UncommonTEEN for Christian Teen Girls

Have a question you want me to answer on the podcast? Ask Here!On this week's Ask Me Anything, episode, we are answering the question, "Could you talk about fear of the future on the UncommonTEEN Podcast? I'm really scared of everything going on in the world. I know I should give all my problems to God, but I'm still so scared and don't know what to do. I feel like God isn't listening to me and isn't helping at all.On thing I have learned about fear is that it is meant to paralyze us. It's meant to make use doubt God, doubt ourselves and doubt others. It's meant to consume uses that the enemy can stop us in our tracks. Fear is something that I dealt with from a young age. On one hand, I lived my life in fear and on the other hand I was addicted to it--drawn to it. I didn't give my life to the Lord until I was 17, but even so, I was still addicted to fear. I couldn't wait for the next horror movie to come out. I remember the last horror movie I ever saw. I was in college and a bunch of my friends from the Christian organization on campus and I went to go watch it. There was one girl in our group who wasn't used to watching horror movies and it scared her pretty badly. While we were on our way back to our dorm rooms, one of the guys in our group went ahead of us and pulled a prank on that girl...something to do with the movie, scaring her more. She just laughed it off and so did we...not thinking any more about it. The next day, I was talking to a guy (who is now my husband), telling him about what happened the night before, thinking it was funny and he looked at me and said something I will never forget. He said, "Why would you intentionally invite fear into your life when God so clearly says in His Word not to fear?" Ouch! You may be thinking, "I'm not intentionally inviting fear into my life, it just happens. I can't help it, but see it when I look around me." And you're right. We live in a fallen world and just looking out there it's crazy! However, we aren't the first generation to face pretty crazy things. It's happened to every generation up to this point. The question we need to ask is: why are some people not affected by the craziness going on around us...meaning they aren't in fear...while others fall prey to it? The answer, it's what we focus on. If we focus on our circumstances more than we focus on God, we will step into fear. However, if we focus on our God more than we focus on our circumstances, it will produce peace. Think about the Israelite army when they were up against the Philistines. The Israelites were hiding in terror. They were focused on the big problem in front of them...Goliath. However, when David saw Goliath, he wasn't afraid at all. He was focused on how big His God was and knew that together they could take down Goliath! The same is true for you! Support the showWant a little extra sparkle this month? ✨ Grab your December Glow Mail and soak in God's Radiant Love for you! Packed with goodies and encouragement to help your heart shine—get yours delivered straight to your mailbox! Grab your Glow Mail Here! CONNECT WITH COACH JAMIE LIFE COACHING for Christian Teen Girls SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE! PODCAST RESOURCES ABOUT

Have a question you want me to answer on the podcast? Ask Here!AMA: Hannah-Does Evolution Fit with the Bible? On this week’s AMA episode, Hannah says, “Recently I’ve been thinking about evolution. When I was talking to my friends about Jesus and God one of them asked me “so you don’t believe in evolution?” That question has stuck with me as currently we’re learning about evolution in science and we’re about to do a test on it. But I guess my question is this: is evolution real? And how does evolution fit into what we know happened in Genesis with the creation of humans?” I love this question, because as Christians, this is something that is extremely important to know. We can actually help lead others to Jesus when we know the answers ourselves.  Support the showWant a little extra sparkle this month? ✨ Grab your December Glow Mail and soak in God's Radiant Love for you! Packed with goodies and encouragement to help your heart shine—get yours delivered straight to your mailbox! Grab your Glow Mail Here! CONNECT WITH COACH JAMIE LIFE COACHING for Christian Teen Girls SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE! PODCAST RESOURCES ABOUT

