Invest Yourself

Last Wednesday night, I talked to the youth group about considering what you are doing with your time this Summer. My suggestion came because of a new book that I bought, Do Hard Things. This book is written by two teenagers. They didn't write it to youth pastors or to adults in general; they wrote it to teens. They think that our culture expects to little from teens. They say that you have way more potential than you are using.

I think that the teenagers in our youth group are somewhat of an exception to this. I think that you do lots of things that are above the normal expectations. We have 13 that are going to Mexico City to spend 9 days investing themselves in the lives of others; we have another group who is going to spend a week investing themselves in our own community during T.E.A.M. '08; we have several individuals who spend time investing themselves in other ways (i.e. Nursery, Children's Church, Wednesday night dinners, etc.). However, even though we are doing more than the average teenager might be doing, are you living up to your potential? Only you (and God) truly know what your potential is. You have to be honest with yourself about what you are doing.

I'm not saying that you should be spending every waking moment this summer volunteering at the Rescue Mission. You need time to relax this summer. You have another year of school coming before you know it. What I'm suggesting is that you consider your time valuable and invest some of it in something that will last. Pretend with me that time is money...nobody saves every penny they have, nobody invests every penny they have in the stock market, everybody spends some money on things they need and everybody spends some money on things they want. Every normal person blows some money every now and then, but wise people limit how much money they blow and consider how much they can invest.

When you get to the end of the summer, I hope you have done something worth remembering. Don't get to the end of the summer and only have memories of sleeping all day or playing video games all day or something like that. Do something worth remembering!

If you are interested in investing yourself somehow but you don't know what to do, talk to me. I have some ideas of ways that we could make a difference in our community, but it takes some initiative on your part. I want to help you...come talk to me.