A Quiet Liberty On the Lord’s Day: Sanctifed and Joyful

I’m quickly approaching the end.  In fact, as I write this I still have two lesson plans to write that are due tomorrow.  I’m speaking of my education class.  Education 3302: Instructional Strategies.  In a furious minimester of 12 days, I am having the Texas Education Agency shoved down my throat as I’m being taught how to survive the suffocation.  Needless to say, I’ve gagged many times.

I’ve always had a disdain for the TEA, but I’ve never had it as much as I have now.  However, this subject is not my point.  Forget the way the No Child Left Behind Act takes teachers by the throat and shoves their noses in the feces of high school failures.  “Bad teacher!”

This has to do with worldview clash.

I’ve learned about worldview this Summer in a savage way.  Thanks to Dr. Mohler, whom I’ve taken the habit of listening to as much as I am able, I have learned, for the past month or so, some of the most tragic examples of the decadence of a post-Genesis 3 world. His Christian engagement with news bits and signs of the times have taken me from minor reactions of bothered tsks to major reactions of downright sorrow.  I’m so burdened with what the future holds for God’s people.  Especially…my own children.  I’m actually frightened to place them in the public school system.

We will suffer: mark it.  I’m not the one whose promised it.  See II Timothy 3 and Matthew 24 and also the whole last book of the Bible.

Morever, as I’ve heard the ways my professor lines out for us to successfully ‘beat the man,’ as she so eloquently puts it with her Southern dialect (I absolutely love it, by the way!), I have experienced a heavy heart and even downright despair.  The State is on its way to controlling everything.  Satan controls the State.

Thanks be to God that the Cross of Christ is my victory.  Thanks be to God that the king’s heart is like a stream in his hands.  Otherwise, all my enemies would swallow me alive.  When I gather myself after class, I tell myself to keep going and just take it one day at a time. (That’s always the key, my suffering brethren.)  Sufficient for the day is its trouble.

One day, I know I will face a classroom of troubled young youths.  The majority of their parents don’t care, the majority of student attitudes will reflect it.  They will hate my subject and resent me for trying to teach it to them.  But that’s not the part that burdens me.

What burdens me?  The secularization of education has drained it of all semblance of its origin.  Where did schools come from?  What is the point of education?  My heart tells me one thing, and you can see this on my facebook if you go there.  It is a quote a friend shared with me, and it has captured me ever since.

“The chief design of your academic pursuits is to prepare you more extensively to glorify God in the salvation of sinners. Let this thought be the constant inmate of your soul. Let it rise up with you in the morning and lie down with you at night. Wherever you go, whatever you do, let it attend and direct you.”

-John Angell James

That’s the point of my existence: to make much of Christ so others can see and marval at Him.  That’s it.  That’s the chief end of education.

Sadly, however, in a fallen world, the lines are so hard to find.  Satan prowls around seeking to devour me.  That’s where my heart has been for the last 3 weeks:  Running from Satan as he tries to steal my joy in God about my future.

Here is a blog published today (not coincidentally) by Dr. Mohler entitled Just What Are Schools to Do? The Aims and Purposes of Education.  I knew I had to share it with you when I saw it.  God seems to be working on me.    http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=1183

But thanks be to God for relieving me this past Sunday.  In twofold mediums, he set me free from the burden.  Before church, I wanted to read the Morning devotional from Charles Spurgeon for July 6.  I took it with me, and I read it aloud for my girlfriend and I as she drove us to the church building.  It was the beginning of my liberty.

“Whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell in safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.” -Proverbs 1:33

“Divine love is rendered conspicuous when it shines in the midst of judgments.  Fair is that lone star which smiles through the rifts of the thunder clouds; bright is the oasis which blooms in the wilderness of sand; so fair and so bright is love in the midst of wrath.  When the Israelites provoked the Most High by their continued idolatry, He punished them by withholding both dew and rain, so that their land was visited by a sore famine; but while He did this, He took care that His own chosen ones should be secure.  If all other brooks are dry, yet shall there be one reserved for Elijah; and when that fails, God shall still preserve for him a place of sustenance; nay, not only so, the Lord had not simply one ‘Elijah,’ but He had a remnant according to the election of grace, who were hidden by fifties in a cave, and though the whole land was subject to famine, yet these fifties in the cave were fed, and fed from Ahab’s table too by His faithful, God-fearing steward, Obadiah.  Let us from this draw the inference, that come what may, God’s people are safe.  Let convulsions shake the solid earth, let the skies themselves be rent in twain, yet amid the wreck of worlds the believer shall be as secure as in the calmest hour of rest.  If God cannot save His people under heaven, He will save them in heaven.  If the world becomes too hot to hold them, then heaven shall be the place of their reception and their safety.  Be ye confident, when ye hear of wars, and rumours of wars.  Let no agitation distress you, but be quiet from fear of evil.  Whatsoever cometh upon the earth, you, beneath the broad wings of Jehovah, shall be secure.  Stay yourself upon His promise; rest in His faithfulness, and bid defiance to the blackest future, for there is nothing in it direful for you.  Your sole concern should be to show forth to the world the blessedness of hearkening to the voice of wisdom.”

Thank you Father, for using this Saint of old, to minister to my soul.

A quiet repetition of Van Deventer’s I Surrender All was the resolution of my liberty.

“All to Jesus I surrender;
all to him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust him,
in his presence daily live. 
I surrender all, I surrender all,
all to thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.”

I was free…I am free.

Working with you to stand in defiance to the blackest future where no direful thing waits for God’s people,

Vince R.

Morning and Evening. Charles H. Spurgeon. Hendrickson Publishers. Feb. 2005, p. 376.