The Start of School

Well, it's that time again in south Georgia -- the time when schools are starting back. I know some schools in south Georgia started last week, while most start back around August 9th. This year, more than any other, I have felt an urgent need for prayer for our schools.

Have you ever given much thought over the amount of influence the schools currently have on your children? The students spend significantly more time at school, under the influence of teachers and peers, than they do at home. While this can be positive or negative, it is an area that we need to be cognizant of. Abraham Lincoln once said that the philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation would be the philosophy of the nation in the next. In other words, the influence of the schools on your kids is having a much greater impact on the overall social structure of this country than your influence as parents.

What are our schools teaching? What are our teachers and administrators promoting? Where is our nation headed? I praise God for the schools in our area that still have a strong Christian influence, but there are many other schools that are succumbing to pressure from the state, from teacher's unions, and from other cultural institutions to focus more on pluralism in religion, sexual orientation, and political thinking.

It is for this reason that many Christians have opted to remove their children from public school and have placed them in Christian schools or teach them at home. It is for this reason that we need to pray for our schools -- for the students, for the teachers, for the administrators, and for all who work there. We need to pray that God's presence in our schools would be real and active, and that our schools would stand firm in their resistance to liberal pluralistic curriculum focusing more on cultural change than on actual educational advances. And, we need to pray that God would magnify our influence on our children, that we would be able to lead them and teach them His ways and that it would carry over into their adult lives.

Pray for our children this school year. Everytime you pass a school while driving or walking, pray for the school and for all those who will enter into it. Pray that the love of Christ would reign supreme, and pray for the protection -- both physical and spiritual -- for the kids who will be attending.