Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Model Farms
We are still going into Model Farms High School and teaching scripture classes almost every day. To give you an update, here are a couple praise reports from this morning.
The first period today is a class we've had at least twice before, one you may remember from the blog as the class that wanted to see God do supernatural things in their lives. And after seeing other classes of eighth graders, (and even their own class) the fact that everyone in the class was quiet and attentive this morning could only be the work of the Holy Spirit. Because they were so attentive we were able to cover a lot of material. We shared Daniel Chapter 3 (the firey furnace) and emphasized the points that the three had gone against peer pressure to worship a false God and that God still does miracles like that today, sharing stories about people from our church and friends of ours who have seen God do amazing things to save people from death. And we were also able to share Psalm 30 in that class and have a discussion about the ways God protects us and helps us.
One of the kids in that class was excited because she had also been camping with her family in Narrabeen for the weekend (at the same time we were), and had unmistakably seen Daniel retrieving a nerf football from the road through the campground.
The third period class was a completely different atmosphere. That particular class is a little roudy and talkative today as they had been on the other days we've been with them. They had lots of questions, not all of them biblical. There were a lot of misconceptions about who God is in that class. "Did Jesus really marry Mary Magdelane?" "Are Ghosts real?" "Is Scientology a Christian religion?" "What if you worship demons instead of God?" And so on and so forth. Some of them know who God is too, but they have doubts, aren't sure about what they believe, and what's true and what's fiction they've been told is truth. The thing that really quieted them down though, and drew in their attention and focus was hearing our testimonies. They'd already heard parts of them, as Diana and I (Jessica) had both been to that particular class before, but Diana shared more details she hadn't shared before, and they were really listening to how God had changed Diana's life--the holy spirit had quieted them and drawn them in with facination about God.
And it was also really neat talking to the substitute teacher who was supervising that period (Chris the scripture teacher has been with the 7th grade swim camp for the past few class days) and hearing him share that he was really impressed by the stories from our lives that we'd shared (our testimonies), he said he'd never really read scripture before, so the ideas we shared about who God is was new to him too.
The first period today is a class we've had at least twice before, one you may remember from the blog as the class that wanted to see God do supernatural things in their lives. And after seeing other classes of eighth graders, (and even their own class) the fact that everyone in the class was quiet and attentive this morning could only be the work of the Holy Spirit. Because they were so attentive we were able to cover a lot of material. We shared Daniel Chapter 3 (the firey furnace) and emphasized the points that the three had gone against peer pressure to worship a false God and that God still does miracles like that today, sharing stories about people from our church and friends of ours who have seen God do amazing things to save people from death. And we were also able to share Psalm 30 in that class and have a discussion about the ways God protects us and helps us.
One of the kids in that class was excited because she had also been camping with her family in Narrabeen for the weekend (at the same time we were), and had unmistakably seen Daniel retrieving a nerf football from the road through the campground.
The third period class was a completely different atmosphere. That particular class is a little roudy and talkative today as they had been on the other days we've been with them. They had lots of questions, not all of them biblical. There were a lot of misconceptions about who God is in that class. "Did Jesus really marry Mary Magdelane?" "Are Ghosts real?" "Is Scientology a Christian religion?" "What if you worship demons instead of God?" And so on and so forth. Some of them know who God is too, but they have doubts, aren't sure about what they believe, and what's true and what's fiction they've been told is truth. The thing that really quieted them down though, and drew in their attention and focus was hearing our testimonies. They'd already heard parts of them, as Diana and I (Jessica) had both been to that particular class before, but Diana shared more details she hadn't shared before, and they were really listening to how God had changed Diana's life--the holy spirit had quieted them and drawn them in with facination about God.
And it was also really neat talking to the substitute teacher who was supervising that period (Chris the scripture teacher has been with the 7th grade swim camp for the past few class days) and hearing him share that he was really impressed by the stories from our lives that we'd shared (our testimonies), he said he'd never really read scripture before, so the ideas we shared about who God is was new to him too.
