Apr 26, 2022 | Care Conversations
We are continuing to look at the concept of Hope with Belief.
Christian Schools are renowned for their love and support for students and their families. That is often a major reason parents choose to enrol their children with us.
Most of us, when entering a Christian School, sense the warm and friendly nature of the community. There is a high level of care and safety that arises from our understanding of loving one another because we know of God’s love for us. There is strong guidance and pastoral engagement; a seeking of shalom and developing the right environment for flourishing. There is a commitment to serving one another within the school community and beyond.
These are all excellent things, and we should keep doing them!
It is not our deliberate intention, but could we be inadvertently suggesting that there is a presumption of the right to ease and comfort?
How do we seek to ensure that our students have a genuine relationship with Jesus, and see things clearly through His eyes, not just a desire to be part of a loving community doing good? Being a disciple of Christ is never described in the Bible as a life of ease and comfort.
Even social commentators like Hugh McKay suggest that there is a danger in presuming that we have a right to happiness. If we allow our young people to believe that happiness and comfort is their right, that would actually be dishonest. McKay suggests that if we believe that there is an “Entitlement” to be happy all the time … then disappointment is guaranteed.
We would go even further and say that the Scriptures do not indicate that it is God’s task to ensure ease and comfort in our lives. It is not something that He has ever promised us in this world.
This doesn’t mean that we go looking for suffering, pain, or difficulty but the Bible is pretty clear that these things will continue to be part of our lives on earth.
Maybe as we consider “Hope with Belief” – we need to be considering that hope comes from our belief and understanding of the totality of Scriptures rather than just the comfortable bits? Maybe the uncomfortable aspects help us to deepen our belief?
Let’s explore that for a bit.
Blessings
Brian
Apr 26, 2022 | Teachers Talking
Lecrae Moore, the celebrated American hip-hop artist, grew up without a father and suffered abuse during his childhood. He filled his life with drugs, alcohol, sex and gang activity. He was so wild his friends nicknamed him “Crazy Crae”.[1] But he discovered that his real problem was his sin and brokenness. In his album ‘Anomaly’ he writes “Gimme a pen and a pad I’m tryna outlast all of my idols …… Tryna get me a throne of my own so I could put my feet up. Thank God my kingdom was overthrown by the soul redeemer”.[2] n a rap titled “Truth” he talks about people like himself who are in the grip of “idols in their heart”.[3] His music listened to by millions of young people, wants to see them released from the power of false gods by the power of truth.
Throughout the whole Biblical story, idolatry is the supreme threat to faith because it takes root in the desires of the human heart and so threatens our whole-hearted allegiance to the living God. Regardless of what our minds know, the imagination of our hearts can turn truth into falsehood and reality into fantasy. Theologian John Calvin famously said that “the human heart is a perpetual idol factory”.[4] This idol-making propensity of our hearts is a destructive threat to faith and our thinking can be shaped by the images of our imagination. If we do not understand the nature of idolatry, we will not be able to identify idols or confront them in our own lives, nor the lives of our students or in our educational tasks.
We all create idols to take the place of God. When we choose to not face our Creator or face ourselves, we begin the process of idolatry. Romans 1:25 says “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” For sin presupposes us to want to be independent from God in His majesty and holiness, but we still need our God-shaped hearts filled.
The first commandment may seem outdated if we think of idols as statues made of stone or wood. But an idol is something within creation that is inflated as a substitute for the true and living God. It is counterfeit that presents itself as something other than God as the ultimate source of hope, security, and happiness. An idol can be a person, an activity, an idea, an image or an institution and presents itself through deception that it can deliver the good life. It deceives us into believing that the idol can fulfil our longings while we maintain control of our lives, autonomous architects of our own futures. “That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is, I say, really your God.” [5] The idol becomes the ultimate reality, giving meaning and purpose to life and guiding moral decisions. The tragedy is that when God’s good gift becomes an idol, it cannot bear that weight and a process of destruction sets in. The gift itself is progressively destroyed and it disappoints and disillusions those who put their trust in it.
What are the false gods seducing us, our children, and our young people? For “idols are not just on pagan altars, but in well-educated human hearts and minds.” [6] These talks will help us to identify the idols of our age, that we might lead our students to ponder deeply the consequences of idolatry and walk with them to face the existential questions that they are asking. s Christian teachers and parents, we make the serious mistake of just cultivating a Biblical belief system and a more intense devotional life without assisting them to engage with the issues of faith that impact the world which they inhabit.
The most fundamental decision our children are called to make during their lifetime is what will be what they see as ultimate reality and the reason for their existence. The Bible says this choice is about who or what they will worship. As teachers, we are to model both in our personal lives and in our ministry, what it means to worship the Biblical God, living out His truth across the whole of life. This means we must first ask ourselves, “does my school culture and the teaching and learning promote self-centredness and love of self above love of God and neighbour? What are the corporate idols of western education?” Does my Christian faith speak to the whole of life?
