Tag: Verse of the week

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When We Don’t Know How To Pray

Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

Romans 8:26
  1. There are many things we know we should pray for: forgiveness, strength to overcome temptation, and the coming of God’s kingdom on earth.
  2. We don’t know everything we should pray for in every situation: healing or endurance during illness, that an application for a job be accepted or mercifully declined, or that we seek advisable risk or maintain security.
  3. In that uncertainty, we continue praying and rely on God. He knows what we don’t.
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How to Not Lose Heart: II Corinthians 4:16-18

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

II Corinthians 4:16-18

These three verses contrast two views of the world.

One is external, momentary, and visible. It is deteriorating and ridden by affliction.

The other is internal, eternal, and unseen. It is constantly refreshed and full of glory.

Paul can see both of these perspectives. It’s not as though he’s unable to see his body or feel his affliction. The difference is that Paul has chosen to focus on the view that’s filled with glory.

This week, I will be meeting with my composition students to discuss their rough drafts. These meetings can be rushed, and when they’re done, I often wonder if I’ve shared with them everything I need to know.

It’s so much easier to address the afflictions I can see than engage with deeper invisible issues. Yet it’s this unseen dimension of each of my students that is most important and redemptive. I pray that God gives me the strength to focus on dimension of each student that is most important, to encourage them in the midst of visible affliction, and to call them to a discipleship that will never waste away.

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The Purpose of Life: Romans 11:36

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

Romans 11:36

My semester’s theme thus far has been process over product, and this week’s verse underscores it. I can easily declare that all thing have their proper end in glorifying God. It is another to navigate the process that leads to that end result.

This passage in Romans connects the entire process — the beginning the middle and the end — to Christ. Everything starts with his word. Everything holds together through his word. Everything was made to glorify him.

I don’t find it difficult to acknowledge God is creator, and I confess with my mouth the Westminster Confession’s claim that the end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. This is very different, however, from enjoying him right now in the middle of a work week or in the middle of a difficult class or in the middle of a grading session. It is easy to say, “Love God with everything you have and love your neighbor,” but what does that mean in the gritty details of your life?

This week, I am focusing on the process as a means to help my students improve as readers and writers. If I want my students to develop their reading and writing skills, I must be willing to give them ways of approaching their tasks. What I am praying for is a greater awareness of how God informs that process. Yes, He made all things, and yes, all things were made to glorify Him, but how does that translate into my concrete teaching and something as simple as free-writing or summarizing what I just read?

One thing I am recognizing is that there are far too many parts of the process of learning and teaching that I think I can do on my own. This simply isn’t true. I pray that God gives me the humility to ask for his guidance in every part of my educational and pedagogical process.

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Got Questions? God’s Got Answers: Proverbs 2:3-5

Indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.

Proverbs 2:3-5

This week, my commitment is to seek God’s face for understanding as I prepare for the new semester. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then this proverb describes the way to understand that fear properly. This quest requires that I ask and search with passion, that I acknowledge with my words and deeds how vital such knowledge is. The process matters, but it’s the results that matter: finding the silver and hidden treasure of God’s knowledge. I want that for myself, but I want it even more for my students.

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Verse of the Week: Psalm 139:23

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.

Psalm 139:23

I am anxious and am worried about many things. I am worried about my adequacy as a teacher and scholar. I am worried about my adequacy as a husband and father. I am worried about my adequacy as a child of God.

Yet the solution proposed in the Psalm is not intense self-analysis or reflection. Instead, the Psalmist asks God to search him and, through testing, to know my anxious thoughts.

This, indeed, is a radical kind of pedagogy!

If I am the student, the one who endures the test, then how am I learning if it is God who knows my heart and my anxious thoughts?  Wouldn’t it best for me to know them so as to, you know, give them over to God?

The root of a God-centered education might very well be letting go of that need to know our own hearts first.

This week when I feel anxiety, I want my first impulse to be prayer: that God would know my heart and my anxious thoughts and that the Holy Spirit would intercede for me in my ignorance. This semester when I feel anxiety, I want my first impulse to be prayer too so that this semester when my students are afflicted by anxieties, I can with confidence encourage them to turn to God and pray this Psalm as well.

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Verse of the Week: I John 2:3

We know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commands.

I John 2:3

To know God is to love Him, and to love and glorify Him is the grand purpose for our lives. In the same letter that declares that God is love, John tells us that we can know if we know God by looking at our actions. Do we keep His commands? Do we love God with everything we have and seek to love others in the way we love ourselves?

This week, I will be using this verse and the questions it provokes to orient my course plans for the new semester. I want to give students the opportunity to do things with what we’re learning. Yes, we will read, and yes, there will occasionally be lectures. My best gauge for their knowledge will not be answers to an exam, however. It will come in the form of practice: note taking, timed writing, revised essays, and multimedia projects.

More than that, I will demand my own participation. I will not just talk about my discipline and its spiritual foundations. I must live them out. I pray that God gives me the grace and skill to do that.