Section 2—Basic Relationships
Chapter 10—Inderstanding (Part 2)
Qualities Needed in Understanding Minds (counsel to a literature evangelist)—There are more difficulties in this work than in some other branches of business; but the lessons learned, the tact and discipline acquired, will fit you for other fields of usefulness, where you can minister to souls. Those who poorly learn their lesson and are careless and abrupt in approaching persons would show the same want [lack] of tact and skill in dealing with minds should they enter the ministry.—Manual for Canvassers, 41, 42, 1902. (Colporteur Ministry, 34.)
Meeting With Impulse, Impatience, Pride, and Self-esteem—Dealing with human minds is the most delicate work ever entrusted to mortals, and teachers need constantly the help of the Spirit of God, that they may do their work aright. Among the youth attending school will be found great diversity of character and education. The teacher will meet with impulse, impatience, pride, selfishness, undue self-esteem. Some of the youth have lived in an element of arbitrary restraint and harshness, which has developed in them a spirit of obstinacy and defiance. Others have been treated as pets, allowed by overfond parents to follow their own inclinations. Defects have been excused until the character is deformed.—Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, 264 (1913).
Patience, Tact, and Wisdom Needed—To deal successfully with these different minds the teacher needs to exercise great tact and delicacy in management, as well as firmness in government. Dislike and even contempt for proper regulations will often be manifested. Some will exercise their ingenuity in evading penalties, while others will display a reckless indifference to the consequences of transgression. All this will call for patience and forbearance and wisdom on the part of those entrusted with the education of these youth.—Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, 264 (1913).
A Course Which May Leave Irreparable Scars and Bruises—A teacher may have sufficient education and knowledge in the sciences to instruct, but has it been ascertained that he has tact and wisdom to deal with human minds? If instructors have not the love of Christ abiding in their hearts, they are not fit to bear the grave responsibilities placed upon those who educate the youth. Lacking the higher education themselves, they know not how to deal with human minds. Their own insubordinate hearts are striving for control; and to subject the plastic minds and characters of the children to such discipline is to leave upon the mind scars and bruises that will never be removed.—Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, 193 (1913).
The Finest Discrimination Required—The Lord has presented to me, in many ways and at various times, how carefully we should deal with the young—that it requires the finest discrimination to deal with minds. Everyone who has to do with the education and training of youth needs to live very close to the Great Teacher, to catch His spirit and manner of work. Lessons are to be given which will affect their character and lifework.—Gospel Workers, 333 (1915).
Personal Element Essential—In all true teaching the personal element is essential. Christ in His teaching dealt with men individually. It was by personal contact and association that He trained the Twelve. It was in private, often to but one listener, that He gave His most precious instruction. To the honored rabbi at the night conference on the Mount of Olives, to the despised woman at the well of Sychar, He opened His richest treasures; for in these hearers He discerned the impressible heart, the open mind, the receptive spirit. Even the crowd that so often thronged His steps was not to Christ an indiscriminate mass of human beings. He spoke directly to every mind and appealed to every heart. He watched the faces of His hearers, marked the lighting up of the countenance, the quick, responsive glance, which told that truth had reached the soul; and there vibrated in His heart the answering chord of sympathetic joy.—Education, 231 (1903).
Overwork Unfits to Deal With Others—The teachers themselves should give proper attention to the laws of health, that they may preserve their own powers in the best possible condition and by example as well as by precept may exert a right influence upon their pupils. The teacher whose physical powers are already enfeebled by disease or overwork should pay special attention to the laws of life. He should take time for recreation. He should not take upon himself responsibility outside of his school work, which will so tax him physically or mentally that his nervous system will be unbalanced; for in this case he will be unfitted to deal with minds and cannot do justice to himself or to his pupils.—Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 83, (1890). (Fundamentals of Christian Education, 147.)
Understanding Different Needs—I was shown that the physicians at our Institute should be men and women of faith and spirituality. They should make God their trust. There are many who come to the Institute who have by their own sinful indulgence brought upon themselves disease of almost every type.
