God's Sufficient Grace

Nothing but the Blood of Jesus

The last few days have been full of opportunities to share the gospel with my students. Starting this week, the hymn of the month(ish) is "Nothing but the Blood of Jesus". This was my mom's excellent suggestion as it is a fairly easy one to learn (even for young and/or ESL students) but yet is full of rich doctrine. So far the kids have loved it! Several of them knew the first verse from Good News Clubs (which we have on campus once a week after school) and already loved the singing it. As I was teaching on the meaning of the words in the first verse, I shared all the ways/times that Christ bled for us leading up to and during the crucifixion, giving them hopefully a picture of His great love for us. In just about every class (so far this week I've introduced it to one K, 1st, 3rd and two 2nd grade classes), the students grew extremely serious and even sad as I talked about the cross. And not just that, but I don't think I've ever had every single student's rapt attention like I did when sharing about it. It's been amazing to see the Spirit at work, causing them to listen to the gospel message. And they've asked several questions too - especially my 2nd graders to whom I gave the assignment of making visuals for the hymn (the fold-out cross visual we used to use in CEF). "I don't know what this means...precious is the flow? What does 'flow' mean?" "What is 'atone'?" I had to pray many times throughout class that God would give me the words to put these concepts in "kid" language.

Another neat thing I started yesterday is meeting with Katy Veldhorst (Dave and Jan Veldhorst's daughter) after school to study the Bible, memorize verses and pray together. She's in 8th grade and goes to ICS (too old to be in any of my classes though). I'd like to say that I'll be discliping her, but I have a feeling that I'm going to learn much more from her than she will from me. She a very godly, ministry-minded girl and I have really enjoyed getting to know her this past fall. We actually have a lot of common interests too, despite the difference in age, so I think our Monday afternoons are going to be a lot of fun.

God has encouraged me these last few days. It's been so neat to see Him at work. Since coming back after Christmas, I've been trying to get to school earlier and spend a bit of time in prayer for my students (praying for each by name - Laurel's challenged me so much in this area) and dedicating the day to the Lord. I'm finding that I'm always in a position of need and almost nervous fear as I approach each day, but it's amazing to see God work despite that need and weakness. Maybe me praying only opens my eyes to better see what He is doing, but it seems like recently God has really been "showing off" (as Dave said in his sermon on Sunday, God loves to do : ) - taking what is so difficult for me and what I know I can't do and showing me that He can do it! It's neat to be a spectator here. : )

The following are verses that really challenged me as I prayed through them last Thursday (especially in light of the fact that, as Maria Francis said, I have the "nations" in my classroom):

"Sing a new song to the Lord!
Let the whole earth sing to the Lord!
Sing to the Lord; praise his name.
Each day proclaim the good news that he saves.
Publish his glorious deeds among the nations.
Tell everyone about the amazing things he does.
Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise!
He is to be feared above all gods."

Psalm 96:1-4 (NLT)

posted by Catherine Rogers @ 5:14 AM