Dwelling in God’s Heart – The Schoolroom

Dwelling in God’s Heart – The Schoolroom.

“Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.”  (James 4:8).

“I am inside My Father, and you are inside Me, and I am inside you.” (John 14:20).

Even though the phrase “accept Jesus into our heart” is not in Scripture, we get the picture. Accepting Jesus into our hearts means we receive Him into the very core of our being, into the centerpiece of who we are, affecting everything about us. When we receive Jesus into our heart-home, our identity becomes His, the essence of our personhood is intimately wrapped into the essence of Christ’s Personhood. When we make our home in His home, He miraculously become a resident inside each of us as well. And when we experience that Double Union with Jesus Christ, we discover that our spiritual location is inside of the very heart of God. In other words, if the Son is inside the Father, and we are inside the Son, then logically we are inside the Father! By dwelling in the Son’s heart, we dwell in the Father’s heart as well. By living inside the “Person after God’s own heart,” we find ourselves inside God’s heart! As Paul claims in Colossians 3:3, believers are “hidden within Christ, inside of God.”

Way back in 1954 there was a creative little evangelistic tract produced by Inter-Varsity Press, written by a pastor named Robert Boyd Munger. He entitled his brief tract, “My Heart – God’s Home.” I recommend it if you find it. Following up on Revelation 3:20, Pastor Munger imagined a believer opening his door and escorting Jesus through the home of his heart, now that Jesus has taken up residence in him. Now that Jesus dwells in him, and He has moved into his heart, what will Jesus see there? So the believer in the tract proceeds to give a tour of his heart-home with Jesus as he welcomes Christ into his heart. Together they tour the person’s study, dining room, living room, workroom, recreation room, bedroom and hall closet. I thought this was an engaging idea, but now I would like to give the other side of the story. Jesus lives within us, to be sure. But we also live within Jesus, hence inside the very heart of God. So if the Father was to give us a guided tour of His heart, what would we find? What will be waiting for us to discover in the many rooms of God’s heart? We could easily entitle this, “God’s Heart -My Home.”

Like anyone’s home, God’s heart will reflect His attitudes, motivations, personality, character traits, His heavenly “tastes” in interior décor. God’s deeply held convictions will be revealed in His heart-home, as they are in our own hearts. Using Scripture as our guide, we will explore God’s heart as we make ourselves at home and abide in Him. We will explore everything from the front porch to the front door, the living room to the dining room, from the kitchen to the study to the chapel. And many more rooms as well, like the bedroom, the bathroom, and the nursery. There may even be a sneak peek at the family room, the children’s playroom, and the school room.

THE SCHOOLROOM. Every parent and educator knows about the importance of character development. Integrity, virtue, goodness, self-control. Christ-centered schools and homes wouldn’t be worthy of the Name if we weren’t all over that one. But wait a minute here. While nurturing character, let’s not forget about developing characters.

Faith-based homes and schools, unfortunately, have some work to do in the characters business. Believers in recent history have tended to sand off the rough edges of God-given personality and giftedness. Committing the sin of conformity, the Church is in danger of becoming a cultural stereotype, a bland soup of sameness to a world in desperate need of righteous variety. Why are we prone to do this? Do we fear rejection from each other, from the world? Are we locked in to playing it safe? Let’s look at a key figure in our Judeo-Christian heritage, St. Patrick:

“St. Patrick devoted the last 30 years of his life to his warrior children, that they might ‘seize the everlasting kingdom’ with all the energy and intensity they had lately devoted to killing and enslaving one another and seizing one another’s kingdoms. In the Gospel story, the passionate and the outsized have a better shot at seizing heaven than the contained, the calculating, and those of whom this world approves. St. Patrick, indeed, seems to have been attracted to the same kinds of oddball, off-center personalities that attracted Jesus.” (Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization).

The Effective Learning Culture for Home and School.

There is no such thing as a “brain expert.” The human brain is so complex, the most complex piece of creation in the universe, that there is no end to the mystery of how a brain operates. We learn from the latest research, but there is always more to learn.

The following components of a brain-friendly learning culture are relevant to parents raising children, teachers instructing students and pastors discipling believers. These observations are based on many years of brain research, as well as social and cognitive studies, and are summarized into these five components by Dr. Howard Gardner, a Harvard professor in their Graduate School of Education.

Key questions for us are, What type of learning culture provides the most optimum learning environment? How did God create our brains to function best? How were we designed to learn and grow? What does an effective, brain-friendly atmosphere look like? The following components are intended to help us as we consider these questions.

