Since we hit the tragedy of suicide hard last week, God directed us to take one more week in the hard issues of teenage life…and talk about cutting, self-injury, self-abuse, and self-harm. God surfaced so many struggles in the lives of the students through this sermon. I literally stayed for an hour after the service just counseling teens who were hurting and admitting struggles. I was up past midnight responding to all kinds of texts and emails over the topic. I believe many times, youth ministries aren’t coming close to scratching the surface of the real issues in students lives. And at other times, the student ministries who do focus on all the immediate issues…aren’t pointing them to Jesus thru the gospel. There has to be a real balance here of being proactive and reactive. Proactively letting the Holy Spirit deal with issues from the Word, and reactively preaching the issues that we’re aware of when they become urgent. Feel free to check out and use all of our media on cutting and self-abuse for your own life and ministry.