this is to whomever can best help me.

I started having devotions each and every night with my teens. Since they do not know the books of the bible well enough to quickly find where scripture is i thought we would begin this week and every week after beginning our devotions in Gensis and work our way thru.



now the questions.. How do i relate these scriptures in Genesis and in Matthew to one another .. summarize it i guess to where my teens(15 and 16)can understand it. I ask for their participation and they give me a blank stare. I need help

i want to present the Word of God to them but appaently going about this all wrong.. Any tips or hints as to what i can do better

now for the scripture



Genesis 6 :5-7

Genesis 7:23

Matthew 24:37-44



God Bles

Mandy

I'll give it a shot, Mandy. Maybe I can help. Firstly I'm wondering who "your teens" are. Are they your children? Your "every night" goal implies that they are.



The scriptures you cited, for starters, are difficult and not much attractive to teens. The bottom line message of the scriptures you listed is: You must always be ready because your time of judgement will come when you least expect it.



To a teen, and to adults too, that's a pretty much impossible thing to do. Is this our bottom-line lesson from the Noah flod story? Your selected New Testament scripture (Matthew 24:37-44) seems to indicate that it is. If I were a teen I might want to quit this endeavor right at the get go.



Oh! Another question I must ask: Are you a Bible literalist? I'm not. Do you want to teach your teens an inflexible, absolute, God's whole and infallible literal word in the Bible? If that be the case scrap everything I suggest from here on out. I can't help.



I think your teens will appreciate learning the wonderful and fascinating stories about people in the Bible. They may even get excited about some of them. The people stories can be treated as human history or legend and some of them as mythology, or with a smattering of each. I don't recommend trying to match the old testament to the new. They are separate times and they portray different human perceptions of God. The Bible describes to us how those perceptions have changed. The Bible describes how our perceptions evoloved to what Christians understand -- of God -- today.



What do you hope for your teens to get from you devotions and Bible study? Faith? Values? Increased awareness and appreciation of God? Would you like them to learn that God is their friend who will always be there for them in future difficult times?



Do you want them to learn to fear God and to fear their judgement day?



Both? Which do you think will work best for them as their lives progress? Faith, aware and appreciation -- or fear? Personally, I don't think fear works well at all. Personally, I feel like God is my buddy. We visit like we're buddies. I try to live my life in ways that I think will please my BIG buddy who I have sometimes called the "Big guy."



So, what can I recommend?

What do you want to teach your teens? That's a good place to start. Here's a link to a web-page I wrote that started me on a wonderful learning journey: Explore faith with me. Is this something like what you hope for your teens?



What about ways that Bible stories sometimes conflict with what we believe of God? Who is this God guy?This one's in two parts. Then we take a look at God as "our Father."



Then we might start with a people story out of the book of Genesis about faith, accomplishment and forgivenss in contest with betrayal and adversity: the story of Joseph in two parts.



Check it out, Mandy. You will find links to more that may help you. Let me know how it works for you -- and if this is something suitable for your teens. Can they learn something from Joseph, do they appreciate him and does this help them to appreciate God?



Sincerely, George H. Birkett

Thank you George for your input and suggestions. Maybe i will hold off a few more nights on this particular devition till i get through searching the links you gave me.

Now as for the question Are they my children? yes they are.

The scriptures i sited was picked out because that is what i was lead to. I searched for a goood scripture to start out with and that one was where i was lead.

My linking it to the new testament was through my bible. It had reference to the scripture in Matthew.

Difficult passge yes

What am i trying to teach them through these devotions

just trying to teach them to get in the word.. For starters. Just read God's word.

As they begin this then we will move up to, ok now apply this.. How would this apply to what you are going through in today's time. How could you apply this..Or why did you pick this particular scripture.

Am i a bible literists?

well um seeing as to where i dont know exactly what you mean by that.. i don't know my Bible well enough to say yes or no. I do believe its 100% accurate.. its 100%truth. I am learning as they are learning.

Just letting the holy spirit guide as we go.

you did give me a few thought and they will be taken into consideration so i thank you for your thoughts

Blessings

Mandy

Amanda: You, your children and your "devotions" have been very much on my mind. I read your profile. So, today, I was investigating search engine listings on the topic of "vengeance on the Midianites." It's a cruel story from the book of Numbers. God told Moses to destroy the Midianites. The "why" for vengeance doesn't make sense to me. I thought of your response to my "Bible literalilst" question: "... well um, seeing as to where I don't know exactly what you mean by that .... I do believe it's 100% accurate... it's 100% truth."



A Bible literalist starts with 100% accurate and truth. They believe the Bible is God's divine and irrefutable word. They believe that the Bible defines God. Judging from many Christian denominational faith declarations they prioritize their belief in the Bible's literal truth above their belief in God and Jesus. In other words, it's the #1 item on their belief lists.



As I said, I'm not a Bible literalist, but I do take the Bible very seriously. I have written ...

"Many extol the Bible as the divine or inspired word of God. This poses a problem, not with the Bible, but with what we expect from it.

