High School Seniors

Overview

The final year of the Family Discipleship Plan is designed as an independent study. It aims to foster independence in spiritual practices and pursuits, to help students establish or maintain rhythms that will serve them well into adulthood, and to cultivate a zeal and love for the things of the Lord.

Ecclesiastes 12:13: The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

Acts 20:24: But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.



Download the Senior Year PDF

How to Use the FDP Senior Year

Contents

  • Resource Library: Recommended resources to get started in various spiritual disciplines
  • Pursuits and Rhythms: Steps to consistently help you pursue faithfulness as a Jesus follower
  • Workout: A template to guide your spiritual disciplines such as Bible reading, study, meditation, prayer
  • Aims: Prayer points for yourself and for others

For Seniors

  • You have found this page because you want to grow as a Jesus follower, and we want to help you! We are glad you’re here!
  • On this page, you’ll find recommended resources, and a template for studying and meditating on God’s Word that you can use alongside any passage of Scripture.
  • You can use these resources on your own to supplement your church’s study, or to go deeper into the sermons and messages you’re hearing at church.
  • What matters for you is that you develop healthy disciplines that will serve you well over a lifetime of following Jesus. We are honored to help you along in this journey.

For Parents

  • The Senior Workout is designed to help students establish, build, maintain, and restore healthy rhythms of spiritual disciplines. Encourage their independence, but provide direction and accountability.
  • Encourage students in the relationships that help them grow as disciples of Jesus and in relationships that help them grow as disciple-makers.

For the Church

  • Tip: Have a senior year meeting to cast vision to students, leaders, and parents.
  • If your seniors have been using the Family Discipleship Plan since they were freshman, most of the content that students will receive within church programs, they will have heard before. This time, consider how your church can train them to apply it through an “others-centered” lens.
  • The High School Focus is Influence, but when students hear this content for the first time as freshmen, they likely are not thinking about or practicing influence. When they are taught truths a second time as a senior, they can selfishly think, “I have heard this before,” or they can look outside of self, seek to use their influence, and think, “How can I use this truth to help others follow Jesus?”
  • Consider how your programming can utilize seniors and give them a lab within which they can practice using their influence in younger students’ lives alongside adult leaders.
Resource Library

Resources

Use these recommended resources to establish, or continue in, helpful rhythms of study and spiritual disciplines.

Study Bible: ESV Study Bible
Use a Study Bible to get helpful background and overview information of each book as well as quick study notes to aid in your comprehension and interpretation of God’s Word.

Bible Reading Plans:
Use one of these or another Bible reading plan to aid in your diligent pursuit of reading Scripture.

Commentaries:
Use a commentary after you have read and studied the Word on your own to supplement your comprehension and interpretation of the Word. See the Workout template below as a guide for how to study on your own.

Books:
While not an exhaustive list, these books are recommended as starting places for various spiritual disciplines and pursuits.

Pursuits and Rhythms

Living faithfully as a Jesus follower is a pursuit that will take your entire life to accomplish. Establish the following rhythms that will be able to strengthen, encourage, challenge, and help you along the way.

  • Be a faithful member of a healthy local church
  • Commit to gathering weekly with your local church
  • Be in at least one discipling relationship where someone is helping you grow
  • Be in at least one discipling relationship where you are helping someone else grow
  • Have regular rhythms of spiritual disciplines, both personal and corporate
  • If you are going away to college, be diligent to pursue church membership and gospel-centered community in your new city

Influence

We are not our own. Our lives belong to the Lord, and we are responsible to use our influence for God’s glory over our own, to build His kingdom over ours, and to make much of Jesus instead of ourselves. Ephesians 1 proclaims that the Jesus follower is called according to His purpose. The senior year aims to equip you to study God’s Word independently and grow to use your influence for the good of others and the glory of God.

Workout

Select a passage of Scripture from your personal study or one led by your church. Use the following questions as a template for pursuing faithful study of God’s Word.

Study

Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them. Psalm 111:2

Find the Big Truth (Scripture proclaims truth.)

• What is the main point of this passage?
• How do we know this is the main point?
• Are there other key truths within this passage?

Find Big Ideas (Truths have implications and applications; they mean something for our lives and require a response.)

• What implications of this truth do you see in this passage?
• What other implications does this truth have for our lives?
• What does this passage teach us about God?
• Is there any sin to avoid, commands to obey, or promises to trust in?

Meditate

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. Psalm 1:1-2

Pray

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. James 5:16

• Pray Scripture.
• Pray in adoration and praise for who God is and in thanksgiving for what God has done.
• Pray in confession of sin, submitting to the authority of Scripture.
• Pray in supplication, asking God to meet your specific needs and help you grow.
• Pray in intercession, asking God to meet the specific needs of others and to help them grow.

Practice

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. James 1:22

Talk About Truth

In isolation, we are prone to error and deception. Having faithful Jesus followers around us with whom we can study God’s Word helps guard us from the dangers of false teaching in our own interpretation.

• Who can you talk with about what you’re pondering?

Obey Truth

We exercise our influence by personally applying God’s truth to our lives and living in light of it.

  • What are some next steps of obedience that we can take this week in light of the truths and implications from this passage? (Confession, repentance, faith, trust, worship, pursuit, growth, etc.)
  • What is one application that you are going to pursue this week?

Teach Truth

We exercise our influence by engaging others and teaching them to observe all God has commanded.

  • If you were taking someone else through this passage of Scripture, how would you talk about its truths and implications?
  • How can you take the truths and implications from this passage and help someone else this week? (Helping them take a next step, sharing the gospel, encouraging, admonishing, etc.)
  • Who is one person that you will talk to this week about what you have learned?

Aims

4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Deuteronomy 6:4-5

36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. Matthew 22:36-38

Every student should know:

  • God is One
  • In His sovereignty, He is bringing all things through the story of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation.
  • By His grace, He has brought us from death in sin to new life in Christ.
  • By His power, we can use our influence to make Him known.

Every student should strive to:

  • Be wholly submitted to God, His Word, and His people.
  • Be wholly devoted to Jesus alone.
  • Be immersed in truth, and flee from the lies of the world.
  • Make disciples.
  • Regularly observe your own life, confess sin and weakness, and take next steps to grow in maturity: the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4).

Every student should:

  • Feel small: God is God, and you are not.
  • Feel awe for the God whose story of redemption is unfolding.
  • Feel secure: when you are in Christ, nothing can separate you.
  • Feel responsible to use your influence to make much of Jesus.

Every student should want to:

  • Know the fullness of God’s will in Jesus. (Eph 1:9)
  • Glorify God in all things. (1 Cor 10:31)
  • See others glorify God because of their influence. (Gal 1:27)
  • Long for the day when Jesus comes again. (Rev 22:20)