As I was reading this article, Guard Our Girls, the feeling I had was a strange one. It was the knowledge of myself not being one of the women who have already grown and faced all of these attacks of the enemy. But I had to read it as one of the girls who is having to come face to face with the world in my own life and the lives of my peers around me.

While reading the article I felt the inadequacy of all my attempts at taking action to help and minister to the girls of my generation. I realized that it can no longer be good enough to simply be an example or a silent statue pointing to Jesus. I had to understand that God calls every one of us to do more. He gives a sort of model of the way we are to view ourselves and the way we are to be towards others. The following verse explains some.

Heb. 10:22-24 let us draw near to god with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.

When I was around fourteen, God put a calling on my life to encourage the young girls around me and to try to “spur” them on to serving Him. I was in a youth worship meeting and He started showing me the life that He wanted me to live for His sake and the sake of the lives that I saw every week in youth group. I had to realize that I could use the time despite its short length to try and to encourage everyone but specifically the girls. So I started coming out of my comfort zone some. It has to be a process but God did take me my fear of looking stupid.

By introducing myself to the new girls that came, giving them hugs and getting them to know the other people in youth it was still and easy enough ministry to be comfortable in. There was, however, a difference in the way they related to me as opposed to when I was going more for my own enjoyment. I liked the difference, I liked being friendly and I was comfortable doing it in youth group. But God never seems to want to leave a person in their bubble of comfort!

There were girls who came to the youth group who were hurting. And so many times I wouldn’t understand why the girls acted the way they did or dressed the way they did. Some of them came who were so closed up and hard to talk to and some of them came who clung to every bit of love they got. And for the closed up girls who came showing them love and acceptance, when you first meet them and every time you see them after that, the barrier of hardness eventually breaks down. It is a miracle to see the way God works through a simple hug!

Although I had started to let God work through love, I still didn’t understand how exactly to relate to the ones who had been through so many things that I never had before. Because I had grown up in a sheltered and protected home away from so many of the world’s problems and desperations I didn't know how to dig in past the way a person dressed, talked or acted. But working in the youth ministry and loving the girls enough to let them know that they have a listener to share what they have been through allowed them to open up. They revealed to me a group of young girls whose hearts have been broken time and again by circumstances and choices.

It is so easy to be a judgmental person and simple write a girl down in our mental categories as weird, different, or “looserish,” when really the girls who show that they are hurting on the outside are the ones who are screaming for notice and help. Especially the girls who harm themselves by cutting, attempt suicide, get drunk a lot, do drugs, or sleep around. In those girls lives there are probably more valid reasons for them to claim the word broken and they are the ones who in their hearts are ready to be taken out of the situations that they thought would bring fulfillment but is only making the holes in their hearts bigger.

I believe what God wants us Christian young people to learn most in reference to the broken hearted of our generation is: Don’t push them away. Don’t do what they do, but love them. Jesus loved the outcast and we should follow His example. He says in the Bible, “it is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick.” Mark 2:17. When you are ministering, or even if you are not, don’t go only to the girls who you think will be “normal” with minor or no problems. Go to the lonely girls standing off to the side. Because it is the broken who need someone to come fix them up and as Christians we are the one standing by the Ultimate Fixer of a broken heart and we should be the tools for Him to start. There are real reasons for people to be hurting and we as Christians can’t just push them away and label them “weirdoes”.

This article really called my attention back to the girls who God has called me to minister. It has allowed God to take my eyes off the “future” of the ministry God wants and put them on the broken hearted around me who are in need now!

Submitted by Alicia Tecero: Alicia Tecero was asked to write a response to the main article of our last issue, “Guard our Girls”. At the time she writes she is 16, she is an active member of Lighthouse Christian Center, in Oak Harbor, WA and an assistant to the Youth Ministry.