Student Ministry Blog

If you’ve ever worked a jig saw puzzle you understand the goal is to put the pieces of the puzzle together in such away that you create an image that looks like the one on the box. If you don’t have the image on the box it’s difficult to put together the puzzle. There is only wone possible outcome. If you are putting together a puzzle of the Golden Gate Bridge you will not end up with a picture of the Statue of Liberty. It just doesn’t work that way.

I think, many of us, teens in particular, have the same view of our lives. We have this picture on a puzzle box of we think our lives should turn out. We dream of the type of home we’ll live in, the car we’ll drive, the job we want, the love we desire or the family we’ll have. And even if we wouldn’t dare share those things with someone else, deep within us we hope that life will turn out one way . . . even if we’re at the same time skeptical it won’t. We begin to piece our lives together building this picture. But sometimes the life we envision is different than the one we actually have . . . okay, most of the time. The older we get the more we understand this. But teens understand this, too. They set their hearts on going to a certain college only to discover they can’t afford the school of their dreams. Their vision of a family is shattered by the divorce of their parents. People they thought were their friends begin making choices they don’t want to make. They try out for the basketball team, but don’t make it. The list goes on… Things just don’t always work out as planned.

So how do we react when life doesn’t turn out the way we hoped? And more importantly, what do we do with Jesus, because as wonderful as He is, He steps into our lives and makes things messy. He leads us down paths we never thought we would go. He asks us to do things we don’t always want to do. And even with all that, somehow life still turns out even better than we dreamed. In other words, he replaces our picture on the box with one that is more beautiful than we could have imagined.

Below are four questions to discuss around the dinner table with your teen this week:

• What are some events in your life that turned out differently than you hoped?
• Looking back, did things work out better than you expected at the time?
• How has following Jesus “messed up” your plans?
• Talk with your teen about how following Jesus has cost you something, yet has made your life more beautiful.