Acts 15:35
But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, where they and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord.
Thoughts for Today:
Too often we have a tendency to sit back and let the so-called professional educators teach our children. Then we watch the news and wonder why the children and youth of our society aren't turning out the right way and have such a distorted moral imprint. Could it be their education was flawed? Perhaps the educators failed to educate properly? Maybe the child wasn't raised in a Christian home and taken to Sunday school often enough? There are as many opinions as there are studies to uncover the problem with morality in our society. For Christian's it's an easy answer: our educational, judicial and governmental systems have removed God from this country. So if that is what's wrong, how did it happen? The answer is one small compromise of our values at a time.
The Grand Canyon in some places is over a mile deep and at the widest points stretches to a width of over 18 miles. How did this happen? One grain of sand at a time over thousands of years; and that's how our country got to the predicament we are in too, except it's only taken us a few hundred years to blow God's gift to us -- our country. So how do we reverse the effect of decades of moral decay? The answer is in our passage today, "they and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord."
Not many of you reading this devotion will disagree with my answer because we know "where the Word of the Lord goes in the filth comes out." But there is a small point you may have missed, "they and many others" -- we (you and me), are the many others. I'm quite sure the pastors of our church are doing their job of preaching and teaching the Word, but are you? "Wait a minute Mike," you may say, "I didn't sign on to preach, I am gifted in other areas." That may be, but don't we all have a responsibility to preach and teach, especially when it comes to our young people (and I'm not just talking about our own children)? So often I hear words of surrender when it comes to our youth as if they are a wasted generation. Have you spoken those words of discouragement or have you instead reached out a hand in love and made a real effort to teach and preach the "Word of the Lord"?
Questions to Ponder:
Yesterday my wife was at a crafts store when a teen bumped into a display and sent several items bouncing across the floor. The young girl paused for a moment as if she was going to stop and pick up the spilled items, but instead her friend said something to her and off they went down the aisle. My wife stopped the girl and said to her, "Wait a minute, let me help you pick this up." How would you have handled the situation? Would you have preached or scolded first? Would you have ignored it and gone about your business, thinking it one more example of the carelessness of youth these days? What would you have done if the girl had refused to help? I'll tell you what my wife did -- she picked up the spilled items all by herself, one at a time. Is that surprising? Sometimes your example is a more important teaching than preaching could ever be.
Taken from pocketpower.org