Teen Tuesday: Spiritual Accountability

At the start of every New Year many people create resolutions about how they will make themselves better in the New Year. These resolutions usually have to do with health, fitness, relationships, or personal needs. However, many people overlook the most important type of resolution that could make- spiritual resolutions. How can a person improve themselves spiritually for the coming year? How can they draw themselves closer to God? This topic is written by Danielle Ringold.

These questions became the focus of my last Bible class for 2014. I wanted to push my students to choose one area to focus on in their spiritual walk and make a goal. Goals included ideas like praying more, reading the Bible every day, not gossiping, and attending worship every time. I really appreciated the thought my students put into these.

The spiritual resolution was not the only focus of this lesson. The main point of the lesson was actually to learn about holding each other spiritually accountable and what God expects us to do. So, with our resolutions created, I randomly assigned accountability partners and students wrote each other letters of encouragement about their partner’s resolution.

I instructed the teenagers to open these letters of encouragement, created by their accountability partners, when they are feeling discouraged. Click here to download. Once the letters were written, we jumped into the lesson by doing a true/false activity. I wanted to gauge the background knowledge and current beliefs of my students about spiritual accountability. It was so great to see all students actively participating (even the ones who tend to not talk).

We then jumped into several passages in the Bible to see what God desires around holding each other spiritually accountable. There was a lot of rich and honest discussion around these verses. It is clear that teens struggle with this because of their desire to fit in, maintain friendships, and not stir the pot.

The conversation was so great we didn’t get to our group activity with scenarios!  really enjoyed this lesson for two reasons: it allowed me to get to know the struggles of my students and gave them a chance to encourage each other. I highly recommend pushing students to make spiritual resolutions and teaching them to hold each other accountable.

This week's freebie is the Letters of Encouragement download. There are a lot of choices for a variety of ages. Some are very colorful, others more basic. There are some black & white and will look nicer if they are printed onto color paper. They do not just have to be used for the New Year. They can be used for youth group activities also. Click here to download them.

Hello! My name is Danielle Ringold. You may recognize the children in the picture because my mom is Debbie Jackson, the owner of the Bible Fun for Kids website.