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Gender and Sex? Who am I?
With Guest Pastor John McLennan

Links mentioned in this episode.

https://johnmclennan.com/

The question of “Who am I?” has been to the domain of great philosophers like Socrates and of teenager for centuries.  In other words, the idea of discovering who you are is nothing new and has been a struggle since the beginning of time.

This topic gets a whole lot more complicated outside of the Christian walk, but don’t think that is becomes easy either.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  This idiom is used to express the idea that empty or unfilled spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature and physics.  The space in our hearts, you know, the well spring of life, can be corrupted by worldly influences.  The enemy is working overtime to, at the very least, seed confusion, and if he can do that through adolescence that a foothold will have been made that will make it even harder to allow Jesus to reveal who we were created to be.

Stats that should concern you:

Barna.com Stats on Age of Salvation and Moral Foundations (2004)

• 43% of Christians accepted Christ before age of 13
• 21% of Christians accepted Christ between 13-18
• 13% of Christians accepted Christ between 18-21
• Basic Moral Foundation formed by age 9
• By age 13, basic beliefs of the Nature of God, reliability of scripture, existence of an afterlife, and the everlasting love of Jesus Christ

 

“What you believe at age 13 is pretty much what you’re going to die believing,” Barna said. Research compiled by his Barna Group shows that children between the ages of 5 and 13 have a 32 percent probability of accepting Jesus

 

Nae.net (National Association of Evangelicals, 2015) 

• 63% of Christians accept Christ between 4 and 14 years of age (“The 4/14 Window”) (1% before age 4)
• 34% of Christians accept Christ between 15 and 29 years of age
• 2% of Christians accept Christ after age 30
• Time Spent “Screen Time” averages range from 18 hours per week for young children to 53 hours per week for ages 8-18 (Kaiser Family Foundation Survey 2010)
• 49% of young people first viewed pornography before age 13 (Focus on the Family, article “Kids Viewing Porn – How Pervasive is it?”)

 

Most teens are “sexting”—either on the receiving or sending end of sexually explicit images.

• 62% of teens and young adults have received a sexually explicit image and 41% have sent one (usually from/to their boy/girlfriend or friend).
• March 11, 2019 • Press Release

A research team found nearly one-third of youth ages 10 to 12 years screened positive for suicide risk in emergency department settings. A study on youth suicide risk screening in emergency departments, researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

 

So, what do parents and commanders need to be looking for?

What’s the foundation for success?

If you are to have success in any relational arena a foundation must be laid, and everything must be built on that foundation.

The 4 loves converge in marriage (Agape, Eros, Phileo, Stoge)

Quantity not quality

Discipleship

The Church Family

No mater how well we teach, or disciple children will take some blows to the heart and when that happens satan will try to get them to make some agreements.  “She dumped me, so I will never let a girl get that close.” , “My dad failed and now I can expect all men to fail.”

Story that ties in:

The Tin Woodman had once been a real man, who had been in love with a beautiful maiden. It was his dream to marry her, once he could earn enough money to build them a cottage in the woods. The Wicked Witch hated his love, and she cast spells upon the man that caused him injury, so that one by one his limbs needed to be replaced with artificial ones, made of tin. At first it seemed an advantage, for his metal frame allowed him to work nearly as powerfully as a machine. With a heart of love and arms that never tired, he seemed sure to win. “I thought I had beaten the Wicked Witch then, and I worked harder than ever; but I little knew how cruel my enemy could be. She thought of a new way to kill my love for the beautiful Munchkin maiden, and made my axe slip again, so that it cut right through my body, splitting it into two halves. Once more the tinner came to my help and made me a body of tin. Fastening my tin arms and legs and head to it, by means of joints, so that I could move around as well as ever. But alas! I now had no heart, so that I lost all my love for the Munchkin girl, and did not care whether I married her or not . . . “My body shone so brightly in the sun that I felt very proud of it and it did not matter now if my axe slipped, for it could not cut me. There was only one danger— that my joints would rust; but I kept an oil-can in the cottage and took care to oil myself whenever I needed it. However, there came a day when I forgot to do this, and, being caught in a rainstorm, before I had thought of the danger my joints had rusted, and I was left to stand in the woods until you came to help me. “It was a terrible thing to undergo, but during the year I stood there I had time to think that the greatest loss I had known was the loss of my heart. While I was in love I was the happiest man on earth; but no one can love who has not a heart, and so I am resolved to ask Oz to give me one. If he does, I will go back to the Munchkin maiden and marry her.”

Notice, there was a man who was once real and alive and in love. But after a series of blows, his humanity was reduced to efficiency. He became a sort of machine— a hollow man. At first, he did not even notice, for his condition made him an excellent woodman, as any person can become productive like a machine when he forgoes his heart.

Eldredge, John. Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive (pp. 37-38). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.