Where do Christian teens go for answers? Sometimes it’s Google. After all, the average teenager would rather take medical advice from an article they found in an online search than from an actual doctor.
Other times—or maybe most times, if we’re realistic—they look to friends and peers. That’s why it matters so much which crowd they’re hanging out with.
But, for believers in Jesus—and for everyone on the planet, actually—the answers we search for reside in one place. It’s not in our own minds, in the opinions of others, or in a search engine, but in the timeless truth of God’s Word.
Like Jesus, the Word is fully human and fully divine. It was written by 40 men over the period of 1,500 years. These men had backgrounds that ranged from shepherd to warrior to judge to king to fisherman to tentmaker and more. Although most of the writers had never met each other, what they wrote is in complete harmony. The only way this could possibly happen if they were guided by a divine hand. And they were—by the hand of God Himself!
Also like Jesus, the Bible has no faults. It’s completely perfect and trustworthy!
No other book, friend, expert, or online resource comes even close to the reliability of Scripture. We must teach our teenagers to look to the Bible for answers to the biggest questions in life. Here are three reasons why:
1. The Bible Is Inspired.
No, not that kind of inspiration. There are tons of books out there that are “inspirational,” but only one that is truly inspired. That book is the Bible.
Here’s what 2 Timothy 3:16 has to say about it:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.
The Greek word for inspiration means “breathed out.” When you speak, you “breathe out” words into the air. When God spoke, He breathed out words onto paper (or papyrus) through the pens of the men who wrote it.
What makes the Bible so uniquely divine and so divinely human is that each individual writer retained his own personality and writing style as he wrote. So, although each word is the Word of God, each word is from the pen of men.
How could this process of inspiration possibly happen? Peter, the fisherman/apostle explains it:
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:20-21)
The Greek word translated “carried along” is the same Greek word used to describe a boat that has given way to the wind, to be carried wherever it carries it. In the same way, the wind of the Spirit carried the writers to exactly where He wanted them to be as they wrote.
The Word of God truly contains the words of God, but at the same time is fully human.
2. The Bible Is Inerrant.
This simply means that the Bible, in its original writings, was without errors. Every word penned was perfect.
