This was the first in a new five week series entitled ‘Living out God’s purposes.’ It’s actually centered around our student ministry purpose statement, ‘We are real people, in love with a real God, making a real difference in the world.’ That statement contains five values, or purposes:

• Real People: Fellowship
• Real God: Worship, Discipleship
• Real Difference: Evangelism, Service

We’re using a study called ‘Living out God’s purposes’ from the Live Curriculum as our launching point. This week Jen S taught a combined Student Quest (a number of the students were on the fall retreat). The series is actually looking at the story of Mary and how she lived out God’s purposes in her life. We’ll see how her life can inspire us to reach through our role in telling others about Jesus, connect through involvement in authentic community, grow through commitments and spiritual disciples, discover through serving God and others, and honor God through a lifestyle of worship.

Using Luke 1:26-35, we saw how Mary was a young woman—perhaps a young teenage girl—when she received the news that she would be the mother of the Son of God, whom she would name Jesus. She was initially confused and disturbed, but the angel reassured her that she had found favor with God and that she had been specially chosen. Mary isn’t alone in being selected to play a role in reaching people with the good news of Jesus; all Christians are given an opportunity and responsibility to become active participants in spreading the message of Jesus.

I’d encourage you to take a few moments this week to talk with your teenager about this week’s lesson. As always, I’d like to pass along some questions you could use to stimulate conversation:

• What are some of the most effective and ineffective ways to tell other people about Jesus? Why are they so effective or ineffective?
• When you think of telling other people about Jesus, what fears or worries— or other emotions—do you experience? How different are those from the emotions you experienced as a high school freshman? How have you changed?
• How has the story of your spiritual journey affected the stories of other people—ones you know well and ones you don’t?