Home are going to be coming as well, I think). I am so looking forward to that weekend. Hopefully I will see you there.
Megan
May 31st, 2008 at 2:46 pm