This class do not deserve the sympathy that they frequently require. And it is painful to the physicians to devote time and strength to this class, who are debased physically, mentally, and morally.
But there is a class who have, through ignorance, lived in violation of nature’s laws. They have worked intemperately and have eaten intemperately because it was the custom to do so. Some have suffered many things from many physicians but have not been made better, but decidedly worse. At length they are torn from business, from society, and from their families; and as their last resort they come to the Health Institute with some faint hope that they may find relief.
This class need sympathy. They should be treated with the greatest tenderness, and care should be taken to make clear to their understanding the laws of their being, that they may, be ceasing to violate them, and by governing themselves, avoid suffering and disease—the penalty of nature’s violated law.—Testimonies for the Church 3:178 (1872).
https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/77.410#425
Dear Heavenly Father, Thank You for the perfect example of living in Jesus. Please bless us with the power of discernment between good and evil and the power to choose well that we may be an influence for the good. Thank You for Your Word and biblical advice, which encourages us in the total, true and right development of character and mind, resulting in vibrant health. Please bless us to contemplate the life of Jesus and to allow Your Word to develop within us that true religion, which ennobles the mind, refines the taste, sanctifies the judgment, and makes us partakers of the vibrant health, purity, and the holiness of Heaven. Please bless us so that our minds remain under the direct influence of the Spirit of God that we would know the voice of God, that Satan cannot mold us as he chooses. Please bless us to be strong and healthy mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and to allow ourselves to be cultivated almost to the excellence of angels. Because we ask all these in the Awesome name of Almighty Jesus the Christ, our Savior, we say Thank You and Amen
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
DID YOU KNOW THIS…? Colossians 4:6 KJV — Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. [The WORD OF GOD—It’s the only flesh tthat is safe to eat (meditate on) to live forever!]
Do you feel sorrowful, disconnected—without a place to feel at home or useful? I pray this might show you the way forward. Watch…
https://www.youtube.com/live/2QB6fcwVuws?si=fsEvZU-rkI-BngfD
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
FREE HEALTH TALK* open to the public Thursdays at 5pm at Country Life Natural Foods Store and Vegan/Vegetarian Restaurant, 1217 Eberhart Avenue, Columbus, GA. The topic for Thursday, May 14, “Sweets and Treats Cooking Class ” with Nicole and the Kids.
*Exception: $10 for cooking classes
WHGR 91.5 FM went LIVE noon on Thanksgiving Day 2025, for Hurtsboro (my childhood home town) and surrounding areas, including Tuskegee, Alabama.
If you want to support Christian radio programming for these final days, please visit
https://www.ucheepines.org/radio
Thank you!!!
****
I coordinate wonderful health and worship events and conferences online and onsite as a gospel medical missionary at Uchee Pines, a total plant-based health retreat, where doctors and practitioners specialize in lifestyle medicine. For event details, visit https://www.ucheepines.org/events
Therefore, if at any time you fail to receive this post as a text, please visit
https://baiom.org/author/audreystovall/
where devotionals are first posted daily (almost without fail). From there devotionals are publicly shared to my page on FB, LinkedIn, and Signal (in My Story), and to a response-restricted group on WhatsApp (once again when I am able to find the time to successfully rebuild it).
NOTE: These began as daily texts to encourage my academy roommate and dear friend of nearly 50 years, until she suddenly passed March 2023. Now I continue to compile and send them to anyone who will receive them and to her family in honor of their mom. Lately, I have begun featuring consecutive chapter portions of a select Bible-based book.
If you agree to continue receiving them, then this is my personal gift to you; and in this way, I not only honor God but the memory of a very dear friend whom I desperately miss.
My personal prayer is that God will bless me to find ways to multiply this gift, so that we all may be encouraged to be found faithful in the sight of a Holy God, whenever Christ returns or our eyes are shut in the sleep of death.
It is a prayerful process that leads me to share from my personal study.
So please feel free to forward to your loved ones or to anyone, as God leads you. I’m calling them Barb’s Devotionals.