The story has been told of a mother who said to her son, ‘It’s time to get up and go to school.’ He replied, ‘I’m not going to school today!’ His mother said, ‘Why not?’ He replied, ‘Because the children hate me, and the teachers criticise me. Why should I have to go to school and put up with that?’ His mother replied, ‘Because you’re the headteacher!’ Seriously, the Christian life is a school. Paul describes each grade as going ‘from faith to faith’. In the school of faith, the Holy Spirit is the teacher, and the Bible is the textbook. If you study well and apply yourself, you can move up through the grades. If not, you stay in the same grade you’re in until you have learned the lessons and can pass the tests. You’re like the lady who quipped, ‘My favourite grade was the fifth grade. Three of the happiest years of my life were spent in that grade!’ Unless you want that to be your fate, read these words and take them to heart: ‘Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth’ (2 Timothy 2:15 NKJV). If you want to know God, you will meet Him in the pages of His Word. And you will also need to stay filled with the Holy Spirit: ‘But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory [grade to grade], just as by the Spirit of the Lord’ (2 Corinthians 3:18 NKJV).
