Grades 9-12

Anticipate Maturity

PARENT EMPHASIS

• Encourage godly relationships and friendships
• Model and teach spiritual disciplines
• Teach worldview & apologetics
• Give them a vision for God’s work globally and locally

The high school years are a season of deep questioning and growing conviction. A teen's ability to reason, evaluate truth claims, and connect biblical teaching to real-life challenges expands significantly during these years. This God-given development creates a crucial opportunity to guide them beyond simply knowing Bible stories to understanding and embracing the whole counsel of God.

At this age, your teen is ready to trace themes across Scripture, wrestle with doctrine, and consider the implications of the gospel for their identity, purpose, and daily choices. These are formative years to shape lifelong disciples—young men and women who know God, treasure Christ, and walk in His ways with steadfast faith and joyful obedience.

Point them toward what matters: loving God and loving others. Their love for God can and should increase all their life as they grow in their knowledge of Him and His Word. And their love for others can find expression in service to the church, the community, and those who don’t know God throughout the world.

• Emphasize the inerrancy, authority, clarity, sufficiency, and necessity of Scripture.
• Train and equip them to more fully utilize inductive Bible study skills.
• Give a balanced approach to studying the Bible grounded on these theological disciplines: Bible survey, biblical theology, systematic theology, moral instruction, and gospel.
• Press in on the need to rightly respond to Scripture with the mind, heart, and will.
• Encourage the use of age-appropriate Bible studies for their personal use, including those that study one book of the Bible at a time.
• Expand upon teaching the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith.

Find more age-specific Bible training in From Childhood You Have Known--Guiding Children to Understand and Treasure the Bible.

FAMILY DEVOTIONALS

• Glorious God, Glorious Gospel 15-chapter family devotional grounds children in the essential, foundational, and glorious truths of the gospel.
• The Fighter Verses Bible memory and verse studies with 260 essential passages to arm believers to fight for faith and love, and against unbelief and sin.
  
• Putting Away Falsehood Help children approach deceit from a biblical perspective of heart transformation through “the renewing of the mind” and the power of Christ at work in the heart. (7 lessons).
• Putting Away Fear Eight lessons teach about the Holy Spirit’s power to turn a child’s heart away from self-interest and self-reliance to confident faith in the almighty, unchanging, wise, and loving God. 
  

MORE DISCIPLESHIP RESOURCES

• The Inductive Bible Study Handbook by Jill Nelson
• Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know by Wayne Grudem
  
• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
  
• Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands by Paul David Tripp
  
• Age of Opportunity by Paul David Tripp
• The Attributes of God by A. W. Tozer
• The Holiness of God by R. C. Sproul
• Trusting God by Jerry Bridges
• The Cross Centered Life by C. J. Mahaney
• When I Don’t Desire God by John Piper 

THE GOSPEL AND SALVATION

Your Role: pruner—shaping, encouraging the growing plant

This stage follows true conversion and is a period of growth in faith. The job of the sower does not end at this stage, but the sower’s role changes in character and focus. Young faith must be carefully taught the Word, see an authentic model of the life of faith, and be sustained by prayer. The sower then becomes a pruner as God shapes and brings
faith into maturity.

The Fruit—Salvation and Evidences of Saving Faith
Conversion requires an understanding of the facts of the gospel, a turning away from unbelief and rebellion, and a turning to the Lord Jesus Christ in trust, surrender, and submission. Thus the key elements involved in embracing the gospel are repentance and faith, usually the result of a process and not an event. 

This section was excerpted from Helping Children to Understand the Gospel , a booklet for parents about teaching the gospel to their children, that also includes a 10-lesson devotional to help present the gospel to children.