Have a question you want me to answer on the podcast? Ask Here!In part one of this series, we talked about how to keep ourselves from losing positions so that we don’t find ourselves in a low place asking ourselves, “How did I get here?” As a teen, I found myself in these places so often. I didn’t give my life to Jesus until I was 17 and I had a lot of learning, a lot of shame, a lot of guilt, a lot of regret that I couldn’t let go of…most of those because of choices I made that got me to that place where I was asking myself, “how did I get here?” When I was a teenager, I didn’t have the best track record for choosing guys. Now, granted, I wasn’t a Christian until I was 17, but goodness…I could have taught you all what not to do! Well, I kind of do with my podcast episodes, by sharing my stories with you.  I want you to realize that if you are feeling this way, you are not alone. I know there are many girls who are listening to this walking through something similar, but there is hope. You can become free!  Freedom starts with forgiveness. Forgiving yourself and forgiving those who have hurt you. When we hold onto unforgiveness, it hurts us.  Forgiveness is the choice to let go of the desire to hurt those that hurt you…including yourself.  Forgiveness is not weakness. It gives you the power to take your life back from the person who hurt you. When you choose to forgive, that’s when you find freedom.Forgiveness is not a gift to the offender. It’s a gift to you. When you have unforgiveness, you hold onto your past. You are stuck and not able to step toward your God-given destiny. Forgiveness doesn’t start with their apology. Sometimes they will never apologize. Sometimes they will never be sorry. When you hold onto unforgiveness, that person is still controlling you.Forgiveness is a choice made by faith. Choices lead…and feelings will follow. If you wait for a feeling, you’ll never forgive. True freedom comes from the Word.John 8:31-32 tells us Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”In order to really know the Word of God and step into the freedom He has for us, we have to know the Word. Not just know it in our heads but know it in our hearts. We do that by renewing our minds to God’s Word. Romans 12:2 says in the NLT version, Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.The battle of shame, guilt and regret is a battle in our mind. The Bible helps us renew our minds and when that happens, our thoughts line up with God’s thoughts and we are able to step into true freedom. Support the showWant a little extra sparkle this month? ✨ Grab your December Glow Mail and soak in God's Radiant Love for you! Packed with goodies and encouragement to help your heart shine—get yours delivered straight to your mailbox! Grab your Glow Mail Here! CONNECT WITH COACH JAMIE LIFE COACHING for Christian Teen Girls SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE! PODCAST RESOURCES ABOUT

Have a question you want me to answer on the podcast? Ask Here!I have heard so many stories from several of you ladies who were innocently scrolling on social media when a message popped up in your chat. This super cute guy was messaging you either asking you if you'd like to be his friend or complementing you about how beautiful you are. It seemed innocent enough until you found yourself in the place asking yourself the question, "How did I get here?"Recently, Investigators (who are all former law enforcement officers) with an anti-trafficking organization called Hope for Justice, did an experiment where they created a fake Instagram account with a teen girl’s photo. In just 48 hours, there were messages from several people…three appearing to be older males who were excited to be talking to a girl under the age of 18. According to their website, hopeforjustice.org, these conversations escalated quickly to asking her (this fake Instagram account) for her age, where she lived, for her to send them photos and videos of herself, telling them that they will take care of them. When Hope for Justice responded that she (this fake Instagram account) lived at home with her mother, these guys wanted to meet with this “girl” in person. Two of these Three guys were identified by the police and law enforcement officers took over from there.  One of the biggest tactics online predators are using is blackmail. I have heard this directly from several different people. There is a girl that is local to me. She was homeschooled and an all-around great girl. She was scrolling through social media one day and got a message from this guy who she thought was cute. This girl is a Christian, but she never really felt accepted in her youth ministry…she especially was never noticed by any guys, so when this guy noticed her online and she saw he was cute. She started talking to him. She was cautious, because she had heard the stories. They chatted every day at a specific time when nobody was home, and it became their thing. She got to know him and really felt a connection to him and then he asked her for an inappropriate photo. She was shocked, but sent a photo anyway, because she didn’t want to say no and not talk to this guy again. That one photo turned into blackmail. He began to tell her that she needed to send him more photos and videos or he was going to send her parents the first photo that she sent. He told her that he knew where she lived and recited her home address to her. By the way, it is not hard for people to get your home address if they know what they are doing online. She didn’t know how he got her home address, but she felt stuck. It wasn’t until one day that the FBI came knocking at her door telling her parents that their daughter was a victim of online sexual exploitation.  Support the showWant a little extra sparkle this month? ✨ Grab your December Glow Mail and soak in God's Radiant Love for you! Packed with goodies and encouragement to help your heart shine—get yours delivered straight to your mailbox! Grab your Glow Mail Here! CONNECT WITH COACH JAMIE LIFE COACHING for Christian Teen Girls SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE! PODCAST RESOURCES ABOUT

