If your class is meeting online, invite your students to bring a pen/pencil and index card with them to class.

Think about the beginning of one of your relationships. It doesn’t have to be a dating relationship—it can be a close friendship, or even the first time you met a family member. Think about how exciting it was getting to know that person for the first time.

No relationship stays new and exciting forever. We usually get tired of everyone eventually, even our BFFs. They tick us off, or we get bored doing the same things every time we hang out, or we run out of stuff to talk about. We may wish the relationship could go back to the way it was in the beginning.

That can happen in our relationship with God, too. Maybe there have been times when you had a really great prayer time, and you wished it could be like that every day. Maybe you watched God change someone’s life on a mission’s trip, and you’ll never forget it. Maybe you remember this one church service or retreat where God seemed so close you could almost touch Him. But if you’re honest, those same things—praying, or ministering, or going to church—may seem boring at times.

Every relationship gets a little dry sometimes—even our relationship with God. Sometimes, the “spiritual” activities that used to make us feel close to Him feel dry and worn out. But the solution isn’t giving up on God! Instead, you need to look for a way to make your relationship fresh again.

That’s your challenge this week: Try something different in your relationship with God. That doesn’t mean pick something that’s hard to do—in fact, that may be self-defeating, because you might procrastinate. Instead, just pick something different.

Do you always pray silently? Try doing it out loud in the privacy of your own room. Better yet, grab a friend and do it out loud together. If you don’t have a friend handy, write a short prayer on paper like a letter to God.

Do you always read a chapter from the Bible? Try reading just a verse or two, then “meditate” on it—in other words, focus your thoughts on what it means for a few minutes. Or maybe you always use a devotional book. Skip it for a few days and just read a chapter from one of the Gospels.

Do you always sit in the back of our church? Try sitting up front instead. Take notes on the pastor’s message and talk with your family about it later.

Maybe the most important thing you can do to refresh your relationship with God is to find a way to serve people. That can be as simple as offering to help a teacher clean up his room, or as complicated as starting to volunteer every month at a food bank. Nothing will improve your relationship with God faster than taking your focus off yourself.

Bottom line: Change up your spiritual life this week! As we’ve been learning from Isaiah, doing “religious stuff” is no substitute for a strong relationship with God. So don’t pick something to do just so you can check it off a list. Find a way to experience your friendship with God in a new, fresh way—with a heart to drawing closer to Jesus!

Hand out index cards and pens/pencils to your students. If your class is meeting online, invite them to have those items ready. Have your students write out Ezekiel 36:28b and 1 John 4:20 on their index card (you may want to write out the verses in their entirety on the whiteboard or screenshared document). Encourage your teens to write down one spiritual experience they’re going to try this week that isn’t a part of their usual routine—something that embraces one or both of the verses they just wrote down.

Close in prayer, asking God to keep your teens’ “spiritual experiences” from being empty rituals. Instead, ask God to make Himself real to your teens in a fresh way as they try to draw closer to Him relationally.