You might also want to share some of the good decisions you made with God’s guidance, and the consequences of those decisions. Students need to know you’re not perfect too. Talk about the consequences of those decisions. The most important thing I can do is rely on God for wisdom.Īs you begin preparing this lesson with the students in your ministry, you might want to share some of the bad decisions you made as a teenager. I want them to know I didn’t have it all together (and still don’t). Maybe if I did earlier, some of those decisions would have been different.įor the most part, I am open and honest with my kids about the stupid decisions I made when I was young. I didn’t come into a relationship with Jesus until I was 19. Something I can only give God the credit for. They make better decisions than I did when I was their age. I’ve got three kids of my own – ages 15, 13 and 11. And the ones I shared with you are just the short list. I made a lot of really bad decisions when I was young. It’s really nerve wracking publicly sharing my failures for the world to see.īut I’m not perfect. Oh it feels so strange being so vulnerable. I had sex multiple times with multiple partners before getting married.Spending the night in jail is a horrible experience. On a number of occasions (2-3 times), I didn’t pay the speeding ticket, a warrant was posted for my arrest, and as a result I went to jail.

I got 22 traffic/speeding tickets from the age of 18-22 years old (at the cost of thousands of dollars).We then lied about what happened saying that I was driving and another car ran us off the road. When I had my driving permit at 14 years old, my mom let me drive a friend home who didn’t have a permit or license.At 12 years old, I drank half a bottle of liquor, passed out on my friends’ front yard, and had to go to the ER.The world that teenagers live in can be incredibly unforgiving and decisions that seem of little importance to a youth can turn out to have life changing results.Īs a young person, I made a ton of stupid decisions: Teens are surrounded by decisions at seemingly every turn and those decisions seem to come with higher and higher consequences.

Tough decisions