eZine 04.28.2009

TheSource4YM.com
	Jonathan’s Resource Ezine

• Something You Can Use: Being Pruned by God Object Lesson- What Bad Habits, Sinful Choices or Ungodly Practices are Holding You Back?
• Youth Culture Window: Living in the Red- Many Young People Buying into Debt
• Special Podcast: Jonathan brings you a message he gave last week to a room full of high school students in New Jersey about the subtlety of sin

This brand new resource comes from our OBJECT LESSONS page where we give you a cool idea to jumpstart a lesson, exactly how to pull it off, and even where to take it from there! This Object Lesson gives you a fantastic way to talk to your kids about having sin removed from them using Jesus’ illustration about the Father pruning His people.

Script:
Say, ?If you happen to know anybody who gardens, you may have heard them talk about ?pruning.? When a gardener prunes his plants, flowers, or trees, essentially he is cutting away dead or dying branches that will otherwise harm the plant.?

After introducing this metaphor a little more? you’ll go on to say:

?I want you to think about your own life for a moment. Do you have any kind of ?dead branches? hanging onto you, holding you back? These might be bad habits, sinful choices, ungodly practices. What are these dead branches costing you? In what ways are they holding you back??

Martina said, ?My student loan is $79,000. I have credit card balances that total almost $4,000, and a $320 car payment.?

Martina’s a married professional, right? Nope, she’s a college junior who still doesn’t have her four year degree.

Starting Off Behind the 8-Ball
I remember literally wincing when she said that to me. In all honesty, I found the staggering numbers of my friend’s personal debt hard to believe. I quickly ran the figures in my head, trying to determine when she would pay off her debt given the average salary of people in her chosen field (of ministry).

Small salary, minus principal times interest, carry the one, equals…the day after Armageddon!

Her situation prompted me to research young people’s finances. Granted, her predicament is extreme and not representative of her peers, but there are millions of young people her age who are thousands and thousands of dollars in debt.

For instance, CNN reports that the average college student graduates with about $21,000 in debt these days. Nellie Mae, one of America’s largest providers of student loans, estimates that the average undergraduate student has $2,200 in unpaid credit card debt. (That figure swells to $5,800 for graduate level students.)

That payment on the laptop from BestBuy?plus the car payment?plus textbooks?plus the credit card statement from the Spring Break trip to Cancun is adding up and many young people can no longer pay the ?balance due.? Credit card companies have a term for spenders who do not (or cannot) pay off the balance each month: revolvers. This ?buy now, pay (more) later? attitude is taking its toll on lots of young people who are financing their future.

I gotta ask, ?Where did these kids learn their spending habits??

David R. Smith, is a 12 year youth ministry veteran who speaks, trains, and writes for The Source for Youth Ministry. David’s giftedness is in sharing the Gospel and equipping others to do the same. David is co-author of a book on student leadership coming in 2010.

Episode #25 (4/11/2009)

Listen to it now for free on iTunes! (CLICK HERE) Or, if you don’t have iTunes already… jump on Apple’s web page for a free download, then click on our podcast page.

Episode Highlights:

• Find out whether Jonathan is a “cat person” or a “dog person”
• Listen to Jonathan explain David’s sin in 2 Samuel 11
• Hear about the temptations that are the most relevant to teenagers today
• Glean some insights you can share with your teens about avoiding sin in the first place

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