Joy in My Work

by Kelly Knowlden

This next month is one of the most difficult for students to maintain the proper perspective toward their work.  Long weeks of due dates, or drilling lessons or repeating same ‘old’ tasks, [studying spelling], bring out in children all sorts of reasons to procrastinate, to balk, and simply to refuse to
do work.

And our response? “My dad always said, ‘Tough luck, just do it anyway!’”  While it is true that ultimately our children must get past their ‘feelings’ of not wanting to do work, those parental responses will not achieve the goal described in Ecclesiastes 5:18-19:

Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him—for this is his lot.  Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work, this is a gift from God. 

So then, how will students learn to find joy in their work?  First, do you empathize with their feelings?  Tell them so.  Help them to see that you need God’s grace too, in order to desire what is right and good.  Ask them if they think that God can help us even to enjoy our work - not just do it.  Encourage them with knowing that God will reward those who are diligent. [See Prov. 10:4; 12:11-12; 22:29; and 28:19].  Pray with them.  Remind them that playing now is not going to bring lasting happiness despite what their heart may say.  Help them with godly resolve, to do their tasks as unto the Lord and let Him measure their final worth.  May these next weeks be opportunities to build godly work habits in our children that they might enjoy their work!

Why Christian Education?

by Kelly Knowlden

When re-enrollment comes around it is an opportunity to re-evaluate why you choose Immanuel Christian School to be the means of educating your children.  After all, there are many educational opportunities possible: home school, cyber school, public school, or a combination of all of these. 
So I decided to list reasons that ICS made the most sense for our family:

1. We have godly voices other than ours speaking to our children about life: why learn, what good behavior looks like, why do they do what they do, the importance of good study habits, etc.
2. The quality of education is excellent!  Not only are students taught well and creatively, but what they are teaching takes into account the God that made the whole world.  They will learn to critique what they see and hear from a biblical perspective.
3. Teachers are not going to ignore bad behavior and are going to hold out a high standard.  Along the way, they will also talk to our children about the heart issues that causes behavior.
4. There is great benefit in having our children be a part of a social environment where other parents are making different choices than ours but are still wanting their children to do what is right.  
5. It gives us opportunities to talk to our children about how to live in a fallen world when they sin against others or are sinned against from those outside their immediate family. 

There are other reasons that are nuances of those above that made our children’s experiences of education very valuable.  The cost was worth it!

Horizontal Comparisons

by Kelly Knowlden

One of the aspects of living in a fallen world is that we are continually making comparisons to others.  We compare our hair style, our car make, our economic status, and our parenting rules to those around us.  It usually has devastating results.  Comparisons to those who are presumed to be “better” will leave us with a sense of failure, envy, covetousness, discouragement, and having a desire to somehow bring them “down” to our level.  Comparisons to those that we perceive who are worse off [dumber, poorer, uglier, goofier, etc.] leaves us feeling superior, proud, boastful, sinfully smug, and having a desire to let everyone know that we know we are “better.”

Kids tend to do the same things and end up with the same problems.  The spillover of all that is that kids try to “prove” that they are tougher, stronger, cooler, smarter, by a number of different methods.  This includes bullying, which is the number one problem  in schools today.

As a Christian School we are obviously against bullying, however, we are also against all that underlies the reasons kids bully.  I am sure that you will agree that you do not want your children to be bullied nor to be bullies. Here is how you can help.

Compare them to NO ONE.  Tell them how much you love them for who they are.  Even if they get under your skin, commend them for their desire for what is right.  [I have never had a kid tell me that he purposefully wanted to do what was wrong.]  Tell them about God’s work in fulfilling what He has for them.  Give them that gospel hope that says Jesus Christ is able to work in them to fulfill the potential for which He made them.

Conversation

by Kelly Knowlden

Conversation, generally defined, means to talk.

However, there is a lot of talking which would never fall into the category of an “interchange of thought” (Prov. 10:19).  What often happens in group settings where talking is taking place, is one person speaks about a topic and all others stand around waiting to lunge in with their perspective or their “story.”  And so they do.  And then the next person puts in their piece and so on…

Now here is where the Christian mind must do its work. For the mouth speaks out of the over- flow of the heart (Luke 6:45).  Self-centeredness of living will never see conversation as an opportunity to find out what is going on in the heart/mind of someone else.  Rather we will “air our own opinions”  (Prov. 18:2).

In talking to our children, we often end up telling them how we would deal with the problems they face (or how we did “when I was a boy…”), or we tell them what we think they need to hear.  Very little time is spent in finding out what they are thinking and feeling.  And so we reproduce by modeling, people who mostly fill the air with self talk.

Conversations with our children ought to be a combination of instruction in truth coupled with finding out what they are thinking.  Prov. 20:5 says, “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.”  Learning how to ask effective questions that get “under the skin” will help them understand themselves.  This will take time, effort and repentance from our own self-centered conversation, but the results will be children who feel heard and engaged in the lively discourse of truth!