From a talk delivered August 21, 2008, to the assembled staff of Grace Christian Schools and Cascade Christian High School. Hear the audio here.
Nothing, and no one, is as big and wonderful as the Lord!
But first, a disclaimer: I admire you teachers a lot. You have waaaaaaaaaay more patience than I have. I would rather have my spleen removed with shrimp forks than be put in a classroom of students for six hours. So I really admire you, and I admire what you do. I assume that your career is a calling of God, forged by years of training and experience, and motivated by a love for children who are not your own. You are special people, and I am humbled by this undeserved opportunity to address you.At the same time, I do know one thing for sure, and that is this: I know what your students need the most. I know that your students need, more than anything else, to see how giant and wonderful God is.
They need to know the Lord to be as big and fantastic as he is more than they need to be taught or given anything else. More than they need $3500 worth of orthodontia, and more than they need to be hauled in Suburbans to athletic contests all over the state, and more than they need to be prepared to enter the best schools and gain vaunted degrees, they need to know that God is fantastic, has done incredible things, and promises an awesome future for those who know him.
They need to know this because, among other things, they will find, as have we, that perfect teeth will never earn them the unconditional love they crave; they will discover that the glory of a state championship fades pretty quickly; and that a sheepskin from the best school means squat when you miscarry, or when your wife leaves you for your best friend, or when your son is killed in action.
Let’s face it: for unbelievers, looks, health and success are all they’ve got.Tragically, a bunch of Christians hold this same worldview. Their God is small and very polite: he would never intrude himself into their lives but quietly waits around hopefully to collect “decisions for Christ,” to help with spiritual errands or to listen to emotional complaints. He is simply one aspect of their many-faceted lives, useful only when needed, and understood as they imagine him rather than as he has revealed himself.
Of course, some of your students have the same mindset, or will as they grow. Though raised in good homes – many of them- they are young and immature, they have watched thousands of hours of television and movies and have played thousands of hours of video games. They have been reared by parents who have dropped them off at Sunday School, dropped them off at youth group, dropped them off at football - bless their hearts – are too distracted or spiritually immature or waylaid by sin to fill themselves. There are exceptions, of course: parents who see you as helpers in the challenge that is principally theirs and not as hired guns who replace them, but my guess is – and you teachers have confirmed this in conversations with me – that their children are not the ones we’re worried about.
It’s important to note that much of what I’m saying here is the result of the almost-25 years it has been my privilege to pastor Christian school parents and Christian school teachers. I say that because I’m trying hard here to avoid feelings and biases and base these suppositions on what I’ve learned, seen, and heard over the years. And I won’t lie to you: among the toughest crowds I’ve worked have been Christian high school students! By comparison, the witch doctors were friendly as time-share salesmen! So I have a taste of what it can be like for you, with some of your students, and that makes me even more convicted about what I’m saying: your students need a big, glorious view of God more than anything else.
One more reason this is so needful: my crowd, us pastors, we are not off the hook here. We have to share responsibility for this small-minded view of God and fascination with all the worldly substitutes for him. Instead of showing God and the Bible to be as exciting and irresistible as they are, we’ve been more worried about big numbers than biblical theology; we’ve replaced a concern for faithfulness to the word with a fear of not offending “seekers,” we’ve been playing politics, and we’ve been playing with women who are not our wives. For anyone who wants to be sentimental about God’s happy plan for their life but ignorant of his word’s claims on it, to sleep late on Sunday morning and be self-righteous about it on Monday morning, some of my colleagues and I have provided their most excellent excuses.
So those are some of the reasons that your students think that, and act like, God really doesn’t matter: selfish kids who are overly familiar with the message, an antagonistic culture, drop-off parents, and boring, unhelpful and even corrupt pastors. This is why it’s so critical that you teach them otherwise. The most important thing that you can teach your students, is that God is giant and wonderful.
Of course, you can do this two ways: by speech and through example. But if you do the former: if you teach your students that God is wonderful but don’t act like it, your teaching will actually compel your students to disbelief. They will be turned off by your hypocrisy, of course.That’s why the best way to communicate the awesome size and wonderful worth and beauty of God is to both teach them and to live like you believe it.That’s why I have chosen to call your attention to two prayers found in the little epistle of Paul to the Ephesians. These are the only two prayers of that letter. When asked to address you, I naturally found myself drawn to this short book. The book of Hebrews does a better job of interpreting the Old Testament; Galatians and Colossians tackle local controversies; only the gospels detail the savior’s teachings; and Romans has been called the “cathedral of New Testament theology,” putting together God’s revelation in a way no other Bible book does. But Ephesians is short, glorious, happy and controversy-free. And it focuses on three things I care about most. And thirdly, it touches on marriage and child-rearing, and being a husband and a dad have been two of the funnest things in my life so I like those.
