TEENS PAY TAXES?

-Connect- I often like to watch the Dr. Phil show in the afternoons and this week Dr. Phil has been talking about two little girls who were "abducted" by their father and taken to Belize. Dr. Phil, at the urging of the girls' mom, sent decetives to Belize in order to rescue the girls, and after weeks of tracking the girls down he found them and brought them back to America. However when they arrived, he found out that they didn't want to be with their mom. They had left everything about this world so that they could be with their father in a tiny Christian community in Central America. They left their friends, sports, schools, TV, electricity, and even running water for their faith.

-Reflect- Read Matthew 22
Key Verses 15-22

In our passage for today, a group of Jewish religious leaders come to challenge Jesus along the lines of faith and culture. They want to know if it is alright for believers to continue to participate in culture, to pay taxes, if they are suppose to be faithful to God alone. Just like the girls on the Dr. Phil Show, this group was struggling with their position in the world when God had called them out of the world. How could they continue to be children of this world if they we children of God? Jesus' answer is simple. Simply give to God what is God and give to Caesar (or the world) what is Caesar's.

-Direct- Now I say this is simple, but how do we apply Jesus' command to our lives? Maybe it's not right for these two girls to completely avoid the world and move into a community that has no contact with the outside world, but on the otherhand we are Christians and we have to find our identity first and foremost in Christ. Sure we should participate with the world, but if the world is making up who we are then we have forgotten the second part of Jesus' command, "Give to God those things which are God's." And what is God's? Maybe the better question would be, what isn't God's? This week we should think about those things in our lives that we are quicker to give to the world instead of to God. In what ways do we place the world above our relationship with God? In what ways are we leaving him out of the equation?