I know that I have posted this exhortation from John Piper before, but it is a great ongoing reminder for those who minister to children and youth week after week. And parents: consider sending these words along to those who minister to your children...it would be a great boost for their souls!
Freedom is not doing what you please. Freedom is knowing the truth, loving the good, and never fearing the future. Sunday School exists to give a knowledge of truth, a love for the good, and hope for the future. In other words, Sunday School is for freedom. It is a school of liberation.
Have you Sunday School Workers ever thought of yourselves as a squadron of God’s commandos, weekly storming Satan’s bastion to liberate his hostages? Listen to 2 Timothy 2:24, 25: “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, an apt teacher, forbearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.” When you love your students and teach them truth, you are God’s gentle storm troopers! It is truth taught in love that batters down the walls of Satan’s prison. He cannot hold out against the truth.
O, never, never underestimate the power of truth. We handle glorious things every Sunday. We are in a great battle for liberation. Do not be deceived that you hear no bombshells. Do not be discouraged that your medals are few. The Last Day will reveal that the greatest centers of power and of lasting liberation were not in Washington or London or Bonn or Geneva, but in classrooms where truth was taught and young people were “freed from the snare of the devil.” This is no exaggeration. It is absolutely true.
("Sunday School as Liberation,” article by John Piper, ©2014 Desiring God Foundation, desiringGod.org)
(Image courtesy of Graur Razvan Ionut at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)
