Chloe* was one of the pillars of youth group USA; the kind of girl who draws you in and makes you actually glad to work more hours for less pay than 99 percent of your co-workers.

Chloe rarely missed Wednesday nights and rallied her friends to camp. She didn’t cause trouble and made a terrific babysitter for your kids. On the outside, Chloe had it all together; she was one of the few you didn’t think you needed to worry about. But on the inside, Chloe was a shame-filled, crippled mess. Her secret sins were relentlessly darkening the corners of her mind, vignetting an otherwise hope-filled life.

Chloe never came to you for help because she was afraid of what you might think of her if you knew what she had really been doing lately. Ignoring the issue felt safer than coming clean. She thought, Me plus Jesus can sort this thing out if I can just try harder, pray more often, or stop giving in so easily. And so she kept trying to do this solo sin-slayer thing, terrified at the thought of being found out.

When Chloe first shared her story—anonymously—at LifeLoveandGod.com, my heart broke for her. I too knew what it was to hide my junk under a veneer of perfection; to love God with my whole heart, but to still suffer and sin in silence. Chloe’s story was my story, and it’s the story of, I believe, tens of thousands of girls in churches across the country.

Sexual addiction. Cutting. Substance abuse. Eating disorders. Same-sex relationships. The girls who come to us for help on these issues are only the tip of the iceberg. Many of us who work with youth have no idea just how many girls are drowning right under our noses. Friends, this is serious business. And as youth workers, we are in the best position possible to present a banquet of freedom, hope and new life for these silent sufferers. We can’t choose freedom for them, but we can certainly help them understand the underlying temptations toward their sin and the pathway to breaking the chains.

Over the past decade of helping girls caught in secret sins, I’ve been struck by the correlation between the most common sins and a girl’s core identity.

If we can help girls understand their key identity markers and longings, we just might be able to save them from a lifetime of hurt and regret.

Consider these five ways to save a girl as vital life preservers we should be tossing out of the boat toward drowning girls. I can’t guarantee they will take hold of them, but these tips certainly have the ability to help keep her afloat, giving her a much better survival rate through the teen years.

Help Her Understand Her Desire for Guys

I know it would be easier to do your job if you didn’t have to deal with the obsessive flirting and relationships gone bad, the fallout from poor choices and the complicated nature of guy/girl mission trip dynamics. I really do. But a girl’s identity is very much tied to whether she believes she is worth being pursued, and so you and I had better help her navigate this world if we want to save her—particularly from sexual sins and addictions.

To avoid basing her identity on a guy, she has to understand why she wants so badly to be wanted by a guy—why she subconsciously craves to have someone tell her that she is worthy and lovely, beautiful, precious and smart. If she doesn’t realize that God has given her a desire to be desirable (innately, as a female), and if she doesn’t know the dangers that lurk because that desire was Supersized by mankind’s Fall into sin, then she is going to go running to any pair of masculine arms (real or fantasy) that will scratch the itch.

In other words, if she doesn’t understand why she wants guys’ affirmation, she has no motivation to stop chasing it. Help her know her heart, and you’ll equip her protect it.

Tell Her Why She’s Beautiful

Piggybacking on a girl’s desire to be wanted by a guy, she also has a powerful craving to know she’s beautiful. This is another core identity issue that, if misunderstood, can start a girl down a dangerous path to secret sins. It doesn’t help that our society over-emphasizes and over-sexualizes beauty.

When you pair messages like, “Look like this,” “Dress like this,” “Buy all this” with a girl’s pre-programmed bent toward desiring beauty, the results can be catastrophic (as you know, because you watch this play out like reality TV every week).

Ironically, girls are the most beautiful things on the planet. There’s a reason advertisers don’t use chimpanzees in bikinis to sell mini blinds and deodorant. When God created Eve, He intended her to be the crowning stroke on His creative design for Earth. But you’d be hard pressed to find a girl who thinks she’s beautiful. Instead, she plucks, curls, squeezes, hoists, buys, sprays, tans and filters five million selfies in the name of beauty. On a darker note, she can also get caught in eating disorders, cutting, unhealthy relationships and blatant materialism because of her craving to be beautiful. She defaults to finding her identity in her beauty when she doesn’t understand she already has it. Beauty enough is right there, hiding in plain sight. Help her see that unique beauty as a girl created in God’s image—inside and, also importantly, outside—and you’ll save her from drowning in beauty obsession.

