Tag: personal faith

Called to Love: A Season of Hope

Ryan@educationandfaith.com

“You little jerk.”

“Are you kidding me right now?”

“Wow, you’re really good at ticking me off!” (Fists clenching)

“What in the world were you thinking!”

Embarrassingly, I’ve thought each of these things in response to my students. In the last week. Some just yesterday.

It’s obvious I can have an unloving heart in my classroom. When these thoughts raid my mind, I’ve stolen a child’s hope. While a teacher’s ONE job is to provide hope, I’ve managed to steal it.

A Step Further

What happens when these thoughts become a mainstay, creating a calloused and hard heart. What if I acted on any one of these thoughts? Simply let a phrase slip from my lips. Let an aggressive sense flow through my hands. It’s frightening how easily that could happen. That quick.

We’re a fragile, weak creation. For some reason the Creator placed His treasures in jars of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7). We each are easily broken but contain extraordinary potential!

 

Called to Love, Providing Hope

I’m so thankful for the advent season. Dwelling on these historic truths softens my heart and puts me back together; This allows me to do my ONE teaching job well.

Coincidently the first theme of  advent is hope. I’m reminded how important hope is for a person’s well-being. My hope is found in a quiet presence filled with love and grace, brought forth from a silent and holy night.

To perform my job well I must be a loving and gracious presence. I can’t do this completely without my divine help. Might I even love my students recklessly! Loving without expecting positive returns. When we expect certain returns in this world we’re setting ourselves up for hurt.

As we dwell on the truths of the season may the treasures inside us make us beautiful jars of clay! Merry Christmas!

Reckless Love by Cory Asbury:

O Holy Night by Hillsong Worship

Some of Us Are Slow Learners; Like Me

Ryan@educationandfaith.com

If it is true that God doesn’t waste anything or any circumstance, then boy do I make Him work hard. I think of how much has to happen for me to be alerted to His nudges. Looking back at my last blogpost, it is embarrassing to see that it took 11 years of teaching f

or me to move just a blip toward professional competency. Although I’m glad that Zechariah 4:10, shows that God works through little details and “small beginnings”.

Slow and Stubborn

I can also find joy for His grace is sufficient for me. I often choose to live without tapping into His strength but there’s not a day that I’d survive without His grace. I’ve missed God’s cues even in glaring details that I’ve stepped over each day. Just this morning I’m sure I missed H

is higher route for me due to selfishness. An opportunity to serve a coworker crossed my mind. I declined. I was pretty busy. “His grace is sufficient for me.” There’s really only one reason I continue to require His grace.

An Abundant Life

After reflecting on my first 11 years of teaching and the progress I’ve made I can’t help but notice the root of the problem. My definition of abundant life has been severely flawed. I’m glad my God is patient because he’s only managed to gain a fraction of my attention through a dozen years of family arguments, job failures, and consequences of my many poor decisions. In John 17:3 Jesus clearly explains that the only ingredient of an abundant life is a growing knowledge of God. The knowledge of God, that’s all. It’s both a little and a lot. Honestly I read and understand this truth but my day-to-day mentality displays a still flawed view of life. I try to achieve my abundant life through my occupation, my family, my health, my golf game, and many other shiny things.

In his book Epic, John Eldridge writes that our purpose is for the restoration of life. Repent and turn away from my human desires. I’m so joyful to have a career that gives me unmeasurable ways to restore life in students, families, and coworkers. And God is definitely using my job to restore an abundant life in me. My last 12 years is a testament to that!   

 

God has given me an ability to gain knowledge of him through my daily interactions in my career. I’m curious if others notice these same opportunities in their workplace. I mean we spend a huge junk of our life there, I’m guessing God wants to reveal himself there.

 

Peace in growing through your workplace

We’re More Ignorant than Ever and Here’s Why

Ryan@educationandfaith.com

We have access to more information than ever, yet we remain uninformed.

“The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.”  

-Nathaniel Branden

 

Reality. We have the exhausting task of dredging through the sludge of information.

It’s also why we’re able to connect so well to Lewis Carroll’s “rabbit hole” in Alice in Wonderland. In today’s culture we, like Alice, free fall down this deep complex hole of information overload.

This is why the industry of minimalism exists. This is why minimalism is so attractive yet so difficult to achieve.

Too Much Information = Ignorance

How?

Somehow as we have acquired access to unlimited information, we have also acquired greater ignorance. This is counterintuitive. How can we now have the ability to know everything instantly, but it still doesn’t dispel ignorance?

Responsiveness is the key. I recently read that there are three requirements to being responsive. They are caring, validation, and understanding. I think I could summarize those three into one act. Listening. If you’re truly listening, you are caring about what you hear. You are validating or confirming the information. Through your validation you come to a place of understanding. So why must it be so hard to listen?

Like minimalism, a whole industry for listening can be found in the self-help sector.

 

Awareness

Both minimalism and active listening preach awareness. I love that in biblical times the people would name places and landmarks based on the experience they had there. What an exclamation of awareness! In Genesis 34 Jacob labels the place El Bethel because it was where God revealed himself to him. Even their given names were changed based on their experiences. After wrestling with God, don’t you think Jacob’s eyes were opened when his name was changed to Israel, because he struggled with God and humans and he overcame (Genesis 32). His identity was built on that awareness.