Have a question you want me to answer on the podcast? Ask Here!Anxiety…I remember being in this place…my heart began beating fast. It felt like there was a 1,000 pound elephant on my chest and I couldn’t breathe. I remember one time, and this was just earlier this year, I was in a crowd where I knew about 95% of the people there. In this crowd, we were asked to find someone and go talk to them. Not a big deal right? Wrong! I started to feel anxiety come on me, I started to listen to all of those negative thoughts going through my head like “who would want to talk to you?” “what would you even say?” “you’re going to be alone.” And I began to panic. I excused myself from the crowd, went into the restroom fighting tears and asked God for help.  As a teen, I remember lying awake at night, thinking about (or really I should say worrying about) anything and everything. It would literally take me hours to fall asleep, because I couldn’t shut off my brain. It always felt like something was about to happen, danger was going to hit, but I didn’t know where or when or how.  I was so bad, that if a friend didn’t call or show up when she was supposed to, I would automatically think the worst…and I didn’t know how to stop it! I even remember one time, interviewing for a job. I had my hands on my lap under the table and because of the anxiety I felt, I didn’t even realize I was doing this at the time, but I was scratching my hands with my fingernails. When I got up to leave, I’m thankful the person didn’t want to shake my hand, because my hands were starting to bleed from all the scratching. Maybe you can relate. Maybe you have been right where I was. I recently read an article about the state of mental health in teens from in the United States and I wish I could say that what I read surprised me, but it didn’t. The article stated that anxiety, depression and hopelessness among teens in the United States is getting worse, not better.  If you are anything like I was, I tried everything and anything to get over anxiety, but nothing seemed to work. I thought that the only way things would change is if my circumstances would change, but that didn’t help either. It felt like a losing battle. But one thing I learned was that anxiety doesn’t just go away because our circumstances change. Anxiety goes away when we learn how to conquer it once and for all!! Support the showWant a little extra sparkle this month? ✨ Grab your December Glow Mail and soak in God's Radiant Love for you! Packed with goodies and encouragement to help your heart shine—get yours delivered straight to your mailbox! Grab your Glow Mail Here! CONNECT WITH COACH JAMIE LIFE COACHING for Christian Teen Girls SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE! PODCAST RESOURCES ABOUT

