Rob Bell - Love Wins: For Teens

Love Wins

What We Talk About When We Talk About God

The Zimzum of Love

Velvet Elvis

Jesus Wants to Save Christians

Sex God

Drops Like Stars

Love Wins Companion

Love Wins: For Teens

This book is for every single teenager out there who has looked around at this big, broken, beautiful, exotic, troubled, mysterious, surprising world we live in and asked, What am I doing here?

INTRODUCTION:
BIKES AND BUTTS

CHAPTER 1
EVERYONE IS INVITED

CHAPTER 2
HEAVEN

CHAPTER 3
HELL

CHAPTER 4
QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS...

CHAPTER 5
THE STORY IN THE STORY

CHAPTER 6
TIME FOR THE PARTY

I remember sitting in the visiting room of a mental hospital, talking with a teenager Id known for years who had just had a breakdown. His life had spun out of control and he felt like he was losing his mind, and so his parents checked him into this treatment center. We talked for a while about his life and his problems and his anxiety and depression, but what was so strange was that he kept bringing up his brotherhow amazing and smart and talented his older brother wasand that he could never measure up.

It was almostand Im trying to find the best way to say thisit was like he wished he was his brother. It seemed like somewhere along the way, he had bought into the idea that he would never be as good as his brother. Like he believed that he was doomed to live in his shadow.

I know this sounds like an issue between him and his brother, but sitting there in that mental hospital, I started to wonder if his real issue wasnt actually with God. My friend didnt like who God made when God made him. Now I realize you may or may not believe in God, but whether you do or not, we all have beliefs about who we are and why were here that shape our lives in countless ways.

I tell you about visiting him in that mental hospital because our images of God are crucial for how we understand our lives. Some people believe theres nothing out there, that were all alone, that there is no God helping us and guiding us, and so that shapes how they see life. Others see God as an angry old man with a long beard who cant wait to judge everybody. And others see God as the one to blame for whatever is wrong in their lifefrom the shape of their body to their parents divorce to their brothers successes to the traumas or tragedies theyve experienced.

So what I want to do here is give you a way to think about God, which will lead us to a number of questions about who we are and what were doing here.

So heres the idea, the idea that drives this whole book, the idea well return to again and again:

God is throwing a party,

and everyones invited.

Now when I use that word party, Im sure you have some images in your head. I remember when I was seventeen and walking in the front door of a house where a girl from my school was throwing a party because her parents were out of town. My friend John was sitting on the couch, and he was really, really drunk, talking really, really loudly, and really, really annoying everybody.

Sound familiar?

Whether its getting wasted

or blitzed

or lit

or trashed

or sloshed

or tanked

or schlitzed

or plastered

or hammered

or lubed

or baked

or cooked

or whatever it isIm sure you and your friends have your own words for it!for many people, when they say party, what they mean is escape. Escape from pressure, school, parents, work, authority, rulesand we all know that that often involves drinking or smoking or taking something to get their minds off... well... life.

So theres that understanding of party.

But its not the only one. Theres another understanding of the word party that comes from the ancient world of the Bible. Do you know how the Bible ends? With God living with people in peace. The writer describes the scene like a wedding banquet, which would have been like a party that went on for days and days, with food and dancing and stories and music. In the ancient world, they threw epic parties. The events took months of planning and often took people days to walk to and sometimes cost a lot of money, all to celebrate the fact that for once, for now, life is good.

Good is even one of the first words in the Bible, and it refers to what God wants for us: Gods desire for us to thrive here on earth, to enjoy our lives and our work and our friends, to care for the earth, and to live in peace with everything and everybody.

I realize thats a big sentence, but its the big idea thats in the Bible over and over and over again. Its not that there wont be suffering or heartache or pain or deathwell talk more about that in a momentbut the central story is about Gods desire for us to live in Gods good world in Gods way.

Do you know what this means?

God is for us.

God is for you.

I know this is really basic, but its incredibly important to understanding faith that were clear from the beginning that God is for you. I was talking to this guy who had just gotten out of high school. Hed gotten a girl pregnant, and he was angry that this had happened. He told me at one point, I just cant get a break! as if God was somehow against him. Ive actually met tons of people like him, who over the years have come to believe for some reason or another that God is against them. I cant tell you how many people Ive met who wont go to a church service because theyre sure the roof will cave in or that theyll get hit by lightning bolts. Now, we laugh at the idea of the roof actually collapsing or a random lightning bolt hitting someone in broad daylight just because they walked through the door of a church, but underneath it all what theyre saying is that their image of God is of a divine being who is just waiting to punish them. I think of a high school girl I know who believes that shes worthless and that when God made her, God made a mistake.

The God that Jesus talked about is for her.

And you.

Do you believe that?

That God is for you?

Jesus had this great line about how God causes it to rain on good people and bad people. That was significant in Jesus day, because rain was how crops grew, which was how people got their food. To say that God gives rain to everybody was to say that God is for everybody.

So whatever youre going through,

whether you struggle in school

or you have a relative with cancer

or you have secrets you havent shared with anybody

or you keep hooking up with people and then regretting it,

God is for you.

When God made you, God did not make a mistake.

Now, on to the next big idea: I believe not only that God is for you, but Jesus came to bring us Gods love and forgiveness and grace, because we all need it. I got a call a few years ago from a high school student who was pregnant, and her boyfriend was doing drugs, and she was terrified. It was a massive mess, and for her, the worst part was her own sense of guilt and shame.

We can easily become haunted by the things weve done, cant we? Mistakes, sins, things we wish no one knew about, things weve kept hidden. Sometimes it can feel like our past is following us everywhere we go, cant it?

Jesus message was about the grace of God, forgiving us and cleaning us up and washing us and leaving the past where it belongsin the past. This is why the cross is so important to Jesus message. He never stops insisting that all the ways weve blown it and screwed up and sinned and fallen short and missed the mark have been taken care of by him on the cross. He even said at one point that he didnt come to condemn, he came to save us. One of the first Christians wrote that in Jesus were