While there are lots of classes, teachers, events, and things going on, he is constantly reminding us of the purpose of it all- strengthening our relationships with each other and most importantly winning souls.
Almost every Sunday evening before the service we have a teacher's meeting. There he checks in on all the teachers, hears prayer requests, concerns, and teaches us about teaching.
Something he's been particularly drilling home is our need as teachers to fellowship with our students outside the class and thus showing our students that we're living the Word that we're teaching.
He has stressed, many times that being involved in church and fellowshipping with our students is as much part of teaching as the actual class time. If I tell them that telling others about Christ is our number one priority and never show up for Saturday morning outreach, they will never believe I'm living what I'm teaching.
Every third Saturday our outreach is a gym-night. On Sunday pastor announced it and said it was for 'elementary and high school'. Since he specified the age this time I asked him on Wednesday if I should still come since my son is only two and doesn't participate at all.
Pastor said I should absolutely come so that I can fellowship with my new students.
This short discussion really got me thinking.
On Sunday I was talking to my little cousin, she is fourteen, and in the midst of high school. High school is a treacherous place and if you're not grounded as a believer, you will be tossed from the Solid Rock and lose your way with bad friends in a multitude of temptations.
One thing she said to me is that my sister and I seem really happy. We're both married to christian men and have our babies. We were both married by 22 and we've had our sons by 25, she sees that and it makes her consider her path. This lead to a good discussion on how we were able to get there and it made me realize the gravity of my position.
I don't know what her home life is like, but what if it's not encouraging her to live right? What if the only Godly testimony she knows is my sister and I?
I look at that and I think about the young ones at church.
If there's anything I desire for my son, my nephew, and all the children in my sphere of influence is that they live their lives to serve the Lord. They will be successful if they are in the Lord's will.
Growing up is full of aches and pains, physically and mentally. At the tender age of 18, teens are expected to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. As teachers and elders in the church, we cannot tell them what to do with their lives, but we can show them what serving the Lord is.
This is one of the things that constrains me to dress right, speak right, and conduct myself wisely every day in every situation (although I fail constantly at acting wisely), you never know who is watching and how they will take it.
If I do something reckless or rude while I'm driving and one of my students is driving with their family and sees, how will they view me when I'm teaching?
What if I wore something inappropriate while I was out and about and they saw me?
What if they over heard me using bad language or disrespecting my husband?
How could I then teach them? I can't.
As a mother, teacher, and elder (relatively) I want to be gracious, gentle, kind, wise, and of a good report.
The terrible tragedy of today is that young ladies are no longer required to be young ladies. Men and boys can get what they want elsewhere so why would they choose a pure, wholesome girl that wants to serve the Lord?
These girls will feel more and more pressure to bow to worldly standards just to get a husband.
I fully intend to show them that they don't have to. If they wait on the Lord, He will bless them.
My pastor has a sweet older daughter who loved to help me in my previous class- Junior Church/nursery. I loved having her in there with me but I did not want to take her out of too many services. When I expressed this at a teachers meeting my pastor's wife reminded me of this passage:
The aged women likewise, that they be in
behaviour as becometh holiness, not false
accusers, not given to much wine, teachers
of good things;
That they may teach the young women to
be sober, to love their husbands, to love
their children,
To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home,
good, obedient to their own husbands, that
the word of God be not blasphemed.
Titus 2: 3-5
There is so much in there to dissect but the purpose is this: we are instructed to teach. Whether the aged woman is 26 and the young woman is 8, I am instructed to teach.
If the Lord wills and tarries I may know my pastor's daughter from 8 years old to 28. I may see her through high school, college, marriage, and children. If that is the case I hope she can look at the older women in church who have gone through those things before her to be comforted, strengthened and helped by our example. There are a few young ladies her age at church. I hope I can be that example for all of them.
One last example then I'm done: I was with an older woman and a younger woman one day. The younger woman was boasting about being disrespectful to someone that had helped her and the older woman laughed about it. There is more than a thirty years between them but the older woman found disrespect funny.
That bothered me for many reasons but the biggest one is that the older woman, by laughing, encouraged the younger woman to be disrespectful. I don't know the nature of the relationship between the young woman and the person she was disrespectful to, but regardless, the older woman should have the wisdom not to laugh at a young persons folly.
Sometimes my son does something bad but it's either cute or really funny.
I can't laugh at it. He's only two but laughing at it would encourage him in sin.
This is what teachers in the church must be:
We must be bulwarks against sin. We must be a testimony of holiness, obedience, and service.
As we fellowship with our students, we get to learn about them, we're able to teach them better, and we're able to draw from our own experiences to teach them.
So at gym night on Saturday, as I play dodgeball with my students I must be an example of sportsmanship, losing with grace, winning with humility, and being inclusive to all that come.
Lord willing, as my students grow, they will remember some of the lessons I taught them, but I hope they remember my testimony and when they're faced with tough decisions in the future they'll remember that Miss Grace read her bible, prayed every day, prayed for them every day, and that they Lord used those things to help her do right.
No comments:
Post a Comment