Tag: repentance

The Perfect Storm in Education

April 19, 2018

Over the past two weeks, we have been inundated with the news of school shootings. The most deadly in recent weeks was the shooting on the campus at Ompaqua Community College in Oregon, where 10 people were killed and nine were injured. The US has had an average of one school shooting per week since January 2012 when 20 children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary. How did we get here? What happened in America that over the last 16 years school shootings have become common place? Who broke that dam of evil? And more importantly, how do we stop the killings? 

 

Below I’ve listed three historical events that led us to this place:

  1. The Theory of Evolution Introduced in Education—In the mid 1850s Herbert Spencer proposed that education should draw on new scientific principles to make teaching more efficient as well as pleasant for the child. He proposed that learning was subject to the same laws that shaped the evolution of human beings from simple organisms could be used to shape the development of each child from the earliest moments in life to adults. Out of these concepts, came a new branch of science called child psychology. New discoveries in child learning techniques should give helpful information on how to be a more discerning and caring parent or teacher. The problem with this new branch of science was that it was founded in Darwinism/evolution. Learning disabilities in children began to take names. Eventually, the medical community came up with a myriad of diagnoses for those disabilities, which leads us to the next issue—that of drugs.
  2. Drugs—What came in the 1960s and onwards were a plethora of new drugs on the streets of our cities as well as through the pharmaceutical industries. The street drugs appealed to those who desired to check out of a materialistic culture. The pharmaceutical drugs treated children’s psychological issues as well as learning disabilities. We became a nation that medicated her children.
  3. We Lost our Moral compass Meanwhile the school curricula was steadily undergoing a major shift with the removal of the God of the Christians from the classrooms. With no concept of a creator and therefore no accountability to a higher power, no value is placed on life. When life is cheap, killing the innocent becomes prevalent. When children who grow up deprived of knowing God as a creator are legally drugged there is a recipe for disaster.

These “winds” are some of the strongest influencers that created a “perfect storm” in our educational system.

The answer lies in prayer, but not just a blanket prayer that says, “our thoughts and prayers are with you.” The answer lies with those who know God and the power of the Name of Jesus. Now is the time for believers to come together in unity, in order to pray targeted, strategic prayers that will turn our educational system and consequently our children back to God. Jesus said, “If you believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”  Let’s come together in agreement to take the Mountain of Education!

 

Why Can’t the System Change?

November 12, 2016

Twice a year, I take prayer teams to Washington, DC to pray at strategic landmarks for this nation. One year the group I took participated in “The Call, ” a gathering of over 100,000 people in the area located between the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument, known as The Mall. People stood in the hot sun for hours as one person after another called the group to repentance then prayer. At one time, some women took the microphone to tell their stories of a past abortion and how that decision to abort their baby had drastically altered their lives. Each one related how her life had spiraled out of control after the abortion. The effects were a long list of destructive behaviors that ranged from having multiple partners, inability to keep a job, rocky family relationships, restlessness, drugs, prostitution, illnesses and compulsive lying. Their lives were out of control and they didn’t know why. What they had done was legal so what was going on? They were unable to get a grip on life until they realized the root cause of their issues and repented for the abortion.

Intercessors join in prayer at "The Call" in Washington, DC
Prayer at the Mall in Washington, DC – The Call

The life stories of these women were compelling. They were not overly emotional but shared with a frank honesty that compelled the listeners to look for root causes within our own lives.  Two days later I met this group of women at the airport while they waited on their plane to take them back home to San Antonio. I talked with them and learned more about their lives. Their testimonies had impacted me and gave me a lot to ponder. I thought of the women whom I knew who had abortions. Many of them were like the Cry Out America women, their lives out of control and they had no clue as to why.

The same is true of our educational system. In the past godless decisions were made that led us on a downward spiral and there has been no repentance offered for those decisions. Our education system is out of control and no one knows what to do or how to make changes to counteract those decisions. The innocent children in our classrooms are the ones who suffer and ultimately our nation. Classroom discipline in many schools in almost nonexistent, children who cannot perform at grade level are often passed to the next grade level, and many graduate from high school who cannot read, write or do simple math problems. We have set ourselves on a self-destructive course and no one knows what to do about it. What if the simple act of repentance could turn things around? What if we could look at our history and realize where those decisions were made that turned us against a loving God? Wouldn’t it be a simple thing?