I spent a lot of time in the classroom of life trying to learn this lesson. I even stayed after school in the attempt to free myself from the chains of being enslaved by what others thought of me.

 “Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.” (Prov. 29:25)

I suppose I did lose trust, not all of it, but enough to stray me off the path. It is pointless to rehash what could have been. As I have grown older and hopefully wiser, I can see the better path of victorious living. The time lost was time that could have been better spent telling and showing others the Good News. Instead, I lived hoping that others would pick up the slightest whiff of a hint without it costing me any risk. I came to learn and inhabit what someone far wiser than me said to me: “the only opinion that matters is the one you have of yourself.” Being a Christian means adding the opinion of the One who loves us unconditionally. Standards of living, peer pressure, “keeping up with the Jones’s” – none of that matters.

We can have absolute confidence in The One who determines our future. Everyone has their own unique story, filled with many chapters of roads taken, choices made, alternative routes driven. I hope that younger generations will be open to the life lessons we have spent hours in the classroom of life trying to learn. We all get concerned when we observe them being absorbed in social media, memes, gathering intel, while seemingly not learning how to cultivate healthy interpersonal relationships and learning about God’s love for them. Images and artificial intelligence fill their brains with the wrong messages sometimes. I hope that we who have come through our schools of hard knocks can influence them lovingly without rushing to snapped judgments. There is much to have hope and faith for in future generations. If they learn not to repeat our mistakes, they will become the fully activated, authentic creatures that God made them to be. As for us, dear blog readers, we still have time on our clocks and fuel in our tanks. The classroom of life is open 24/7.

Pastor Art