Praying For Perseverance

By Jason (Connecting to Impact)

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." (Hebrews 12:1)

We live a society that has become transfixed on happiness at all costs. Everything seems readily accessible and easily replaced. The value on people has receded just as the value on things has.

Relationships with family, friends, spouses, and others are all judged and weighed through the lens of what we gain from the arrangement. Church becomes yet another place to be a consumer instead of a contributor. And even if they do want to contribute, they may not find something that immediately interests them and walk away.

Our kids have to have perseverance. It’s not just because that’s a nice value to promote, the Bible tells us a lot about enduring and overcoming. As Hebrews 12 goes on to say, the hardships we endure can be counted as discipline. Discipline doesn’t make us happy, but we need it to be all that He has called and made us to be.

As I said in the post about our kids and work, if these are important values, we certainly have to model them, but we also need to pray them consistently for our children.

"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer." (Romans 12:12)

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Love Is...

By Nick (My Experience As...)

Love is the Greatest

1 Corinthians 13

 ¹ If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. ³ If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

 ⁴ Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud ⁵ or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. ⁶ It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. ⁷ Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

 ⁸ Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! ⁹ Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! ¹⁰ But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.

 ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. ¹² Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

 ¹³ Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

If you have been a Christian for more than five seconds this is probably a familiar passage. My wife can quote it by heart, and often does.  Not in the “you need to learn what love is so you can treat me right” kind of way (I probably deserve it but she gets the passage and know that would be missing the point). No, she tends to remind me when I’m getting bent out of shape on something trivial with someone else. She’s pretty compassionate like that.

I think this is all a lesson we want our children to learn too. I pray for my kids to know what real love is, so when they start dating (around 30) they won’t be fooled by someone telling them how much they “love” them.

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When Did Everything Change?

By Chuck (Sharing Compassion)

Allow me an off week here. I love the fall season, it is my favorite. It is a time of change. For a long time it represented a new beginning for me. Growing up there was always a new school year to look forward to. After I had a daughter it was her new school year each fall. School Orientations, PTA meetings....always something new. There was something about the leaves changing, the crisp cool weather, the smell of wood burning. All of these things reminded me of new beginnings. A little backward I guess...most people look at Spring as a time of renewal. This year is the biggest change of all. My daughter has left for college and is now living away from home.

For the past eighteen years we shared every weekend together. I mean we did all kinds of stuff. Weekends were our special time. Her mom and I separated in 1998 and I had custody for the weekends. That time was special. Even in high school when we adjusted the schedule so she could have social activities we still had great weekends. Even after I remarried and got a wonderful step-daughter we still had those special weekends. There were many times that we were doing our own separate things but it was still special just being together. Now all of a sudden she is gone.

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Praying for Biblical Self-Esteem: I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough... Or Am I?

By Jason, M.Ed., M.A.R., Headmaster

In the 1970's, Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral wrote a national best-seller called Self-Esteem: The New Reformation.  In it, he made the rather audacious claim that the recovery of self-esteem would transform the church for the 21st Century, just as the Reformation led by Martin Luther had transformed the church in the 16th Century.  Self-Esteem became the cultural rage of the Me Generation in the 1980's and 1990's.  Saturday Night Live made fun of this obsession with their character Stuart Smalley, portrayed by now-Senator Al Franken from Minnesota, who would look in the mirror and affirm himself with the words: "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and, Gosh-Darn-it, people like me."

Self-esteem is a tricky thing.  Studies in the 70's had shown that students who performed poorly in school usually had very low self-esteem, while high-achieving students had high self-esteem.  Schools responded by developing self-esteem programs.  Oddly, other studies since have shown that one population group has exceptionally high self-esteem: death row inmates.  It seems they all valued their own worth much more than that of their victims.  Today, American students have nearly the highest self-esteem of any group of students in the world, even though they perform well below most industrialized nations on standardized testing.

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Educating The Whole Child, For The Whole Of Life, For The Glory Of God

By Jason, M.Ed., M.A.R., Headmaster

“The truth in its wholeness—for the whole child, for the whole of life, for the glory of God—this is what the curriculum is all about.”  (Norman E. Harper, Making Disciples)

Our lives are filled with different responsibilities and we take on different roles in fulfilling them.  I am a husband, a father, a deacon, a principal, a boss, an employee, a church member, a Sunday School teacher, a student, an American, a Marylander, a University of Maryland alumnus and fan, a friend, a neighbor, a son, a brother, an uncle, etc.  I could go on and on ad infinitum, ad nauseum.  Sometimes I am called to clean dishes, while at other times I run staff meetings.  Within the course of a day, I may go from changing a dirty diaper to writing an article for MAD21, church, or school to counseling an employee to playing with my son and so on.  The question: For which of these roles and responsibilities do I need to be educated in God’s truth?  The answer: ALL of them.

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