“And we are in Him who is true – even in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Dear children, keep yourself from idols.” I John 5: 20, 21
Grace and Peace
TEC Team
[1] Brad Wete, Interview: Lecrae Talks about going from ‘Crazy Crae’ to ‘Christian Rapper, in Understanding Truth, www.Complex.com, 8 June, 2020, Accessed 19 April 2022.
[2] http://www.songlyrics.com/lecrae/anomaly-lyrics/
[3] http://www.songlyrics.com/lecrae/truth-lyrics/
[4] https://postbarthian.com/2019/08/06/the-human-heart-is-an-idol-factory-a-modern-critique-of-john-calvin/
[5] Martin Luther, The Larger Catechism of Martin Luther, translated by Robert Fischer, (USA: Philadelphia Fortress, 1959), 9.
[6] Os Guinness, No God but God: Breaking with the Idols of the Age, (USA: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), 30.
Apr 26, 2022 | Teachers Talking
Welcome to Teachers Talking for Term 2. Last term we explored how to engender a sure hope in the lives of our students as we invite them to locate their lives in God’s grand story and carry it forward in their times.
Our challenge is to nurture school communities of long-term hope in a world that seeks to pressure our children to conform to the spirit of the age. The statistics paint a grim picture of “an epidemic of young people leaving the evangelical church.” [1] Various sources put the rate of students who claim to be Christian leaving their faith on beginning university as 70 – 75%.” [2]
Our heart is to raise up a new generation who will faithfully and thoughtfully follow the Lord Jesus, and who will not be taken captive by the seductions of the culture. If we, as Christian educators, are to do this, we must identify the idols of our historical and cultural time. Which false gods are 21st century people seduced by? What is captivating the hearts and minds of our students? Teacher-training, curriculum documents, school policies and culture are all shaped by religious belief. When we define ourselves by the dominant narratives of the culture that are idolatrous at their heart, we end up as neither relevant nor faithful and are in danger of losing not only our identity and significance, but the very heart of what the Lord calls us to do through our educational task. That task is to raise our students to be faithful disciples of Jesus who will rise to the challenge to serve the Lord in their generation.
To this end, during Term 2, the Teachers Talking offerings will focus on the theme “Unmasking the Idols of the Age”. We trust these talks will assist you to critique and challenge our cultural idolatry and call our students to a life of radical discipleship that reflects the way of Jesus.
“I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath …. “ Exodus 20: 2 – 4
Grace and Peace
TEC Team
[1] Dr Kara E. Powell and Dr Chap Clark, Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids, (USA: Zondermans, 2011), 15,16.
[2] John Collier, The Attrition of Christian Youth from Faith at University: Why does it happen and what can be done about it, (Australia: Unpublished Journal Article, 2022), 2.
Apr 26, 2022 | Hope_Tina
The Hope of Belief
“Catch me Granny!” Have you ever walked into a room, and you see your child or your grandchild running up the middle of the dining room table, leaping, without hesitation, into mid-air and calling out with uninhibited confidence “catch me!” You gotta’ catch that kid.
The image we have selected to accompany this article beautifully captures in pictorial form what the hope of belief is. So, wander with me through the next few paragraphs as we explore this leap of faith and the hope of belief a little further.
Why does the child take such a leap and yell “catch me”? You will notice the child doesn’t stand there and contemplate the principles of gravity or calculate the possibility that the spontaneous leap could be met with an unpleasant, jarring thud on the solid surface below if the person they are jumping to doesn’t catch them. So, why do they leap and call “catch me”?
Firstly, the child trusts in the person who is catching them. The relationship is safe and sure. They know the person as genuine, true, reliable and able to catch them. Their confidence is based on the consistent character of the person they are leaping toward.
Hebrews 11 outlines the basis of our faith that builds a solid foundation of belief and generates confident hope. It is not a blind, unfounded faith. It is anchored in the authentic, faultless character of God and the relationship He establishes with His children. The story of God in relationship with His people shows us who God is and His faithfulness to “catch us” in all areas of our lives. The hope of belief is never a leap in the dark but is rooted in God. As Augustine says “So by fixing our hope up above, we have set it like an anchor on firm ground, able to hold against any of the stormy waves of this world, not by our own strength but by that of the one in whom this anchor of our hope has been fixed. Having caused us to hope, after all, He will not disappoint us, but will in due course give us the reality in exchange for the hope.”[1]
Hope is birthed because of who God is and becomes a living hope when we “leap” by faith into the faithful arms of our God who never fails to catch us. We know and believe who God is and appropriate hope through faith and belief. The child leaps because they know and believe in the person who is catching them, and their hope has a firm foundation in the context of a secure and dependable relationship that is undergirded by the promise to be their strong tower and to catch them when they jump. From the perspective of the one who is doing the catching, their heart is always set on catching the child no matter what. I’ve never once not caught my grandchildren when they leap. I dare not and sometimes it costs me, but I can never afford for it to cost them. I believe that God is like that with us. He would never dare not to catch us because it would be against His true character.
