Parenting Teens - August 27, 2012

Day 11 - Love Languages

Teenagers needs the confidence that comes from knowing they are loved. Their behaviour often acts like a gauge showing how full of love their internal “emotional tank” is. Today, we introduce the concept of the five love languages as a way of expressing love to our teenagers in order for them to feel loved.

Our teenagers’ greatest need is to feel loved and accepted during this enormous transition in their lives a time of: • self- discovery • pushing for independence • much self-questioning • peer pressure

they can experience a lot of self-doubt and feel awkward and unlovable • confidence rests on: • security (knowing they are loved) • self-worth (knowing they are of value) • significance (knowing there is a purpose to their lives) • seek to keep their emotional tank" full of lOVE: • their behavior acts like the gauge to show how full of love they feel

Knowing that they are loved and accepted enables them in the long-term: • to resist peer pressure when they need to • to make good choices • to build close relationships

Discovering how our teenagers feel loved
discover the primary way each teenager feels loved, whether it's through: • time • words • touch • presents • actions

(see Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages of Teenagers) • importance of a particular love language may have changed as a child has grown older

Question:
Which of the five ways of expressing love was most important for you during your upbringing?

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Yesterday we continued looking at the Christian story as a six act play.  Act 1 was creation, that we were created to love God and be loved by God.  Act 2 was rebellion, when we learned that humans pushed God’s love away.

We continue an overview of the Christian story in six acts with Act 3, Israel.

So what did God do after we rebelled?  Let us figure it out on our own?  Forget about us and move on, create another world on Mars, or somewhere else?

No.

He stuck with us.

Slide10He chose a small group of humans – beginning with one man named Abraham, but eventually the whole national of Israel made up his descendents  – and said he would bring the world back to his plan using them.

He began to work with them, to remind them of the script he had written for our world.

Think of it as a school play…when the kids forget their lines, the director is off stage, prompting the actors to remind them of their lines.

Giving them help, guidance, correction.

This is what God did by giving Israel the ten commandments, and his laws, and prophets.

Reminding them of how they were meant to relate to each other, their world, and God himself.

Unfortunately, God’s people seldom listened, and even when they did, they very quickly went off script again.

Through all this Israel learned a few things, and so can we:

  • God cares enough not to give up, but to work with them
  • That they are too rebellious to actually do this on their own, and need the director to actually intervene.

And so the play continues off script, with the director off stage prompting, but nobody on stage listening or acting in the way he guides them.

Have you ever tried to make yourself “right” with God, or to be perfect?  Is it possible?  Have you ever met a perfect person?