Praying for Dependence

“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. Matthew 16:17 (ESV)

I’ve written elsewhere about my internal conflict about praying to start of class, and much of that stems from my negative experiences with it. I’m on record for referring to myself as a “recovering Christian school alumnus.” Please don’t get me wrong; I love Christian schooling, and I pray that my Heavenly Father will allow me to stay involved in Christian schooling all of my days. Yet, I’m very much affected and shaped by what I observed many years ago.

When it comes to prayer in class, my student experience wasn’t great. To be honest, the teachers who did the best job of weaving their faith through their instruction rarely prayed at the start of class. Similarly, many of my teachers who were strictly regimented about praying at the start of class didn’t talk about the things of God at any other points during their classes. To be honest, I also don’t know that I was ever told why we prayed at the beginning of class; it was just something Christians were supposed to do.

Similarly, in my work with Christian school teachers over the past few years, prayer is often one of the first things teachers list when I ask them what it looks like to teach “Christianly.” Almost always.

Sometimes, it’s good to take a step back and recognize that, if this is true, Christian teachers in public schools aren’t able to teach Christianly, because most of them are prohibited from opening class with prayer.

As Frank Gaebelein says in his timeless book, The Pattern of God’s Truth, the Christian school should be able to eliminate its chapel services and Bible classes and still not miss a beat when it comes to being “Christian.” For the sake of the argument, I would throw prayer in there too … not because I don’t think we should have chapel, bible classes, or prayer, but because we often rely on them to be the distinctives that fundamentally make us Christian. Yet, Gaebelein challenges us to recognize that thinking and living Christianly should so saturate our interactions with our students and peers that we aren’t dependent on chapel, etc. And, yes, Christian teachers in public schools really can teach Christianly, too.

If I were to mentor a new teacher in a Christian school, I would help him or her develop a framework for learning to think through the implications of foundational truths and consider how they inform the way we teach. I would do that first – long before I ever suggested starting class with prayer. We have to put our emphasis there; otherwise students will think (as I did as a student) that the “Christian” part of class is the prayer, but there’s very little that’s particularly Christian about geometry, or physics, or phoenics. Even though no teacher ever said that to me, that’s clearly what was modeled to me.

Oh, but Christianity has tons to say about geometry and math facts, short stories and sonnets, astronomy and geology, vocabulary, grammar, art, and music. And, we can’t rob our students from seeing that because we cause them to think that our prayers are what has made the class Christian.

Yet, we should still pray at the start of class.

I’ve come full-circle from one who was quite obstinately against praying at the start of class to one who can’t imagine starting class without it now. But for different reasons.

I’m more motivated now by my growing courtship with the gospel, rather than adherence to the regiments of what Christians are supposed to do. If I believe the gospel, I begin to realize how deeply I need God. Not just for salvation, but for everything.

And this is where I reflect on Jesus’ words to Peter in Matthew 16. Peter had just made an accurate confession of who Jesus is. He was right, when there were all sorts of disagreements about who Jesus is. And Jesus looks at Him and essentially says, “but for the grace of God, you wouldn’t have known what you know.”

This is why we pray to start class. Teachers have put immense work into preparing their lessons and thinking through multiple ways to help students learn the lessons for the day. Students try to learn it. Hopefully, they’ll pay attention, review back over class, do their best on their homework, and study when required. These are all things that we do as part of the learning process. And, both teachers and students ought to continue to do everything we can to get better at our respective roles in the learning process. Yet, these are our works. They’re part of the “flesh and blood” that Jesus is talking about in this verse.

Jesus is saying to Peter, “you’re right, but it’s not fundamentally because of your effort or because of the things that were said to you.” He turns things upside down, because he’s demanding the Peter recognizes his dependence upon God. Similarly, our prayers at the start of class are confessions of our dependence – we’re going to put in the effort to go through the best processes we know to bring about learning. But left to ourselves, we cannot learn these things without God’s intervention. It’s easy to focus on all the work we have put in, but we need to be reminded that we don’t have enough control to be able to guarantee that the truths we’re dealing with will be learned by our students.

This may seem a bit overwhelming, but I write these things as an encouragement. Confessing our need isn’t the most natural thing to do; we like to have control. But, it’s life-giving to humbly recognize that it’s not up to us. It’s up go God, and He has given us the tasks to be faithful in the work he’s entrusted us with. It’s like what Daniel’s friends say to Nebuchadnezzar: they trust that God will intervene, but if He doesn’t they still will do what is right. That’s what faithful dependence looks like.

God may use our teaching to change lives. And, it’s good for us to pray toward that end. But, that’s not up to us. It’s up to Him. He is the one who brings these things about. He brought it about in Peter’s life. He brought it about in your life to allow you to come to see the truths that you have. He’ll bring about what He wills in the lives of our students.

Our prayers at the beginning of class confess this publicly to our students. It puts both the students and the teachers in a gospel-posture of dependence and recognition of how good God is.

“Lord, I can’t teach these things well enough to guarantee that these students will learn them, but please go before my words. These students can’t make their brains work hard enough to guarantee that they’ll understand and retain everything I say, but please open their minds and hearts. Come among us as we start class and help us not just to learn these truths together but to find You beautiful because of them.”