Why I Teach Kids

A friend of mine recently flew down to Sacramento to run a marathon in the rain. I have to admit that my first thought was to ask him what planet he was from. My second thought, however, was a bit more introspective: “What propels this man to fly to California to run 26 miles for 3 hours and 30 minutes in a downpour, beating his body to the point of sheer exhaustion?” So I asked him.


He said that he needed to run in the race and finish under a certain time, to qualify for the Boston Marathon, a lifelong dream of his. Ah, then I understood! He was striving, enduring, and punishing his body because there was a bigger prize at stake. It’s always the bigger prize, or the higher purpose, that drives us to accomplish the smaller things along the way.

I’ve never thought of applying a running analogy to teaching kids the Word of God, but I guess it fits pretty well. Like running a marathon, teaching kids isn’t for everyone; in fact, it might seem just as crazy to some as running 26 miles in the rain. Distractions, noise, short attention spans, separation anxiety, unique learning styles and even tears are just a regular part of any Sunday morning in the life of a children’s worker.

Everyone knows that the marathon is a culmination of months of training out on lonely back roads; no one else around, wondering to yourself if all the hard work will pay off one day. Such it is with teaching kids, as we spend Sunday after Sunday in the back rooms of the church, never fully knowing how much of the Bible lesson stuck, or whether that craft effectively reinforced the Biblical truth.

But God knows….and He uses the Apostle Paul to remind us of the importance of our work, spurring us on to “run in such a way as to get the prize” (1 Cor. 9:24), and encouraging us to “not become weary in doing good” (Gal. 6:9). Most importantly, God wants us to “stand firm in one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel” (Phil. 1:27). I like that phrase “striving together”, because it reminds me that we are not alone, and that God is equally interested in the work He’s doing inside each of us, as He is in what we teach or how we care for the little ones.

The process of teaching kids is a not a sprint, but a marathon, one worth striving for when we think of these children as the next world changers and history makers of our time. They will one day sit in the same church rows that we sit in, hold places of office in the cities we reside, and work in the businesses that we now patronize. And even more than this, they will advance the road of the gospel to the ends of the earth, and that alone drives me to continue to press on, striving forward and together for the faith of the gospel.

To Love is to Obey

"This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world." 1 John 5:3

How many ways has love been redefined and watered down by the world to accommodate or justify our sinful or self-serving actions? The majority of divorces that occur in this country are not a result of some irreconcilable act or broken trust in a marriage. They result from one or both spouses simply declaring that they are no longer “in love” with each other, as if “love” were ever meant to be based on our ever shifting emotions. If we are diluting and distorting the definition of love when it comes to human relationships, how much more are we capable of using the same twisted logic when it comes to choosing to love Christ?

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 clearly maps out a clear definition of love based upon action, not feelings. Eliza puts Freddy in his place in the musical, My Fair Lady, when she exhorts, “Don't talk of stars burning above; if you're in love, show me!”. We must show love to Christ. Love is a verb and requires us to “do” something, not just once, but consistently and often. Jesus doesn’t beat around the bush when defining love for Him. In Matthew 7:26, Jesus clearly states, “But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.” In John 14:23, Jesus through simple and clear instruction declares, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

If we can return to the pure and true definition of love for Christ, not just hear the Word, but take the time to understand it, retain it, and put it into practice, we will discover that “his commands are not burdensome”, and we will truly experience that ever eluding "joy" that the world fails to deliver on time and time again.

1 John 5:4 states that, “everyone born of God overcomes the world". The real and honest question that we must ask ourselves is, “Do we want to?” Do we really want to allow God to pry the white knuckles of our will from the worlds grip, die to self, take on the identity of Christ and truly love God and others with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength? What's the alternative....a self-focused, miss guided, train wreck of a life? No thanks.