What if you were to ask your teen the following questions:
- What does the Bible have to say about using Facebook?
- Are you honoring Jesus as you participate in sports?
- Do you have a biblical view of doing your homework?
- Are you wise in the friends you choose?
- Why are the answers to these questions important for your life?
What kind of answers might you get in response? Would your teen be able to explain his or her answers using specific verses and biblical truths? What might the answers reveal about his or her heart?
As these questions suggest, our young people do need a thorough knowledge of the Bible to navigate the many arenas of life. But these questions also reveal the need to go beyond head knowledge, says author and biblical counselor Paul David Tripp.
What a teenager needs, if he is going to live a God-honoring life, is a thorough knowledge of Scripture that allows him to apply its commands, principles, and perspectives to the many different situations that arise in everyday life. He needs to be more than a person who has acquired biblical knowledge; he needs to be a person who is able to approach life with biblical wisdom.
I am convinced that many teenagers are unprepared for the spiritual struggle because they have never been taught to think biblically. They have been in Sunday school, so they know all the familiar Bible stories and they have memorized all of the favorite Bible passages, but these are not much more than isolated, unconnected biblical factoids to them. They haven’t been woven into a consistent, distinctively biblical view of life. The Bible isn’t a way of thinking to these teenagers. It is a book of moralistic stories, a book of dos and don’ts. The result is that, although they have lots of biblical knowledge, they have little biblical wisdom. They do not have a functional, useful, biblical view of life that would keep them from living foolishly.
We must disciple our children to think biblically, to interpret all the facts of life from a biblical perspective. We must teach them to always ask how the Bible can help them to understand whatever they are considering. (Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens, 121.)
This is no simple endeavor. Imparting biblical wisdom requires a serious, well-thought-out, intentional, long-term plan that involves both formal biblical instruction as well as relational discipleship. At Truth78, we have taken great care to write all our resources in a manner that serves to foster both. We designed Your Word Is Truth – A Study for Youth on Seeing All of Life Through the Truth of Scripture to help lead teens in developing wisdom.
