Section 4—The Growing Personality
Chapter 22—The School and the Teacher (Part 3)
Determination to Improve Important—A teacher’s advantages may have been limited so that he may not possess as high literary qualifications as might be desirable; yet if he has true insight into human nature; if he has a genuine love for his work, an appreciation of its magnitude, and a determination to improve; if he is willing to labor earnestly and perseveringly, he will comprehend the needs of his pupils, and by his sympathetic, progressive spirit will inspire them to follow as he seeks to lead them onward and upward.—Education, 279 (1903).
Faculties of Mind Not Half Used—It is important that we should have intermediate schools and academies…. From home and abroad are coming many urgent calls for workers. Young men and women, the middle-aged, and in fact all who are able to engage in the Master’s service, should be putting their minds to the stretch in an effort to prepare to meet these calls. From the light God has given me, I know that we do not use the faculties of the mind half as diligently as we should in an effort to fit ourselves for greater usefulness.—Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, 209 (1913).
Combine Natural With Spiritual and Reach for Highest Attainments—The natural and the spiritual are to be combined in the studies of our schools. The operations of agriculture illustrate the Bible lessons. The laws obeyed by the earth reveal the fact that it is under the masterly power of an infinite God. The same principles run through the spiritual and the natural world. Divorce God and His wisdom from the acquisition of knowledge, and you have a lame, one-sided education, dead to all the saving qualities which give power to man, so that he is incapable of acquiring immortality through faith in Christ. The author of nature is the author of the Bible. Creation and Christianity have one God.
All who engage in the acquisition of knowledge should aim to reach the highest round of progress. Let them advance as fast and as far as they can; let their field of study be as broad as their powers can compass, making God their wisdom, clinging to Him who is infinite in knowledge, who can reveal the secrets hidden for ages, who can solve the most difficult problems for minds that believe in Him who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light that no man can approach unto. The living witness for Christ, following on to know the Lord, shall know that His goings forth are prepared as the morning. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). By honesty and industry, with a proper care of the body, applying every power of the mind to the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom in spiritual things, every soul may be complete in Christ, who is the perfect pattern of a complete man.—Special Testimonies On Education, 215, April 22, 1895. (Fundamentals of Christian Education, 375, 376.)
Correct Lessons Cannot Impress Minds Who Know Not the Truth of God’s Word—But the fallen race will not understand. The science of nature is supposed to control the God of nature. Correct lessons cannot impress the minds of those who know not truth or the Word of God. When the heart and mind is submitted to God, when man is willing to be instructed as a little child, the science of education will be found in the Word of God. Higher education of the world has proved itself a farce. When teachers and students come down from their stilts and enter Christ’s school to learn of Him, they will talk intelligently of higher education because they will understand that it is that knowledge which enables men to understand the essence of science.—Manuscript 45, 1898.
Visual Aids Needed—The use of object lessons, blackboards, maps, and pictures will be an aid in explaining these [spiritual] lessons and fixing them in the memory. Parents and teachers should constantly seek for improved methods.—Education, 186 (1903).
Avoid Too Great a Variety of Mental Food—God would have the mental faculties kept pure and clean. But often too great a variety of food is given to the mind. It is impossible for this to be properly taken care of and used. The brain should be relieved of all unnecessary burden. Only the studies which will be of the most use not only here but in the future life, which will provide the best instruction for body and soul, will be carried over into eternity.—Manuscript 15, 1898.
Study and Practical Life—It is not well to crowd the mind with a class of studies that require intense application and exertion but that are not brought into use in the practical life. An education of this kind will be a loss to the student, for these studies take away his desire and inclination for the studies which would fit him for usefulness and enable him to fulfill his appointed responsibilities as laborers together with God to help those whom he should by precept and example assist to secure immortality.—Manuscript 15, 1898.
Need for Practical Training—The study of Latin and Greek is of far less consequence to ourselves, to the world, and to God than the thorough study and use of the whole human machinery. It is a sin to study books to the neglect of how to become familiar with the various branches of usefulness in practical life. With some, close application to books is a dissipation. The physical machinery being untaxed leads to a great amount of activity in the brain. This becomes the devil’s workshop. Never can the life that is ignorant of the house we live in be an all-around life.—Letter 103, 1897.
Textbooks and Thought Patterns [See Chapter 13, Food for the Mind.]—With solemn voice the Speaker continued: “Do you find with these [infidel] authors that which you can recommend as essential to true higher education? Would you dare recommend their study to students who are ignorant of their true character? Wrong habits of thought, when once accepted, become a despotic power that fastens the mind as in a grasp of steel. If many who have received and read these books had never seen them but had accepted the words of the Divine Teacher in their place, they would be far in advance of where they now are in a knowledge of the divine truths of the Word of God, which make men wise unto salvation. These books have led thousands where Satan led Adam and Eve—to a knowledge that God forbade them to have. Through their teachings, students have turned from the Word of the Lord to fables.”—The Review and Herald, March 12, 1908.
Broad Principles of Bible to Control Concepts [See Chapter 11, “Bible Study and the Mind.”]—Upon the mind of every student should be impressed the thought that education is a failure unless the understanding has learned to grasp the truths of divine revelation and unless the heart accepts the teachings of the gospel of Christ. The student who, in the place of the broad principles of the Word of God, will accept common ideas and will allow the time and attention to be absorbed in commonplace, trivial matters will find his mind will become dwarfed and enfeebled; he will lose the power of growth. The mind must be trained to comprehend the important truths that concern eternal life.—Letter 64, 1909.
https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/77.963#996
Dear Heavenly Father, Thank You for the privilege of prayer, knowing that through the name of Your Son we may expect what we ask, because we ask according to Your will to be like Jesus. Please grant us a pure, wholesome, consistent Christian life, which is obtained by studying Your Word and which is the highest education that any earthly being can obtain. Like Jesus, please bless us to not be conformed to this world, but to be truly transformed into the persons You would have us be that we might honor You. Please bless us truly 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 patient partakers of the vibrant health, purity, and holiness of Heaven. Because we ask all these in the Awesome name of Your Son, Almighty Jesus the Christ, our Savior, we say Thank You and Amen.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
DID YOU KNOW THIS…? And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 1:5-8 KJV—[The WORD OF GOD—It’s the only flesh that 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.
Thursday, June 18: Children’s Health
*Exception: $10 for any cooking class
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.