Have a question you want me to answer on the podcast? Ask Here!Recently, one of you wrote in letting me know you got water baptized! Woohoo!! I’m so excited for you! Then, some questions came up about water baptism, so I thought this would be a great time to talk about it!  This was an area of my life where I was so confused. To a lot of churches, water baptism has become a ritual…something that they do, but the people who are getting baptized have no idea why. That was the story of my life. The first time I was baptized was when I was 8 years old. My grandma belonged to a church that I went to with her on occasion. At this church, which was not a Christian church, everyone at the age of 8 was to go through indoctrination classes and get baptized at the end of the classes. I will be completely honest, I had no idea what they were teaching me and any time I asked questions, I got in trouble…so, I just went along with what they were saying and at 8 years old, I was baptized. I didn’t know why I was getting baptized; I just knew that I was supposed to according to the people at this church. I wasn’t even a Christian at the time!  Fast forward to my senior year of high school and I come to know Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I guess I didn’t tell my friends this, because with the denomination that we were going to, they believed that you had to be baptized in order to be saved. Well, I was baptized when I was 8, so that counts, right? Well, in college, I was a part of a Christian organization. I was actually a leader in this organization on campus and I kept hearing over and over again that in order to get saved I was supposed to be baptized. I began to question my salvation, because even though I was baptized when I was 8, that was before I made Jesus my Lord and Savior. I began to ask the director of the Christian organization about whether or not he thought I should be baptized, and his response was to kick me off of the leadership team, because I wasn’t “saved!” Yikes!  Shortly after all of this, I met my husband, we got married, moved to TN and started going to the church that we go to today. This was the first time that baptism was actually taught to me in a way that made sense! I learned that you didn’t need to get baptized in order to get saved, but it is very important, because it is the first commandment Jesus gave us. We’ll talk more about this in a bit. Shortly after going to our then new church, we got involved in youth ministry. The more I learned about baptism, the more I knew I should get baptized again, but my pride was holding me back. I began to think, well, if I get baptized now, people will think I wasn’t saved before. I can’t do that. That was purely pride talking! It wasn’t until I was on one of our mission trips to Jamaica that I decided that I was going to get baptized, and I was going to declare to the world what Jesus did on the inside of me, so in the Caribbean Sea in Montego Bay, Jamaica, I was baptized, and I am so gratefu Support the showWant a little extra sparkle this month? ✨ Grab your December Glow Mail and soak in God's Radiant Love for you! Packed with goodies and encouragement to help your heart shine—get yours delivered straight to your mailbox! Grab your Glow Mail Here! CONNECT WITH COACH JAMIE LIFE COACHING for Christian Teen Girls SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE! PODCAST RESOURCES ABOUT

Have a question you want me to answer on the podcast? Ask Here!We’ve heard it before, maybe many times…God loves you! For many of us, we grew up singing the song, “Jesus loves me!” and we were so excited…which we should be! I mean praise God for His love. But Just because we’ve heard it, just because we’ve sang the song a million times, doesn’t mean that we really know it. It doesn’t mean that we really understand it. And it doesn’t mean that we actually believe that God loves us. I didn’t grow up in a Christian home. My dad was physically, mentally, and verbally abusive. I did go to Vacation Bible School in the summertime, and I heard all about God’s love, but for me, there was a disconnect. I couldn’t understand what love was, because I never actually saw love. I was never actually told by either of my parents that they loved me. I didn’t receive hugs. I didn’t feel loved at all. I didn’t feel accepted. I often felt like I was a mistake, that I was here by accident.  You might be listening to this feeling the same way. On the outside, you pretend to have it all together, but on the inside you’re falling apart. Maybe your story isn’t as crazy as mine or maybe your story is crazier. No matter where you feel like you’re at, you’ve been asking yourself, what’s the point of being here? Or maybe you aren’t, which I pray is the case, but I can almost guarantee someone you’re close to is feeling this way.  God loves you so much more than you even realize. This is not the Sunday-school Jesus loves you kind of love…this love is so real. It’s a love that’s not based on condition. If you mess up, He isn’t going to love you any less than He already loves you. He loves you…period!  Support the showWant a little extra sparkle this month? ✨ Grab your December Glow Mail and soak in God's Radiant Love for you! Packed with goodies and encouragement to help your heart shine—get yours delivered straight to your mailbox! Grab your Glow Mail Here! CONNECT WITH COACH JAMIE LIFE COACHING for Christian Teen Girls SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE! PODCAST RESOURCES ABOUT

