Like Jesus

I am preparing my message for Wednesday night, for the middle schoolers. We have been in a series called the "7 channels of student culture". We have talked about the responsibility we have as Christians to create and redeem student culture through these 7 channels. After talking about this for a few weeks, we will close the series talking about what a changing culture looks like. In reality, it looks like God. Through us, we take what is broken and restore it. So the question that I want to leave with the students this Wednesday is this, "Do I look like Jesus", and in context of their channel, "Do we look like Jesus"?

Last week they wrote their stories on a sheet of paper, their experiences, the events that have been a factor for setting the course of their life at this point. After reading through their stories and thinking about this question of "Do I look like Jesus", I stop. Why? Because I think about the "stuff" that they are currently going through, and I think, "is looking like Jesus remotely close to being on their radar"? I can only imagine the anxiety they feel as the school day comes closer to ending and some of these kids have to go back home to the blow-to-blow interactions with their families. When they go to bed at night, I have to wonder if looking like Jesus is the last thing on their mind. I would say that with many, it is an easy no! Getting their homework done for some of these kids is a victory.

But I have to believe with my heart, that somewhere in the chaos of their life, that looking like Jesus can bring about a sense of peace and hope, that it can construct a foundation, it can give them substance to keep them moving. I have to believe that for an American Teenager, to want to look like Jesus, even while they are being sexually abused by their father, that looking like Jesus, they can overcome. I have to believe that it is in looking like Jesus, that they come to know their identify, they find love, peace, and a strength to endure the unique day, a love, peace, and strength for a unique day that I will never know anything about, when it comes to understanding. Jesus is that powerful, that transcendent.

And so when I think that looking like Jesus may be the last thing on their mind, I want to believe that is the very thing that must be on their minds. How much closer can you get to Jesus, than living a life that looks like his.