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Introduction
THE SESSION
As your young people arrive, take extra care to compliment your young people, without focusing on physical appearance, perhaps noticing the way that they treat one another or how they help to make others feel welcome. Begin the session by explaining that we will be thinking about the way God sees us, and why we can stand with our shoulders back, and our heads held high, as children of God.
Track 3: BEAUTIFUL TO ME
Play the track, and distribute copies of the lyrics for your young people to follow. Encourage them, as they listen, to underline or highlight any lyrics which they can relate to, or that they can see in other people.
Invite your group to share the lyrics which stand out to them, and to share any experiences they have (while respecting anonymity) about the issues raised in the song surrounding low self-esteem or selfimage. Explain that, for many reasons, we may all struggle to see the beauty in ourselves. Perhaps because we judge ourselves against things we see in other people, or compare ourselves to images we see in the media. It is far easier to see the faults in ourselves, and to imagine that we don’t match up to an expected ideal.
The only way to understand who we really are is to view ourselves in the way God views us, and we get a glimpse of this in the Bible. Provide a selection of small mirrors for your young people to look into, as you read Psalm 139, perhaps from a translation such as The Message. Remind your young people that when God looks at us, he sees exactly who he designed us to be. He doesn’t focus on physical appearance, and even looks beyond the faults in our character, acknowledging who we are now, but celebrating all that we can be.
For some of your young people, there may be particular issues that have been raised by this session. Invite those young people to talk these things through with a member of your team, after the session has come to an end.
As you bring the session to a close, pray for your young people, that they would come to understand and grasp that they are fully known and loved by God, who sees the beauty within each of them.
