A Residential Treatment Home

For those of you who don't know, in a bizarre twist of fate/irony or what I know to be the hand of the Lord, I who HATED high school and couldn't wait to be free, now spend much of my free time with teenage girls. Yikes. My friend Patty and I have the opportunity every Saturday night to go, by invitation, to a state funded residential treatment facility for teenage girls…and teach bible study. How amazing is that. These girls are there because they have drug and/or alcohol problems and have failed foster care, or they have committed a crime and are there through the xxx (state deleted) Youth Authority. Despite their backgrounds and experiences, they are amazingly resilient and insatiably curious young girls.

As you may imagine, these girls have been victimized repeatedly by numerous people throughout their lives. They come from drug homes, abusive homes, or transient homes. One girl rejoiced with us that her mother was in prison and could no longer take the drugs that were blowing out her veins. Another came to study one week glowing and joyous because she had finally had the courage to testify at her father's trial about her extensive abuse. Another sweet girl asks us to pray that she'll behave long enough to earn the privilege of shaving her legs.

I could go on and on.

We are studying with them right now the proofs of the bible and of Jesus as Messiah in the student version of "The Case for Christ".

These girls ask some of the hardest questions imaginable. They want to know if Jesus cares that they were abused and abandoned. They want to know if he was there while they were being beaten and neglected. If God could still love people like them. How can they know for sure? How can they trust Him? Why didn't he stop the abuse they went through? Can he help them be free of their addictions? What if they're mad at Him or forget to pray, are they still saved?

When I look at them I can hear Jesus as he said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest...My yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Slowly and carefully, they are turning to Jesus. One precious girl came to to the facility thinking that god was in the trees and the animals. She asked, is that god? No, he is not the flower, but he made the flower. We should never praise the creation instead of the creator. If you could only see how far she’s come! Her face glows with the grace of God as one who has been washed in the blood of a perfect savior who has made her as white as snow. She can't stop talking about Jesus, she has met the one who makes her face radiant. "Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered in shame."

My purpose in writing this isn't to brag, though I love to talk about how wonderful they are. It isn't to horrify or shock you, though the things they've experienced are horrifying and shocking. My hope is that you will remember us on Saturday nights from 7-8, that you would cover all of us in prayer. For Patty and I, pray that we speak the word of God with boldness and that we shower them with the love of Christ in humility and kindness. For each of the girls, that their time at the facility would prove to be the time when they meet their savior, and their lives are changed for eternity. That they trust and believe that God is who he says he is, that He can do what he says he can do, that they are who He says they are, that they can do all things through Christ and that His word is alive and active in them.

Thank you, Father, for loving each of us so much that you sent your Son, Jesus. Thank you that each of us can become new creatures, free to live an abundant life. Amen.