For my purpose in trying to encourage you, I think that these two prayers of Ephesians are the best possible prayers that I could pray for you as you begin a brand –new, exciting and challenging and nerve-wracking and exhilarating and long and plodding and break-neck new school year, and the best possible prayers I could pray for you because I believe – once again -The first prayer is found there at the end of chapter 1, which I compare to a thunderstorm in the Amazon. Another way I might describe the impact of Ephesians 1 on me is to compare it to that first plunge on the old Giant Dipper roller coaster on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk: both that first dive and Ephesians 1 are exciting and scary and take my breath away.15For this reason,(A) because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love[a] toward all the saints, 16I(B) do not cease to give thanks for you,(C) remembering you in my prayers, 17that(D) the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,(E) may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18(F) having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is(G) the hope to which he has called you, what are(H) the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe,(I) according to the working of(J) his great might 20that he worked in Christ(K) when he raised him from the dead and(L) seated him at his right hand(M) in the heavenly places, 21(N) far above(O) all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above(P) every name that is named, not only in(Q) this age but also in the one to come. 22And(R) he put all things under his feet and gave him as(S) head over all things to the church, 23(T) which is his body,(U) the fullness of him(V) who fills(W) all in all.
The second prayer comes at the end of chapter 3, which as you know is the end of the more theological first three chapters of the book, and the transition to the more practical second three chapters of the book. I don’t like those descriptions, because I don’t think there is anything impractical about great theology. Great theology is more practical than so-called practical instruction since what we believe is the most important thing about us, and what we believe determines what we do and why. He starts it by telling those kids and wives and all of us that God “..chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” Otherwise, we’re all just self-righteous nerds.
Anyway, the second prayer makes this transition and it goes like this:
14For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15from whom(A) every family[a] in heaven and on earth is named, 16that according to(B) the riches of his glory(C) he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit(D) in your inner being, 17(E) so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being(F) rooted and(G) grounded in love, 18may have strength to(H) comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and(I) height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ(J) that surpasses knowledge, that(K) you may be filled with all(L) the fullness of God.
These prayers are so precious and weighty and complex and wonderful and beautiful and poetic and grand and gripping that we could spend our whole lives trying to grasp them, and should!1. Paul is here asking God for what only God can give
2. In the first prayer, Paul asks for knowledge of our hope, the saint’s riches, and God’s power
3. In the second, Paul asks for strength to comprehend the love of Christ (which, btw, is incomprehensible)
4. His aim is that his readers (and us!) be filled with God’s fullness
I said that I thought these the best possible prayers to be prayed for you Christian school staffers because what Paul is asking for in these prayers is the perfect antidote to small-minded and trivial and petty and apathetic views of the perfection and importance of the Lord God, and his work in Christ Jesus. I am tempted to call it a “guarantee,” but I do not wish to assume a role only the Holy Spirit can fill, so instead I call it my “earnest suggestion” to you. And that is what your students need most to see, and to hear.Recently, I was in the audience of a high-profile event for youth led by a very dynamic speaker who went on at some length about her difficult background. I assumed this was for the purpose of helping the teen listeners to identify with her. There was little explanation of the gospel, no magnification of the glory of the work of God in Jesus or direction about the application of that work in the student’s lives, and no testimony to the sanctifying work of the justifying savior.I love the pile of words Paul uses in these prayers. How different from my dopey, “Give us a good day and keep us all safe” kind of drivel. As a guy, I love power. I love watching powerful things, and feeling raw power. Once I stood on an open catwalk above a giant tug as it strained and pushed an even larger carrier, the US Nimitz, into a narrow berth. That’s power!We are God’s handiwork on display!Would that God would give you and your students the power and strength to comprehend this God, and not the safe and convenient and impotent and popular god of modern American self-help evangelicalism or revivalism. Because this God, Paul’s God, the God whose power is immeasurable and whose love cannot be comprehended apart from his own revelation of himself for which we must trust by faith, this God is the one that your students need to know, that they be saved from sin and self, and that they are comforted when they miscarry, reassured when they are abandoned by a spouse, and not lost if their son is killed in action.Over the course of the next school year, you wonderful people are likely to find yourself in many of those challenging situations that are part of God’s project in making us holy and blameless. Maybe you will be tempted to taste a bit of juicy gossip about another member of the staff, or to join in thinly-veiled criticism of them. Perhaps financial concerns, or stomach trouble, or the effects of global warming, or a disappointing outcome on American Idol, or whatever, will get you down and cause a dark outlook in you that will lead to impatience or indifference toward your charges.
In these situations and in many others like them, you will have the unique opportunity to capitulate to the old self in you and faithlessly indulge your appetite for selfishness, or brooding, or the justification of sin. When a relative in Nebraska takes ill, knowing the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge will keep you from worrying over what must be left to the sovereignty of Christ’s affections. Besides being filled with joy as God’s purposes are worked out in your marriage, and in your extended family and in the privacy of the teacher’s lounge, so also will your students see not anger but obedience, not anxiety but trust, not ugly speech but speech that builds others up.