We can take it a step further to see God even identified with numerous different names depending on the characteristics he was exhibiting. I’m jealous of the clarity these biblical people portrayed. This clarity requires a humble awareness in recognizing the circumstances one is facing and their response to that experience.

When I’m consumed with every piece from every informational feed I grow tired. When I’m tired in this world I lose my awareness. When I lose my awareness I grow self-serving and greedy. After falling down this rabbit-hole I find myself ignorant and unresponsive.

 

Name Your Experience

Reflect on your current circumstance, what would you name it? Name it, accept it, and trust God to lead you through it. In what area have you lost awareness? It’s a constant struggle and we need guidance.

We’re a kinder, more thoughtful people when we take time to reflect on our experiences.

May we be more self-aware, relationally-aware, and culturally-aware.

 

An Answer in the Form of Questions (a lot of them)

Ryan@educationandfaith.com
As I am attempting to maintain alignment with God’s will and now asking Him to help me overcome my unbelief, I’ve discovered the most unique answer to my requests.
God has flooded my thoughts with curiosity and questions. Specific questions like…How can a school balance both developing children in living holy lives and also provide real opportunities to be salt and light? Could a school that is just grades K-6 or K-8 manage that balance? Will I be able to visit Anastasis Academy (www.anastasisacademy.com) in Colorado, to gain understanding of all of the logisitics? How can a school with a small student to teacher ratio still provide teachers with plenty of planning time to collaborate and create dynamic learning opportunities? I could go on to fill pages with the detailed inquiries that have been placed on my heart.
You may be thinking, “How is this an answer to prayer?”
Amidst all of these questions, I have an unexplainable confidence in knowing these are God’s directed concerns. I’m pretty sure God welcomes my curiosity because it is no longer doused with doubt, but it is filled with fascination. As I looked at the many examples of faithful servants in Hebrews 11, I couldn’t help but assume that they were filled with questions as well. I’m grateful that questions do not have to equal doubt. As my fascination and contentment with God’s holiness increases, so too does my faith. It seems wherever I read about faith, there is a result of righteousness. Now there is a characteristic to work towards.
In Genesis 22:1-19, God tests Abraham’s faith. The only way Abraham could have been willing to follow God’s command to sacrifice his own son Isaac, was through a pure trust in the Lord’s holiness (completely OTHER and HIGHER than anything in this world). When we face tests of faith, God’s holiness is waiting on the other side, affording us a glimpse of his heavenly goodness. I wish the bible told us what Abraham was thinking as he led his son up the mountain to the altar. I’d like to think that his mind was filled with questions driven by wonder and reverence, with an absence of doubt. Ultimately, Abraham named that mountain Jehovah-jireh, meaning “The Lord Will Provide”.
As teachers and parents, our most promising learners are the ones who inquire with fascination and wonder. It is the ones that dismiss and/or mistrust our guidance that we really need to encourage and support. I would challenge you to reflect on where you might fall on this spectrum of faith.
I would anticipate that being a fascinated inquirer of a Holy God, is a very exciting lifestyle. May my faith increase to the point where I can refer to this journey as “The Lord Will Provide”.
Joy in the limitless possibilities!

Ryan Hershey see my blog at
www.faithandeducationcollide.blogspot.com

“Help Me Overcome My Unbelief”

Ryan@educationandfaith.com
Well, I’m diseased…
Everything I read, see or experience I relate to teaching, learning and education. This diagnosis also causes me to avoid some things that are meant for my personal relationship with God as well as my family.
As I read an article by Terry Pluto, faith and sports writer for the Akron Beacon Journal, I was doing my best to relate his words to my teaching. In the article, “God Believes in Us”, Pluto says, “I need to remember that God believes in me even more than I believe in myself.” Now I could write a whole blog post about that characteristic of God. How, as teachers and leaders we should embody a faith in our students that surpasses their own. That was the point when God wrestled away the symptoms of my “disease” and shifted my blinders away from education and fixated them on Him. 
Pluto went on to refer to a story in Mark chapter 9, where a father brings his demon-possessed son to be healed by Jesus. In verse 23 Jesus said, “Everything is possible for one who believes.” While that is profound, it’s what is written in the following verse that God intended for me. The father in the story responds to Jesus with this desperate plea, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”  
I’m constantly asking God for “stuff”, but I can’t ever remember requesting a stronger faith. I always was in the frame of mind that it was my job to believe and have faith because God offers such an abundance of promises and blessings. But God used Terry Pluto’s words to set me straight; “I have to remind myself that before I ask God for anything else, I must ask him for more faith.”
This is exactly what I needed to hear, as my vision for this blog and my future in education was becoming much more of mine than God’s. I was feeling antsy about who was reading the blog and the possibilities it would lead to.
God really provided clarity through Hebrews 11. How ignorant of me to think that people like Moses or Noah, as well as the numerous others mentioned in the chapter, never had to ask God to help them overcome their unbelief. As we ask for an increased faith, I think we’ll gain contentment in knowing God maintains a holy perspective. Chapter 11 also describes all of these faithful servants as pleasing to God and commends them as righteous.
We very easily mask God’s power when we don’t ask for help. I think the song “Light Up the Sky” by the Afters displays the great contrast between a meek faith constructed on our own, and the faith achieved through God’s design.

Now when I seek the vision God has given me for education (in addition to anything else), I’ll sincerely start with, “help me overcome my unbelief”.

Ryan Hershey see my blog at
www.faithandeducationcollide.blogspot.com