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Introduction
This week is one of my favorite weeks of the year and that’s not me trying to be a suck-up.
Genuinely, the week before New Years is always a fun week to reflect on all that has happened over the last year and to get ready for what God has in store in the year to come!
A new year brings with it a lot of unexpected things and a lot of question marks but it also brings with it a seemingly endless list of possibilities.
Some of you will graduate high school and this year will be a year of great change.
Others of you will move from one school to another.
Some of you will make new lifelong friends.
Others will start a new job or learn a new hobby or try a new activity.
The year to come is yours for the taking but you have to have the right mindset as you enter it.
We’re going to talk about this on Sunday morning but how many of you have heard of something called a New Years Resolution before?
What is a New Years Resolution?
How long do you think the average New Years Resolution lasts?
25% of people who make a New Years Resolution don’t even make it 1 week!
The average American breaks their New Years Resolution after 32 days
Why do you think people only last 1 month with their New Years Resolution?
Lack of focus
Bad resolution
Don’t try hard enough
This week, I’m going to challenge you all with a New Years Resolution and I think most of you all will fail but I want to be proven wrong and I think you all are capable of proving me wrong.
In 2023, I challenge each of you to read your Bible for 5 minutes each day.
The only way that you’ll succeed is to understand your purpose and the only way to understand God’s purpose for your life is to know God.
The only way to know God is to know His Word and discover what Jesus Christ has done for you.
Other things matter, but reading your Bible daily is the most important thing that you can do if you seriously want to grow spiritually.
5 minutes / day = that’s your challenge!
Your generation, Gen-Z, is resilient and technologically advanced unlike any other generation in human history.
Lots of older folks talk about the younger generation in negative terms and there are some negative things, but there’s negative things with every generation.
Your generation has a lot of positive things going for you!
Your generation is learning to work smarter, not harder.
Your generation has learned that you can do some amazing things through technology.
Your generation has learned how to deal with a global pandemic and you survived and, I hope, came out the other side stronger.
There’s a lot of great things with Gen-Z, but there’s also a lot of bad and confusing.
Your generation, unlike any other generation, isn’t sold on absolute truth.
Because of this, most in Gen-Z believe in their feelings above everything else.
How many of you know someone who considers themselves to be LGBTQ?
I’m 1 year off from being Gen-Z, I guess that makes me a young millennial unlike some of these other leaders… Did you know that in 2022, 10% of millennials identified as being LGBTQ? 1 out of 10.
What do you think about Gen-Z?
More or less?
More than 20% of Gen-Z identifies as LGBTQ.
That’s more than doubled from one generation to the next and it shows no sign of stopping with Generation Alpha (10 and younger).
Gen-Z, unlike any generation before, is feelings based and this leads to trends like this growing… but it also means that Gen-Z, unlike any generation before, does not care about religion on average.
More than half of Gen-Z identifies as atheist or agnostic.
This means that either they believe there is no god or there is a god but this God isn’t knowable.
Now, you all are smart.
Gen-Z doesn’t just take someone else’s word for something, they want to do the studying on their own and if that is you, more power to you!
How many of you have taken a class like Chemistry, Trigonometry, Calculus, or Speech and debate or public speaking?
Those are hard classes!
Even if you’re in middle school, you’ve learned some detailed information.
You’re smart!
Here’s what I believe - we don’t need to dumb down the Bible with you all.
I think that you guys can have fun and learn some important truths from God’s Word like justification, sanctification, substitutionary atonement, inerrancy, or the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ.
These are big words but you are smart people.
My goal for each of you this week and during your years at FBC Salem is that you would grow in your understanding of God’s Word and overall purpose for your life.
77% of Christians become followers of Christ before the age of 18.
Where you are at today matters because it impacts the rest of your life.
In your teenage years you are building a foundation and that foundation cannot be built on how you feel because how you feel will change.
It must be built on something stronger and more secure.
Today we’re going to kick off our lessons by looking at what God’s Word says about each one of us and we’re going to look at 4 main passages of Scripture.
We Are All Created By God
When it comes to things happening in our world, lots of people say that things happen because of luck, karma, or coincidence.
Why do you think people believe these things?
It’s popular
People don’t want to give God credit
Do you know how insanely perfect conditions have to be for life to exist in our universe?
Whenever you jump, how do you know that you’re going to come back down to the ground?
Gravity.
Gravity is a very strong force but if you were to alter its strength by just a tiny degree stronger or weaker, you’d have a completely different universe.
In fact, you’d possibly have a universe with no stars or planets if the force of gravity was altered by .00001
percent.
What about our DNA.
Did you know that you have enough DNA in your body to go all the way to the sun and back to earth over 60 times?
You and I have over a billion miles of DNA in our body - that’s insane!
If your DNA was slightly altered, though, you’d not only have massive problems but you wouldn’t even be alive.
All those miles of DNA have to be perfectly calculated.
What about the earth’s location in our galaxy?
The earth is located on average 93 million miles away from the sun.
If the earth were 2-3 million miles closer to the sun, on average, our planet would be uninhabitable.
We’d burn up.
If we were 5-6 million miles further away from the sun, we’d have the opposite problem!
You can’t help but look at the world around you and not be amazed that everything from our DNA to our placement in the galaxy, to the force of gravity are perfectly aligned for life to not only exist but to thrive.
There are too many variables to just say that it was random chance… it’s clear that there is a creator who knew what He was doing and this same creator God knew what He was doing whenever He made you and me.
Let’s look at Psalm 139:13-14 and see what the Bible says about you and me
What are some lies that people say about birth or human life?
You’re unplanned
You’re an accident
You’re a mistake
You shouldn’t be here
These are lies that lots of people believe!
If you’re going to stand out in Gen-Z and be salt and light like Jesus wants you to be, you must first believe that you are created by God.
You are not unplanned - the Bible tells us that God already planned your days.
You are not an accident - God created you.
You’re not a mistake - God has a purpose for you.
You are here for a reason.
It is crucial for us to remember that God created us.
We Are Created in God’s Image
Not only did God create us, though, He made us in His image!
Could someone turn to the first book in the Bible and read Genesis 1:26-27?
Notice that the Bible doesn’t say that males are created in God’s image and females are not.
Every single human being is made in God’s image.
And the Bible tells us that there are males and females.
The sexual revolution is a storm that is consuming your generation and leaving people confused, depressed, and longing for something to satisfy the void in their heart.
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