1. TRUST AND BELONGING. For learning to occur, an atmosphere of trust is vital. Peace of mind is good for the brain. Where there is overt fearfulness or high anxiety, higher order learning is less likely to occur, eg, problem-solving, creativity, analysis, recollection. It’s interesting that we do our best thinking with “optimum stress,” a balance, when there isn’t too much stress, but there is enough stress to push the brain into action. Our emotional well-being is  an important part of learning… We learn best when not overly anxious or disconnected. An atmosphere of trust means that a student feels security, a strong sense of acceptance, belonging, and connectedness. Perhaps nothing promotes that feeling of belonging more than when a student feels s/he is known and understood. A teacher/parent’s role is to truly know, accept, and understand the child. When that happens, learning is most likely to occur. If a child is living in the midst of fear or trauma, learning is virtually impossible.
2. MEANINGFUL CONTENT. Learning is more likely to occur when the child feels s/he is studying something worth knowing. Brains seem to operate well when the learner senses that this is worth the effort. It could be that the child will need to simply trust the teacher for a time, and learn anyway. But for optimum learning, a student needs a rich curriculum that invites intellectual or imaginative involvement. It helps when the content really does feed the mind and heart, and is not mere junk food. Content that is merely trivial pursuits, filled with lists of facts and raw data, is not meaningful and tends to be demotivating. Much of learning is emotionally driven, and it’s important for the person to sense that the content is significant, worth knowing, and thus inspiring. The more a student is convinced that something is worthwhile, the more likely learning is to occur.
3. ENRICHED ENVIRONMENT. The brain loves it when its multiple areas are given the chance to integrate. Learning occurs best with a variety of things to learn and a variety of ways to learn them. The brain seems to be expert in adapting to methods and styles and content. A change is as good as a break in the learning environment. Multi-sensory and experiential learning tend to be the most memorable. Remember, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. But, you can make him thirsty! A rich environment makes student thirsty, telling the brain there is something to look forward to. But there is an extreme that actually goes against learning… If the environment is too hyper, too busy, or overly stimulating, then there is simply an overload, too much distraction, and focused attention will be next to impossible. A healthy, not hyper, dose of richness and variety is key to learning.
4. INTELLIGENT CHOICES. At some point a student has to take ownership of his/her learning. A child needs to grow into being an independent learner, self-motivated and able to choose to learn for himself. Providing options to students helps them learn how to make decisions for themselves in the learning process. Providing a range of acceptable choices also helps the student learn from mistakes. This builds confidence in decision-making even when one isn’t sure of the exact perfect choice to make. Providing intelligent choices gives students the opportunity of growing in personal ownership of the learning process.
5. ADEQUATE TIME. Feeding the mind is not an exercise in speed-eating. Speed isn’t necessarily a virtue in the learning process, which calls for the gift of time. A sense of being unhurried is important, an opportunity to learn at one’s own speed. Evidently, the brain’s neural connections need “jelling time” for learning retention, kind of like film developing in the dark room, or incubation time. It’s interesting that “optimum stress” comes into play again. If there is too little time, then anxiety rises and learning is less likely to occur. But if there is no time limit at all, too much time, the brain isn’t pushed into action adequately. So, like so much of the learning process, the gift of time is another balancing act. A little time pressure seems to stimulate the brain, while too much time pressure works again learning.

At the end of the day, these five qualities will go  far in establishing an effective learning environment. Our brains were made to learn and develop in a culture that values trust and belonging, meaningful content, an enriched environment, intelligent choices, and adequate time.

May we all continue to explore what a learning culture looks like and how it operates, whether we are parents, teachers, or pastors. As we educate our young, may we all establish a House of Peace, of Shalom, where all concerned are free to learn, to flourish, growing into wholeness and integrity, without fear or insecurity.

The Pedagogy of Love (1 Corinthians 12:31-14:1 for Home and School Communities):

Even as you seek the higher gifts, I will now show you the most excellent way: If we speak with eloquence, or even in the very language of heaven, but have no love, we are no better than screeching playground whistles or creaking classroom doors;

If we are able to understand the deep mysteries of God and the universe, or hold in our minds all human knowledge, or if we become miracle-working spiritual giants, but are empty of love, we amount to nothing at all;

If we minister to the needy in school-wide service projects, even to the point of sacrificing our very lives, but are without love, we achieve precisely nothing;

So despite our gifted intellects, our generous works of charity, our spiritual pedigree, or our standing in the academic world, we remain utterly bankrupt without love. We say nothing, we accomplish nothing, we know nothing, we are nothing, without love.

Love takes the ego out of education, for a school of love doesn’t run on the fuel of ambition. Self-advancement loses its steam in favor of a generous concern for the growth of one another. The individual’s race to achieve is overshadowed by a kindhearted, corporate walk toward wisdom.

Though teachers may write the world’s best integral unit, engaging each learning style, exercising each intelligence, building every skill and capturing every imagination, if they don’t love their students, they have failed as teachers.

Though a teacher may be the envy of the educational world with the best classroom management skills, intimate parent conferences, poignant drama productions, clever scope and sequence, or whatever else it may be that reveals professional, teacher-of-the-year effectiveness… as important as all that may be, if that teacher labors without love, s/he is basically a waste of talent.

A school of grace doesn’t miss the forest for the trees. It seeks understanding and wisdom, not mere knowledge or information. It expects progress, not perfection. It values relationship over efficiency; presence over productivity; mercy over minutiae. In a school of grace, the bottom line is love.

For ultimately all eloquent speech will be silenced, all human knowledge will be erased, all great books will crumble, all impressive buildings will fall, and every single body of flesh will return to dust. When everything man-made and earth-bound has finally fallen, only one thing will remain standing tall… Love.

In God’s perspective, there are three great virtues: humble and steady faith; resolute and steadfast hope; godly and extravagant love. But only one of these virtues has the final word… Love. So then, go after a life of love in everything you study and do; Follow the way of love as if your life depended on it.