As a long-time Sunday school teacher, I sadly must admit that there have been many times when my heart attitude was not right when I entered the classroom. It might be that I was frustrated and simply in a bad mood. Or, I hadn’t taken the time to really prepare the lesson. Sometimes I had prepared the Bible lesson, but I didn’t treat the truths in it as sweeter than honey or more precious than gold. These thoughts came to mind as I read this illustration given by John Younts:
If you bought your daughter a gold necklace for her birthday, how would you give it to her? Would you ball it up and toss it to her on her way out the door? Of course not! Would you not rather place the necklace in a jewelry box, wrap it beautifully, pick a special moment, and then give it to her? If you just balled up the necklace and threw it at her, she would probably think the necklace was on the bargain table at the dollar store. Too often, we hurl admonitions at our kids in the heat of battle, propelled by frustration and anger. Proverbs encourages you to present God’s truth as the precious gift that it is. How you present it is likely to have a great influence on how children receive it.
(from Everyday Talk: Talking Freely and Naturally about God with Your Children, copyright©2004, pages 17-18)
May we as parents and/or teachers always be mindful of how we present God’s truths to our children and students. Does our teaching attitude, style, method, etc. reflect the incomparable, priceless treasure of who God is? As a teacher, one way to strive toward this is to spend more time in spiritual preparation as we prepare our lessons—spending time reading the Scripture passages and meditating on them, praying that the Holy Spirit would be at work giving us understanding and transforming our own hearts and minds. In doing this, it will be more likely that our own hearts will be gripped by the treasure of God’s Word, so that when we teach we will present God’s truth with the honor and worth it deserves.(Image courtesy of sattva at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)
