Friday Assembly: Headmaster’s Address (February 24, 2017)

Proverbs 22:24-25 (NKJV)
Make no friendship with an angry man,
And with a furious man do not go,
Lest you learn his ways
And set a snare for your soul.

The proverbs teach us about many different things. This particular proverb has a couple things that I want you to understand:

#1. Who your friends are matters. This proverb warns us that we will become like our friends. We will turn into the people that we hang out with.

This can be good or this can be bad. If we spend time with people who speak kindly, make peace, show patience, and give thanks, they will help us become kind, peaceable, patient, thankful people. If we pal around with friends who let sin run their lives, sin will start to run our lives too.

#2. Anger is dangerous. One thing that we know about God is that He is slow to anger. We should be slow to anger too. Remember Proverbs 16:32? “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, And he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.”

If who our friends are matters, and if anger is dangerous, then angry friends become a trap for us. Do your friends go off in a huff when people won’t play the game exactly the way they want it? Do your friends yell at their parents when they don’t want to leave the party? Do your friends shove, hit, or kick to make sure they get what they want?

Now, even more importantly–do you do any of these things? Are you the angry friend that is leading others into sin?

Guard your soul from falling into a trap. Choose your friends wisely, and guard yourself against anger–because the worst thing about anger is that it’s contagious.

Friday Assembly: Headmaster’s Address (February 10, 2017)

Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV)
Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it.

Imagine two roads, two paths. One path leads to death, the other path leads to life; one path is a narrow, crooked road that makes you get carsick, the other path is a straight highway with good pavement; one path runs you smack dab into a hedge of thorns, the other path leads you into green pastures by still waters.

Which path would it be better to travel down?

Now imagine you’ve brought your bike to the park where these two paths begin. Maybe you are just learning how to ride your bike. You’re using training wheels. It’s still hard to balance, and you need someone to give you a little push to get going, to walk alongside of you and steady you occasionally. You still need your parents to help you get going down the path.

You’re not very tall yet, and at the trail head, the spot where the two paths begin and then veer off from each other in different directions, it’s hard to see very far down the path. You don’t know where the path on the right leads. You don’t know where the path on the left goes.

But the person helping you with your bike does. Your mom and your dad have seen these paths before. They know which path ends up in the green pastures. They know which path ends up in the hedge of thorns. And so they point your bike in the right direction, and they give you a little push to start your trip.

At school and at home, you are being given everything you need for your trip. A helmet, a water bottle, a map showing where to go, a push to send you down the right path, and someone to run alongside you for a little while, to help you balance, to keep you from falling.

Your teachers and your parents are training you to ride your bike in the right direction, on the path that leads to life not death, and it is our fervent prayer that you will continue on that path your whole life and never depart from it—as a teenager, as a young adult, as a parent yourself, and all the way down into old age.

Friday Assembly: Headmaster’s Address (February 3, 2017)

Proverbs 22:4 (NKJV)
By humility and the fear of the LORD
Are riches and honor and life.

What is humility? It is being humble. It is thinking of others more highly than we think of ourselves. It is not putting ourselves down—it is putting others up. It is the opposite of being prideful.

What is the fear of the Lord? We learned a song about it at the beginning of the year. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. It is what keeps us from sinning. It is what makes us prosper. The fear of the Lord is a love for God that is so strong that we are afraid to do anything that would displease Him.

Do you want a good life? Do you want the American dream of life, liberty, and happiness? This proverb says that we need two things to achieve that. We need humility and we need the fear of the Lord.

Last week we talked about riches, and how riches are a good thing. We talked about how having a good name is even better than riches—another word for “having a good name” is honor. Honor builds a good name. Underneath both honor and riches is the simple blessing of life—a good life here on earth, and eternal life in heaven with Jesus.

Riches, honor, life—those are all things you should want. They are all things that come from the Lord to those who serve Him with humble hearts.