Have a question you want me to answer on the podcast? Ask Here!God doesn’t cause bad things to happen, neither does he allow them to happen.  We may ask ourselves: what if someone close to me dies and they were believing for healing? This happened to me just recently. A good friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer about a year and a half ago. Their family was believing for healing, she was believing for healing but ended up passing away. It seemed like God didn’t heal her. However, what we didn’t know was that my friend had given up fighting. She was tired of fighting when she knew she could be made free in heaven. Ask God if there is something that you're missing. He will show you!Think about Job, why did all of that bad stuff happen to Job? He had allowed fear to control his life, which opened the door to the enemy to be able to work in his life. Think about the woman with the issue of blood. She needed a mindset shift in order to receive God's healing. She was in a place where she continually expected bad things to happen. She had to shift that and begin to speak life over herself. God is constantly showering blessings down upon you. Picture an umbrella and under that umbrella is all of God’s blessings that He has for you. Is there an area of your life keeping you from stepping under that umbrella?  For example, do you need to dig into the Bible concerning a topic, because you really don't know what it says?Is there someone that is causing you pain and you need to forgive them?Is there a secret sin that you are struggling with and you haven't told anyone in order to get help to overcome?Is there pride in some area of your life or vanity? Maybe feeling less about yourself than what God says about you?Is it doubt that what you are believing for will actually happen?Ask God to reveal to you if there's something in your life that is holding you back from stepping into those blessings. Maybe it’s pride. I don’t know. Ask God to reveal to you your blind spots. Things that maybe you can’t see but are holding you back.Mark 11:22-24 says, "And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."God is on your side! He is not against you! Support the showWant a little extra sparkle this month? ✨ Grab your December Glow Mail and soak in God's Radiant Love for you! Packed with goodies and encouragement to help your heart shine—get yours delivered straight to your mailbox! Grab your Glow Mail Here! CONNECT WITH COACH JAMIE LIFE COACHING for Christian Teen Girls SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE! PODCAST RESOURCES ABOUT

Have a question you want me to answer on the podcast? Ask Here!AMA: I’m a junior in high school, but only just turned 16, which means I’ll move out to start college when I’m 17, and I still don’t know where God wants me. I’ve prayed for guidance and trust, but I just don’t quite know how to get through high school with so much ungodly anxiety.  I wanted to answer this question, because we are walking through this exact thing right now ourselves. I have a 17 year old daughter who is in her senior year of high school (grade 12) and a 15 year old son who is a junior (grade 11).  To share a little bit about our story, my daughter started taking dual enrollment classes during her 11th grade year in high school. For those of you who don’t know what those are, that’s when you take college courses in high school, but they count both toward your high school courses and your college courses. She was sure she knew exactly what God wanted her to do in life. Fast forward to this year and she came to grips with the thought of…what if this isn’t what God wants me to do with my life? What if I’m wrong. Girls, whew, this culture puts so much pressure on teens to have their whole life figured out. I feel like many times, we rush God’s plans, because of this pressure. It’s tough…you have only a short period of time to figure out your whole life when a lot of adults don’t even know what they want to do with their life. Check out this week's episode to learn how to listen to and be led by the Holy Spirit!  Support the showWant a little extra sparkle this month? ✨ Grab your December Glow Mail and soak in God's Radiant Love for you! Packed with goodies and encouragement to help your heart shine—get yours delivered straight to your mailbox! Grab your Glow Mail Here! CONNECT WITH COACH JAMIE LIFE COACHING for Christian Teen Girls SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE! PODCAST RESOURCES ABOUT

Have a question you want me to answer on the podcast? Ask Here!Have you ever felt like God wasn't answering your prayers? Like, He's just not listening? I have had several of you girls write into me lately saying that you don't feel like God is answering your prayers and it's making you question your faith.Today, we’re going to talk about Hannah. We can find her story in 1 Samuel chapter 1. Hannah walked through some pretty big challenges. She doesn't feel like God is answering her prayers, so she gives into the challenges, starts to let them take her down and then something happened. Check out this week's podcast episode to learn what Hannah did and what you can do to see real results with your prayers.  Support the showWant a little extra sparkle this month? ✨ Grab your December Glow Mail and soak in God's Radiant Love for you! Packed with goodies and encouragement to help your heart shine—get yours delivered straight to your mailbox! Grab your Glow Mail Here! CONNECT WITH COACH JAMIE LIFE COACHING for Christian Teen Girls SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE! PODCAST RESOURCES ABOUT