During the teenage years, it is difficult to stay focused. So many things are competing for your attention making it hard to determine what is really important.

I know for a fact that fitting in is important to youth. Having friends and socializing is a big deal. Friendship is so important to some youth, that they will take chances or do wrong things just to fit in.

Listen. It is more important to be yourself than to be something that you are not. It is impossible to please people by being a fake. When people see the real you, then they know up front what they are dealing with. If they don’t like it, it’s their loss.

That is why it is so important to have Christ in your life. You see, without Him life is meaningless. We search and search for happiness, but we always come up empty. We look at what others are wearing, and we assume that they have it all together. So we want to wear the same things. We equate looking happy with being happy. We fake it. We want to look like movie stars because movies stars look happy. We want to get involved in romance because couples look happy. But when we leave Jesus out of it, we miss it every time.

Jesus said that our life doesn’t consist in the abundance of things that we possess Luke 12:16. In other words, if we had the most beautiful and expensive things this world had to offer, we still wouldn’t have what life is all about. More stuff doesn’t equal more happiness. It makes things more complicated.

If we really want a satisfied life, we must give ourselves over to God’s purpose. Living for God is our greatest source of joy and contentment. God satisfies like nothing else can.

I am not against stuff, and neither is God. But if we think that anybody or anything other than God can satisfy us, we are in for a big let down.

                                                                                  

By: Edmund Brown