Recently I asked each member of our youth staff to read “Do Hard Things” by Alex and Brett Harris and then pass the book along to one of our teens. The book challenges the worldly thinking of our culture by showing that God would have teenagers do more than just play video games, watch the latest YouTube sensation, and hang out with friends. The goal is to create and fuel a “rebelution” against the low expectations of our culture, expectations that have even crept into churches and that Christian teens may have for themselves.

The authors are 19-year-old twins who were homeschooled and accomplished some amazing things during their teen years. Their challenge to this generation is to do hard things by God’s grace with the abilities and interests that He has given. The book is an easy read as most of its argument develops through illustrations from real teens’ experiences, including many from the Harrises’ lives. At 16 they were interns for an Alabama Supreme Court justice, the youngest interns in the court’s history. The next summer they ran the justice’s campaign to be elected chief justice. Later that year they started a blog dealing with the issues of low teen expectations and it became the most successful teen-run blog on the Web. Read More→