Teach Her to Stand Up to Guys

I’m not looking to discourse on gender roles, but there’s something at the core of a female that seems bent toward following a guy’s lead in a relationship. In a healthy situation, this works beautifully. But when you throw in sin, selfishness, a highly-sexualized society, hormones and the desires we talked about in #1 and #2, girls can easily find themselves in compromising—even dangerous—situations.

Interesting fact: I’ve never once had a guy come to me and say, “Man, I really want to stay pure until I get married, but my girlfriend is just putting all this pressure on me to ______.” I know this does happen, but it’s 100 to 1 the other way around. On the flip side, I can’t tell you how many girls have confessed, broken-hearted, that they followed a guy to a back room, let him drive her down a dirt road, or stayed in a borderline abusive relationship because they were following a boyfriend’s initiative.

Please hear me: I am in no way excusing a girl’s part in all of this. She (usually) has the power of choice, and is always responsible for her own sin. But we have a huge opportunity, and responsibility, to help girls understand their bent toward following so they can be equipped to stand up for themselves and get out of compromising situations.

Help a girl know her strengths and rights, and you’ll save her from the shame and regret of giving in, or, worse, the devastation of abuse.

Give Her a Space to Dump Her Shame

Speaking of shame, it’s a virtual spin cycle on secret sins and addictions. For whatever reason, girls seem particularly susceptible to unhealthy shame, and it keeps them in hiding. A girl who feels shame over her sin is unlikely to get help, and without help, she is even less likely to find freedom.

I can’t understate the importance of breaking the silence about these secret sins. We need to give girls a safe place to come clean about their sin and dump their shame so we can help them get to the business of rooting out sin, embracing forgiveness, and walking in the freedom Christ died to give us. How? Here are a few practical ideas:

Just tell them.

Not to be over-simplistic, but there’s something to be said for simply saying the words, “If you’re struggling with something you think is too shameful to share, I want you to know this is a safe place…”

Let them know you understand.

There’s a reason so many girls have opened up to me about their struggles: I went first. I shared my struggle of overcoming secret sins, and how I found freedom, in Unashamed: Overcoming the Sins No Girl Wants to Talk About. Maybe you’ve never been trapped by her particular sin, but don’t be shy about admitting the struggles you’ve overcome.

Save the judgment for Judy.

Teens can smell a judgmental heart a thousand miles away. Even if you talk dismissively about “those kids,” no teen of your acquaintance will feel comfortable getting vulnerable with you about their junk. If you want to be a safe place, you’ve got to create an atmosphere of acceptance and grace.

Have a plan.

Make it known that if they do open up to you, they will receive help. This could look like an ongoing book study, connecting them to specific trained staff, or simply having a list of qualified counselors in your area.

However you do it, make sure she knows she is not alone. Provide a safe place for her to dump her shame, and you will save her from being strangled by it.

Point Her to Jesus

Not to be anticlimactic but, ultimately, we can’t “save” her at all. We can give her the tools to understand her desires and drives, we can show her how to be strong and careful, and we can create a safe place to open up about her struggles, but at the end of the day, there is only One place she can ultimately go to find the wisdom, strength and grace she’s going to need to navigate these crazy teen years: the Cross.

Point her to Jesus, the author and finisher of her faith, and trust that His Spirit will complete the good work He began in her heart. If she is already trapped by a secret sin, only the Spirit’s work in her life will ultimately bring her to healing and wholeness.

The bulk of your teaching, discipling and relationship-building, then, must be focused on connecting her to the source of her life. John 15 promises that if she stays connected to the Vine, she’ll ultimately be okay.

We find tremendous freedom in understanding this as well. In many ways, it takes some of the pressure off our shoulders. We aren’t Savior. We simply have an opportunity (and responsibility) to offer these life preservers to a generation of girls who are suffering in silence, pulling to shore those—like Chloe—who are willing to grab hold.

* “Chloe” is fictional character based on actual stories from girls in youth groups across the United States.

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