New Morning Mercies for Teens (eBook)

Q&A for Teens with Paul Tripp

During the teen years, you will move from having your parents think for you, or tell you what to think, to becoming a young adult, capable of thinking for yourself. In this bonus chapter, I have provided answers to questions about life that you will surely encounter. These answers are not designed to be comprehensive or specific. Yet Lord willing, they will help you to get started in learning how to think biblically about the everyday personal and cultural issues you will face as you continue to mature and eventually leave your home to build life on your own.

The stories, commands, wisdom, and principles found within the Bible have been recorded and preserved for you so that you can think, desire, choose, speak, and act in the way God intended in the context of your everyday life and culture. Although the Bible doesn’t directly address many of the issues that you will have to face during your teen years, it does provide a body of wisdom that will help you decide how to respond to whatever comes your way.

As you grapple with the questions and answers that follow, may God bless you as you learn how to think through the issues of your generation in a way that is distinctively biblical.

Paul David Tripp

May 26, 2023

Anxiety and Depression

I feel anxious, even depressed. It feels like I have a dark cloud of sadness that follows me nearly every day, or that I experience panic attacks. I know the Bible says, “Do not be anxious about anything” (Phil. 4:6) and “In your presence there is fullness of joy” (Ps. 16:11), but I just can’t seem to get over my anxiety or depression. How can I find peace and happiness?

These experiences of fear, discouragement, depression, and anxiety are more normal than we tend to realize or are willing to talk honestly about. All of these emotions are pictured for us in God’s word. Why are they normal? First, we live in a broken world that doesn’t function the way God intended for it to function. Second, that brokenness is not just outside of us, but it’s inside of us as well. Our minds, our emotions, and our physical bodies don’t always function the way God designed for them to function when he created perfect people living in a perfect world. So the first thing you need to do when you’re suffering with anxiety, fear, or depression is don’t let shame drive you into silence and hiding.

One of the beautiful things the Bible tells us is that Jesus carried our shame (Heb. 12:2). Hanging naked on the cross, Jesus shamed shame so that we don’t have to live in shame any longer. Don’t act like you’re okay when you’re not. Don’t put on a front, a happy face. Don’t hide in shame. Be honest with yourself about what you’re facing and then be honest with people around you. When I encounter people who are crippled by fear, crippled by anxiety, or paralyzed by depression, I encourage them to seek help. When you’re dealing with these struggles and emotions, it’s hard to get out of your own head. It’s almost impossible to objectively step outside of yourself and tell yourself the things that you need to hear.

There may actually be physiological components to your anxiety or depression, so reach out for help and don’t hide in shame. Don’t allow yourself to think that you’re abnormal or the only one struggling. These are the regular experiences of life in a fallen world. Because he loves us, God has provided help for us. He has designed for us to live in community, and as a teenager, it’s really good for you to get a hold of this: a healthy life, spiritually and emotionally, is a community project. You can’t do it on our own. You won’t make it on your own. We all need help, so get help. Reach out for help, and don’t hide in shame if you’re struggling with fear, depression, or anxiety.

Sex and Marriage

A lot of my friends are having sex, or at least messing around. I know the Bible says I’m supposed to wait until marriage before sex, but if I told my friends I believed that, I’d be made fun of. What’s actually so wrong or dangerous with sexual activity before marriage, and why does the Bible command us to wait?

God designed a world with all kinds of pleasures, and he created human beings to live in that world with what I call “pleasure gates”—our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, our ability to touch—so that we could enjoy those pleasures. Enjoying pleasure is not something God is against. In fact, when I enjoy pleasure God’s way, it actually brings glory to God!

But any pleasure that God has created and designed for us to enjoy, whether it’s sex, food, or entertainment, requires boundaries. You can’t eat a piece of chocolate cake anytime you want without hurting your health. In the same way, sexual pleasure (which God designed for us to enjoy and pursue) requires boundaries. The question is: Who is going to define and set those boundaries?

Because God is my Creator, he knows everything about me. He knows everything about the way I am put together. He knows everything about what is wise for me and what is foolish for me, what is good for me, what is dangerous for me. There’s no one who could know me better than God does. For example, when you buy a new car, what’s in the glove box? An owner’s manual. That manual is there to tell you how to best maintain that car, to keep it running on the road for as long as possible. Why is that manual reliable? Because the manual was written by the person who designed and manufactured your car. It’s trustworthy.

In the same way, God has provided us with a manual of how we are to operate. It’s called the Bible. He made us, he wrote the owner’s manual, and it’s the best thing you could ever trust. So, here’s the decision you have to make, and this is very hard. You will either believe, “My culture and my friends and my desires (which are sinful, mind you!) are right, and they are best for me, so I will follow them.” Or you will believe, “God knows best, and although it’s hard because everybody seems to be going in the opposite direction, I’m going to trust in the perfect holiness, the perfect wisdom, the perfect love, and the perfect goodness of God. Even though it doesn’t make sense and I don’t have all the answers, I’m going to live the way God intended because he made me and knows me and wants what is best for me.”

When it comes to your sexuality, do you believe that God’s laws are good for you? They’re not meant to crush or limit your pleasure. Because God is perfectly holy all the time and in every way, it’s impossible for him to give you counsel, advice, and commands that are bad for you. What God commands of you is always good for you. God’s boundaries for sex and sexual pleasure is never a restriction; it’s an invitation for you to enjoy those pleasures in ways that God intended.

P.S.—If you’re a teen who hasn’t waited, or if you’ve been sexually active and now you’re in a place where you’re feeling shame and regret, let me say this: regret in the hands of God is a good and beautiful thing. God uses regret to draw us to himself. Why? Not so he can condemn us, but so he can wrap his arms of love and grace around us, offer us forgiveness, and give us divine power to take our lives in another direction. If you’re feeling regret about your sexual life, don’t run away from God. Run toward him. Your sin doesn’t make you disgusting to God. Your sin excites his mercy and causes him to offer you the grace you need.

Pornography and Sexting

Lots of my friends are looking at pornography or sending sexual images and videos to each other. I’ve been asked to send these images and have been sent them without even asking. I know I shouldn’t look at these things online or participate in sexting, but it seems impossible to avoid.

If you’re going to stay pure in this sex-crazed culture and age of digital technology, then you have to be prepared to fight temptation 24/7. But it’s not just about avoiding the sin and sex outside of you in the culture, on the internet, and circulating around in your friend group. It’s always first about the sinful and selfish desires inside of your heart. It’s only the sin inside us that every time magnetizes us to the sin outside us.

When Jesus teaches us to pray, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:13), he is calling us to admit that the evil that is the greatest danger to us is the evil inside each of us. If you want to stay pure, you need to be honest: while you might be able to escape the evil of a certain location, avoid an evil in a specific situation, or run from an evil person, you cannot run from the evil inside yourself. Only grace has the power to rescue you from you and to deliver you from the most threatening evil of all—the evil that still resides in your heart.

But of course, if you’re going to fight temptation, then you have to be very careful and intentional with what you expose yourself to. Not everything on Netflix is going to help you to think correctly about sexuality. Not everything on TikTok or Instagram will be helpful for your eyes and your heart. Here’s the question: If you want to be sexually pure, are you willing to say no to the popular things that everybody is participating in, watching, or talking about that will increase your temptation and make your struggle with purity even harder?

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