I hope that I’ve been an advocate for young women through my years working with teenagers. I may not be a youth pastor anymore, but I certainly hope I’ll have opportunities to encourage young women to be everything that God created them to be. Now, though, I don’t have to go outside my home to find a girl to encourage and build up. I love Clara so much and hope that she can learn the lesson I wrote about in this post.
I still love youth ministry even after 15 years. Coming off of two weeks of summer camp, few things still excite me as much as seeing students embrace Christ.
I love hanging out with our guys. I love leading Guy Time at camp, I love hanging out and playing Magic, I even love them when they don’t take a shower during an entire week at camp.
I also love the girls in our ministry. As a male youth pastor I obviously have a different relationship with our girls than I do with our guys. I don’t get one-on-one time with them and I obviously don’t hang out in their cabins. But I love the girls in our ministry and the role I get to play in their lives.
Which is why I would love for them all to watch this new music video from Colbie Caillat for her song “Try.”
Each of the girls in our ministry is a beautiful, handcrafted work of art. God created them and loved them before they were born. Regardless of any insecurities or expectations they feel they have to live up to, they are beautiful and precious, daughters of the one true King.
I’m not a girl, though, so I don’t know what it’s like to experience all of those insecurities. I don’t know what it’s like to see unrealistic expectations for physical appearance in every ad, on every television show and in every movie. I know that I don’t look like the Rock with my shirt off (or on for that matter) but no one is holding me to that expectation. Unfortunately girls and women are held to those ridiculous standards and those expectations have taken a toll.
I don’t understand what it’s like to be a girl but Colbie Caillat does, which is why I’m grateful that she wrote this song and made this video. I can tell our girls over and over again that they don’t need to try so hard to meet the expectations of others, but a four-minute song could potentially say more than I ever could.
God has called me to work with adolescents, which includes teenage girls. I have been called to encourage, support and love our girls, letting them know that they are beautiful and precious because God created them. And if I can do that by reading them Psalm 139, that’s awesome. And if I can do that by encouraging them to watch a music video, then that’s awesome too.
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