Ron Luce - Quit Playing with Fire: Its Time to Get Serious about the Issues Facing Teens Today

Quit Playing with Fire

It's time to get serious about the issues facing teens today

Ron Luce

First printing: March 1995

Fourth printing: April 1999

Copyright 1994 by New Leaf Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations in articles and reviews. For information write: New Leaf Press, Inc., P.O. Box 726, Green Forest, AR 72638.

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 94-69835

ISBN: 0-89221-280-2

All Scripture in this book is from the New International Version of the Bible.

Printed in the United States of America.

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Dedication

To my son Cameron Townsend Luce.
May my life demonstrate to you the teachings herein.

Acknowledgments

This book has come out of who I really am, and my wife has been the human being who has contributed most to everything that I am. She has added the ingredients to my life that make my life an incredible existence and joy to live. I thank God for you, Katie!

I also want to thank Cindy Powell, my secretary, who has worked countless hours tracking down all the details for this book, and the only robo-intern to ever endure me for a whole year!

Jonie Jones has again added her finesse to this manuscript and made me look better than I really do, thank you.

Contents

Introduction

Fire. One of the most essential ingredients for the survival of mankind. Yet, if you get too close to it, or dont take its potency seriously, you will get burned.

Too many teens today are not taking seriously the consequences of playing with fire. They are fooling around with the things of the world that can burn them. They get lured by the illusion that it will be fun, not realizing that the real story is much less glamorous. They try to stay as close to the world as they can without totally falling away. They tango with temptation and end up feeling the sting of sin.

Others play with the fire of God. They halfheartedly go to church and youth group, but never take God seriously unless they are in a crisis. Many really do want the fire of the presence of the living God in their life, but they just dont know how to get it and keep it. They settle for an emotional time at the altar at a retreat, and hope the feeling doesnt go away. When it does, they try to get it back, but get tired of going back and forth trying to stay on fire. As a result they get burned out on the God thing.

It is time to get honest about the issues that are burning teens. It is time to deal with these vital obstacles to living a Christian life from an in-your-face biblical perspective.

It is time to quit playing with fire, and get as far away as we can from the world. Teens need real solutions for the real tough times they face. God has these answers in the Word and they are presented in this book in a way that a teen can understand. This is not a book to make you feel good about what you are doing. It is about getting out of the situations that cause Christian teens to fall on their faces. It is help for specific issues that teens everywhere are wrestling with.

It is time to quit playing with the fire of God and get serious about living close to Him every day. You do not have to go back and forth all your teen years in your walk with God. It is time to get hooked into God with all youve got while you are young, and never let go. It is time to get plugged into the power from the Most High God, and never get turned off again.

As we draw closer to the end times, the complexity of the issues that teenagers face is increasing. We know that all the answers come from Scripture, but how do we apply them to the specific situations faced by the teens of the nineties?

Too many teens, who have been in church all of their life, feel like God cannot relate to the problems they are facing on a daily basis. If this Christian life is so great, then why cant I get it together? Why are so many things falling apart in my life? Where is God when all these things are happening to me? These are the kinds of questions that young people are asking and need to get some real answers to.

This book addresses many of the key issues that are huge question marks in the minds of teens today. Once all the hype of a Christian event is gone, how do we keep a fire burning for God? It is incredibly important that we stay real with God and let Him help us with the real life issues we face.

It is possible to keep your fire burning for God all through your teen years. I know, because I did it. You just have to be willing to have some in-your-face answers from God. These are the kinds of answers you will get in Quit Playing with Fire.

This book was written so that teens could read it and apply the principles to their life. It was written so parents would know how to counsel and guide their teens in these issues. The ultimate is to have both parent and teen read through it together and discuss and pray about what they read.

Section I

Breaking the Spiritual Gridlock

The fire of God. What is it? How do you get it? How do you keep it? So many young people play when it comes to their relationship with God. They do not get serious until they face a crisis. They are sometimes committed and sometimes not. The fire of God is His undeniable presence in your life! People can see Him in you without you telling them. It is time to quit playing with the fire of God and get serious about getting all of Him that we can living big in us.

The most essential part of dealing with all the tough situations facing your life as a teen is to make sure that the fire of God is continuing to burn strong in your life. It is so easy to go to a camp or conference and feel God there, and then return home and feel like nothing happened.

It is time to get serious about your walk with God. If you want Him to help you with all the other intense things you are facing, you have to be pursuing Him with all your heart! You cannot be an air-head Christian and expect God to bless your life. You have to blast through the tendency to be on a spiritual roller coaster.

You might be young, but you are not too young to be serious in your pursuit of God. David, Josiah, Mark, and Timothy are all biblical examples of young people who were serious about God. You cannot just pray a crisis prayer every time you get into trouble and hope God gets you out of the mess. If you go after Him with all youve got all the time, He will keep you from getting into so many messes!

This first section is written to help you blast through the emotional ups and downs and the distractions, and to stay real with God. If you will apply what you learn to your life, you will never have to live on that spiritual roller coaster again.

What Are You Hungry For?

It seems like everyone is looking for something to fill me up. People are looking for more fun, more adventure, more thrills, more happiness, or more of something else that they just cannot seem to get their hands on.

We, as human beings, are hungry for something to fill the holes in our lives. We have a craving to eat more, have more, and do more. What do you crave more than anything? What do you really want?

The Bible says in Matthew 5:6, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

We are all empty without Gods love inside us. It does not matter how cool someone looks on the outside, if he does not know God, then he is empty. It does not matter how much money he has, how popular he is, or how successful he looks. Without Jesus in the middle of your life, you are empty. People try to fill their lives with all kinds of things but only come up empty every time.