Teenagers Are People Too! - JOYCE MEYER

INTRODUCTION:

Teenagers Are People Too!

As a teenager reading this book, you may look at my picture in the back and think, What can a woman of
her age know about being a teenager?

Well, believe it or not, I once was your age, and, believe it or not, someday you will be as old as I am now. The decisions you make between now and then will determine the quality of life you have. Every decision you make right now is affecting your future

— the attitude you have toward family, school and church; the kind of friends and the type of entertainment you choose; the role models you follow and the heroes you admire and imitate — all these have lasting results. They are not fleeting things without impact on the rest of your life.


As a young person, it may be harder for you to make proper decisions than it is for an adult, but that is understandable.


Teenagers are no different from anyone else. They have many of the same problems adults have, but they are less equipped to deal with them simply due to lack of experience.

At age eighteen, we usually think we know everything, and certainly more than our parents and most adults we know. By age forty, we have realized we don't know much of anything and need all the wisdom we can get. At this point in life, we usually begin to gain some wisdom, much of which derives from the experiences we have had.


The fact is, we learn much more about life from the things we go through than we ever do from books.

We gain knowledge from books; we gain experience from life.

Some teens do have more common sense than adults. Not all adults are doing what they should be doing in life. It seems almost everyone has personal problems, and I have observed that people with problems usually cause problems for those they are in relationship with.


You as a teenager may be facing some difficult problems in your life right now. Those problems did not just appear suddenly; there is a reason, a root cause for them. But there is also a solution.

In this book, we are going to explore some of those problems, their causes and ways to overcome them. In the process, you will discover that regardless of your past, God has a wonderful future planned for you.

Face Challenges Together

Your teen years can be challenging not only for you, but for your parents as well. You may be living with both of your parents or in a single-parent household, you may be living with a relative or a legal guardian, or it is possible you are reading this book and currently have no place you call home. Whatever your present situation, because it is very probable that you will face some kind of challenges as a teenager, I have included a special section for parents at the end of this book.


In this final chapter they will read about some of the pressures teens are under these days that can cause you to make unwise decisions about your behavior, and they will be encouraged to be patient, loving, respectful and supportive of you. The ultimate purpose is to help close the “generation gap” and encourage each of you that you can live together in peace, harmony and love.


I believe that God wants your teen years to be a happy, healthy, exciting time of life, one filled with positive learning experiences. I pray that reading this book will be one of those positive experiences for you in which you will learn that God loves you, your parents love you, and with God's help, you can overcome every problem and become the person He created you to be!