When we insist that every character physically existed, every event occurred exactly as the Bible describes, every prophecy has happened or will happen, we place constraints on what and how we learn from the Bible. It's inevitable that we will encounter conflicts between what the Bible says and what we know to be true of our world ¯ and what we believe of God too.

The divine word tenet of Christian beliefs entangles us in a conflict that we are totally unqualified to resolve: that of defending the integrity of God's word. We rationalize, explain away and attempt to justify and worst of all, we twist what we believe of God to accommodate scripture attributed to God. And then, we pick and choose."

100% accurate? I don't think so. If it is I wouldn't be able to deal with it all. 100% truth? It depends upon what kind of truths you're looking for and perhaps how you define truth.

"I've always accepted the Bible as truth. I don't know that I ever thought the Bible was God's divine word and inerrant and all those things people say. It doesn't seem necessary. Not to me. Is it?"

An allegorical story, while not fact, can reveal to us wonderful and sometimes not so wonderful truths about us. We know that Jesus taught using parables, a.k.a. allegories. So, we know that large portions of the Bible, both old and new testament, are allegories.



Vengeance on the Midianites is an especially difficult, skip over, topic. It's written as history, not allegory. Moses fled Egypt to Midian. He married a Midianite girl: Zipporah. Moses' sons were half Midianite. His father-in-law, a Midianite priest, employed Moses as a sheepherder and he offered to Moses sound advice during the Israelite stay at the foot of Mt. Sinai (Exodus chapter 19).



Why did God want the Midianites destroyed? One Bible commentary says:

"We must understand that God dealt very harshly because it was through the people of Israel that the Messiah would later come. Satan, in his perpetual effort to oppose God, sought to have the people of God fall into false worship and through intermarriage with other people, to destroy the messianic line and make not only the promises of God null and void, but destroy means by which the Messiah could be born. If this could be accomplished, then none would have any hope of deliverance from sin. Therefore, we see in the Old Testament God being very harsh and strict according to the Law."

Only the virgins left alive among the Midianites This is obviously an attempt to explain and justify God's behavior and attitude -- except -- there is nothing in the Bible that says anything like that.



I have my answer, or way of dealing with these kinds of conflicts with the Bible and what I believe of God.

"The Bible is less about God and more about men. It is written by men about men. God is therein portrayed according to the perceptions of men. I think perceiving the Bible as the literal and divine word of God is not healthy for Christianity. I shudder when I say this so bluntly because I don't want anyone for one moment to think I'm scrapping the Bible. It just ain't so. I have come to rely more upon the Bible than ever before. I'm learning wonderful lessons about us. ... I'm concerned with how we sometimes misuse the Bible based upon the "divine word" concept. It's not like it ain't necessarily so. Our Lord Jesus Christ was on the inside track; his words and the example of his life appear to have had a divine affect on our human history."

"The Bible books are exceptional because they are fine literature written when literature was a new and rare thing. They probe back into the ancient oral tradition of the Hebrew people including genealogies and some early myths of humankind. They include collected quotations attributed to famous people of the time. They define laws attributed to God ¯ and rules of worship. The histories are incredibly honest and candid, and dramatic too. They give us insight into how the ancient Hebrew people lived, what they thought, their strengths, their weaknesses and their failings. They offer insight into the very beginnings of our beliefs and how they have changed through the ages. The Bible books are unique. They are the most published and most read and most analyzed written works of all time. They are among the oldest written works of all time ¯ from a time when most of what was written has been lost to us, apparently forever.

The history of the Bible, what little I have learned of it, is no less fascinating. It's a wonder to me that it has survived so relatively intact these thousands of years. It gives me pause to ponder if God had a hand not in the writing of it but in the keeping of it."

So, I'm thinkng about you and your family. Your "teens" are really young adults and in a few years they will be embarking into their own lives. As you well know God can be a big help as we proceed with our lives.



Sincerely, George H. Birkett

I think that's a great devotional topic for teens that are likely to face a lot of school years, especially college, hearing harsh ridicule of anyone taking the Bible literally. The Flood is probably the most reviled of all Bible stories. God decided, God carried out his decision. So what to do in the face of almost universal rejection of that event being possible? Will you stand up for it no matter what, teaching your teens to do likewise? Well, the Matthew passage is Jesus affirming the Genesis event, that the whole world will be caught up in another global great judgment with little warning other than old scriptures.

We are believers not reserved for that punishment, but in this day are faced with whether to totally take Jesus at his word, or not, in a skeptic world. If not then what else in scriptures cannot be taken seriously? Jesus' statement commands his followers not to doubt the Genesis flood word for word. He is expecting all of us to take the rest of the Bible record literally in the face of tough resistance from makebelievers, doubters, and unbelievers. I say that because of all the OT stories, that one is the hardest to not question, today strongly doubted by many geologists, yet vindicated by many others that simply view evidence differently. Your teens need to be taught to stand up for truth now, making a life habit of being counted as Bible based believers. It's the greatest inheritance they can receive from you.

Jim
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Be fishers of men