If your young people are well off, and have a good supply of spending money, ask them to list all the 'stuff' they have bought over the last month. This includes clothes, mp3 tracks, CDs, junk food they didn't need but just wanted. Ask them to consider the list for a moment. Is there more there than they thought there would be? How much of that stuff did they actually need? Did buying that stuff make them happy? Why/why not?

If most of your group has little or no spending money, ask them to write a list of 5 things they feel pressured to buy, things that maybe they get a bit obsessed about owning. Ask them to keep the lists private but to answer these questions together: Why do they feel the need to own this stuff? Where does the pressure come from? Do they think owning these five things would make them happier/more popular? Why/why not?

'We all want to be loved and admired.'
'We are sold the idea that buying this will make us beautiful.'
'We want to be renewed because we get bored and tired of ourselves.'
'We hate our imperfections, so to make ourselves new we buy new stuff.'

All these feelings are associated with consumerism, and all these feelings stem from the Fall. Read 2 Cor 4:16-18 and Coll 3: 9,10 together.

• 'For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal'. What does this mean?
• God says we are 'being renewed'. It is a continual process that is happening all the time. How do you feel about this? What can you do to help the process?

Key point: When humans broke away from God's perfect love, we no longer had the perfect affirmation or acceptance of a perfect loving God. Ever since then, we have been striving to reclaim the perfection with which we were made. Yet the Bible says that it is only through God's love, our acceptance of our sinfulness, and our acceptance of Christ's sacrifice that will lead us to wholeness and contentedness again.