Overview of Remix September 8^th, 2010:

As you have probably already heard, we kicked off a new series tonight called “BABY” that’s all about love and teenage dating relationships.  This is an important series because our teenagers are surrounded by pressure to jump into love and dating relationships without realizing the potential danger of doing so.  It’s in the music we listen to, the TV shows we watch, as well as in our schools we attend each day.  During this series we are going to take a look at love and dating from God’s perspective.

In large group tonight we were reminded of God’s challenge in Song of Solomon about being careful not to wake up love until it is ready to be woken up.  Love is a very powerful emotion – one that we must be ready and capable of handling.  We talked about the dangers of waking up love to early.  One of those dangers is that it can burn us and leave scars in our lives that can affect us even later down the road when it is time to wake up love.  Our love is a gift we give our future spouse.  Each time we start a relationship we are giving away a piece of ourselves that we can never get back as well as opening up ourselves to potential hurt.  We also highlighted another danger or waking up love to early – that is it can keep us from discovering who we really are.  That’s a huge one for students.  Our teenage years are supposed to be about discovering who we are and growing into our own skin.  When we throw dating into the mix we can easily begin to wrap our own identity up into someone else, instead of allowing it to develop properly.

In their group time, students, with the help of their life group leaders, discussed some of the reasons why they feel pressure to date as teenagers.  They discussed in more detail some other potential dangers of waking up love to early.  They ended their group time by looking at 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 to get a better picture of what real love looks like compared to the typical picture of teenage love and relationships.  At the end of their time in group they were challenged to take serious God’s warning of not waking up love to early and to take time to discover who they really are so they are ready to wake up love when it is ready.

Listed below are some questions that you can use to spark conversation with your students and connect with what we talked about this week:

• On a scale of 1-10, 1 being none and 10 being extreme, what pressure do you feel to date?  Why do you think there is so much pressure to date at your age?
• What are some reasons why you would want to date someone?
• What’s the purpose of dating?
• Do you feel that you are ready to date?  Why?
• What are some good indicators that you can think of to let you know when you are ready to start dating?  (you could give them some things that helped you know when you were ready to start dating.)