CHANGED!
December 16, 2019
Prayer: I thank You, Lord, for bringing change to my heart and life. Please help me cooperate with what You are doing today. Amen.
Scripture: Instead of the thorn bush will grow the juniper, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. Isaiah 55:13 NIV
Was I hearing this ten-year old correctly? The principal had just spoken to him about his behavior and Tommy’s rude and disrespectful response to him nearly curled my hair. Tommy was well known for his hot temper and disrespect. I knew him as a boy who constantly disrupted my classes year after year. Throughout his elementary years in my classes and again when I taught him at the middle school, he always acted the same. And when adults corrected him, he responded as he had to this principal or as though he didn’t care.
Many years later I heard about Tommy, now a young man. The report was that he had received Christ, and was living for Him. Tommy’s behavior and his perspective had completely changed. He was a “new creature.”
Sometimes we forget that God can transform a person, and often does. It is so easy to react to our students as their sinful nature deserves. We forget that God hasn’t finished with them yet, no more than He has finished with us. Those students we teach, though they don’t appear that way now, may be Christ’s chosen servants in the making. Each one deserves consideration and loving treatment as a future child of God. Our prayers need to express our faith that God will change these children. Ask God to give you new “eyes” with which to look at your students. Ask God to help you see them as He does.
Copyright Shirley Wilson. Email [email protected]