Secondly, when a child jumps and calls “catch me”, it is about the focus of the child when they leap. Their belief in the adult fuels their hope and trust of being caught. The eyes of the child, as seen in this image above are locked on the eyes of the father. It is the same when my grandchildren leap. They fix their eyes on me; on my eyes, eyeball to eyeball with the one they hope in. Nothing is distracting or deterring the child from jumping. They are not doing a lateral sweep of what surrounds them or scanning the potential dangers. The child leaps with laser like focus on the one they believe will be there to catch them in that critical moment of action. Their hope is sure and comes from their belief in and their knowledge of the character and capability of their father or in my case their Granny. They are focused and unswerving in their gaze. That’s not because the child is good at focusing. It’s because the father or the person who is going to catch them creates in the child the ability to focus and the confidence to jump.
We live in a world where distractions are trying to grab us by the hand and lead us into an impoverished faith by averting our attention and undermining our confidence in God. We can be tempted to shift our gaze off the Father and on to our circumstances. But to “jump” in faith and hope is to believe in the Father and to set our attention on Him.
As we recall the grandest distraction of all time that took place in the Garden of Eden, we are reminded that we must keep our eyes always fixed on Jesus, with singular focus. If history has taught us anything, it is that only Jesus is worthy of our gaze and only Jesus is truly able to catch us in every circumstance of life. Hope comes when our belief is anchored in the truth that our Father who will never fail us will always spread His arms and catch us.
Finally, when my grandchildren leap off a table and call “catch me Granny”, and I do catch them, there are shrieks of joy and elation as they sit content in my arms and snuggle into that safe space, even if it only lasts a few seconds. Not only does this create a greater bond, but their confidence in me also grows and confirms their belief and shapes their hope that next time they want to jump I will catch them again. So it is with our heavenly Father, the more we leap to Him in faith and belief, the more our hope is fuelled and bursting with confidence that God is always who He says He is and will always do what He says He will do.
So, friends, the hope of belief is that we can leap to the Father in unwavering trust, not because we muster up the ability to jump but because the Father will always catch us when we do. That is the hope of belief.
Blessings
Tina
[1] Saint Augustine (Sermon 359A, 1-4). Sermons 341-400 (wesleyscholar.com)
Apr 26, 2022 | Wens Pen
Crowned.
Psalm 103:2-4. Today as we approach the throne of the most high God, we recall a special coronation that took place where the King of Kings reinstated us as His royal sons and daughters. Undeserving, Jesus walked across the room, and He called us forth. He spoke our names, summoning us to bow our knees to Him, the one and only reigning King. Lifting our heads, He crowned us and robed us in garments of His holiness. He took our hands and invited us into a dance of grace, leading us around the grand ballroom of His kingdom. His glory and majesty filled the room. As we gaze into the eyes of our loving Lord and Saviour, we weep with thankfulness, knowing it cost Him everything so we could be crowned.
How did He do it? How did He give up His heavenly crown, exchanging it for a cruel crown of thorns made by defiled human hands, intended to humiliate Him? How did He endure the mocking, the spitting, the beating, and the suffering; the poisonous fangs of sinners sinking their vicious teeth into the very One who could save them? Would you do that? I wouldn’t. Yet, He saw our worth woven into the vile crown of thorns, and He wore it unto death to reclaim us and remind us we are treasured at the greatest possible cost and freed to live crowned. He calls us royal, and it almost hurts, for we know we have been unworthy servants. Yet, He crafted our new crowns with His holy hands, decorating them with the jewels of His love: rubies of redemption, diamonds of dignity, sapphires of significance, opals of opulent love, pearls of purpose, and emeralds of eternal value; all precious gemstones of His grace and goodness. Were any of us qualified to wear the crowns He made for us? No! Not one. We were all guilty of trading our original crowns and leaving them on His kingdom floor to go off and dance with the wolves of lies, deception and disobedience. We left our Master. Yet here we are reinstated and restored to Him, crowned again and again by Jesus, our King supreme.
We will never really know what it cost Jesus, our King of valour to purchase and personally make the crowns He has given us, but He didn’t hesitate to come for us, purchase us and ensure we are once again crowned.
So, friends, get your “crown” on today.
Best days to come.
Wen
