The Background

Brian was a typical suburban teenage guy in the 11th grade. Brian was growing up in a family of achievers. Each had his niche in life firmly established. Brian’s dad was a ladder-climbing businessman. Brian’s mother was the ever-present keeper of the house, juggling schedules with the skill and detail of a mechanical engineer. Even Brian’s younger sister was smart and, to Brian, “almost” as popular as he was.

The Change

Through a series of events, Brian became a follower of Christ through the faithful witness of a friend. It seemed that overnight Brian had changed. Brian noticed that he would get uncomfortable with certain friends telling “those” jokes. On the basketball court, Brian became painfully aware of how often people would mention the name of God, and not in a complimentary way. Although this hadn’t bothered Brian before, he was now struggling with what to do about these new feelings. These feelings were pointing to more than being uncomfortable about a seedy joke or a careless word. Brian started to see the world as a needy place, a place where so many people had life-wrenching cares and needs. As time went on, Brian noticed more changes in how he viewed life. Brian had always considered himself to be successful, but now “success” had lost its definable edge. He also seemed to lose his place at the table of popularity. To the casual observer, it was obvious that Brian seemed to fall to the back of the pac when it came to being a member of the “in” crowd. Even so, Brian had been told at church that some people wouldn’t accept his new faith. Brian privately wondered how cool could he be with his friends and still be a real Christian? Brian’s “identity crisis” began to grow more intense when it started to affect what he considered fun. When he was asked about what he did on Friday night in first period class on Monday morning. Brian no longer had juicy stories of going to the big party or watching the latest movie or pursuing that attractive girl. As a matter of fact, Brian started to feel dirty about things that seemed to just appear in his head. Sure, Brian found pleasure in being a Christian, but he also missed the fun he had before he became a Christian. Even so, Brian told himself that being a Christian was worth missing out on the fun with his old friends. After all, he had heard other Christians say that becoming a Christian helped them discover how much fun they could really have in life. Christians made it sound almost like the party would never end. Brian assured himself that he just had to figure out how to see life through this new lens, and then everything would be great.

Reinterpreting Life

When Brian became a Christian, his definition of being a successful teenager, of having status and of what he defined as fun, fundamentally changed. Without even realizing it, Brian had traded in his unwavering loyalty to the lusts of the eyes (success), lusts of the flesh (pleasure), and pride of life (status) when he became a follower of Jesus Christ (I John 2:16). There was just one big problem; Brian didn’t recognize this and had no model of how to make the transition from living by his self-satisfying impulses to now being a follower of Jesus Christ. So, Brian instinctively did what a lot of people do in his situation; Brian simply substituted worldly categories of success, status, and pleasure for religious categories of success, status, and pleasure. As a Christian, Brian naturally began to define being spiritual as being successful in living a “good life.” Brian’s itch for status was scratched by working his way into the leadership in his church’s student ministry. Brian also morphed into a master at talking about standards of purity, while cultivating a harvest of secret pleasures. Brian would often fight back the guilt by reassuring himself that these “private sins” would go away when he got married. To the average outsider, Brian was living a normal Christian life. But, if the truth were told, Brian had simply become a Christian and substituted worldly categories of life for religious ones. Brian is skating on the proverbial “thin ice.” Unless Brian can come to see a clear understanding and model of what success, status, and pleasure are in terms of being a follower of Jesus, he will continue to create an illusionary world in which he is more like a player in a religious drama than a true and healthy Christian.

Questions that Must Be Resolved

How does Brian reshape his definition of what being truly successful is? How does Brian wrestle through the responsibility of having status among peers and yet not allowing it to be his motivation for fitting in? How does Brian harness the sinful private pleasures? Unless Brian makes this migration through each of these life-issues, he will never mature and reap the life-benefits that trusting in God has supernaturally provided for him.

Brian is at an impasse in life… and he doesn’t even realize it.

Find out how Pastor Dan used this life-story as a backdrop for the teaching on the Sun., Jan. 31st.