Those Juniors, Part 10: Reaching Their Hearts

By Eric B. Hare

Last week: If you want the attention of your class, you must be interesting. By being interested both in the subject at hand and in the things your students care about, you will gain and keep your class’s full attention.

Juniors Want New Experiences—They Crave Variety
Did you ever notice the effect that a new suit, a new pair of shoes, or a new kind of food on the table has on boys and girls? Exactly! It rekindles their interest in life. Let us harness the same force in our Sabbath schools and our Missionary Volunteer meetings. A new picture, a new song, a new chair, a new chart, a new way of presenting the same lesson.

Creative Corner: Acrostic Challenge!

We challenged you to write acrostics using the first letters of your name, and we received many creative responses!

Remember your Creator in your youth.
Awake to righteousness and do not sin.
Commit your way to the Lord.
Hold fast the confession of your faith.
Enter not into the path of the wicked.
Lay hold on eternal life.

Memory Text for July 27–August 2

Key Thought for Lesson 5, "Power-Packed Prayers"
The Holy Spirit can help us pray to God with intense earnestness for specific blessings. Such prayers are packed with power.

Memory Text:
“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26).

Project: Memory
“Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (Ephesians 3:20).

Prayer in the Science Lab, Part 1

by Cheyenne Francis Reiswig

A little band gathers in a country chapel. It’s Wednesday evening, and the people have come for prayer meeting. An elder steps to the front and asks for prayer requests. Hands go up all over the room, and people share about mission projects, family needs, and, perhaps more than anything else, sick neighbors, friends, and relatives. Then all kneel and unite in prayer.

It’s a familiar scene to many of us, and it’s not limited to one denomination—or even to Christianity. People have been praying ever since Adam and Eve lost their privilege of talking with God face to face. The results of different polls and studies on the subject have some variation, but in one survey of over 35,000 adults in America, 58% said they pray every day, while 75% pray at least once a week. Only 18% said they never or hardly ever pray!1

Memory Text for July 20–26

Key Thought for Lesson 4, "The Believers’ Secret"
When we pray, we are speaking to the totally righteous Ruler of the universe. We should enter His presence with reverence, and ask Him to cleanse us of any sin that would come between us and Him.

Memory Text:
“Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him” (Acts 12:5).

Project: Memory
“And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God” (Ephesians 3:19).

Of All the Week the Best: God's Power

“God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God” (Psalm 62:11).

There is probably nothing more inspiring than to look in nature for evidences of God’s power! A little study before you go out will make your time outside much more meaningful.

Those Juniors, Part 9: Becoming Interesting

by Eric B. Hare

Last week: You must capture both the attention and the interest of your juniors. Interest comes before attention just as thirst comes before drinking. A teacher must know how to create the right sort of attention and interest—in short, it is an art well worth practicing.

How to Be Interesting

Since it required something that was interesting to produce the students’ apperceptive spontaneous attention which in turn kindled an interest within them, we are faced with the fact that we leaders, parents, and teachers must learn how to be interesting. Here are a few suggestions.

Memory Text for July 13–19

Key Thought for Lesson 3, "Priceless Blessings"
Great things can be accomplished for God through intercessory prayer.

Memory Text:
“Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints” (Ephesians 6:18).

Project: Memory
“That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height” (Ephesians 3:17, 18).

Captive to Calling

It's coming. They're coming. It's here.

And I get excited, as usual. For 8 years now, I've been getting excited.

However, I once was not excited.

----------------

2007: I stepped out of the car that summer, scared stiff and looking the part. I didn't really want to be here. I mean, honestly, these people were weird. I didn't know them, had never seen them, but I'd read that handbook--probably 25 times or more. I just knew I was staring boot camp in the face; complete with wearing a skirt all day, every day, for an entire week. I was convinced this was a kamikaze mission.

2008: A little less harsh, a little more open, but still afraid. Excited now. Hoping for the best...and remember the amazing, overwhelming wash of Christ I'd received the year before. I'm in a unit with who this year? And she's my counselor? Why in the world am I taking Literature Evangelism? Can I dare to open myself up?

2009: A friend in tow. More excitement. More open. More of a smile. Still fearing. Breathing deeply that camp smell. Shivering from anticipation. Looking at LE again. Something feels a little different...but what?

2010: Bounce out of the car. Exuberance, but you wouldn't know if you looked at me. Still locked up, but bubbling over inside. Skirts all day? No problem. Even more of a smile. Two weeks this year. Literature evangelist again. Applying for the Mission Experience. Yes, I like it...I love it. Home away from home.

2011: Early arrival. Counselor. Nervous, still silent, but changed, greatly changed. Girls, schedules, procedures and responsibility. Staggering proposal of internship. Inner wings wanting to stretch....

2012: No arrival this year. I've been here since September. Excitement building, but sitting in the office most of the day. Watching the activity from the outside. Dissatisfied, even almost unhappy, and yet, almost... Almost there...

2013: First time as staff. Proofreading, photography, and any number of odd jobs. Song in heart, smile on face, such a different drum beating inside. Happier, more open, more satisfied, more...

2014: No arrival again. No departure when all's over. Eagerly anticipating others arrival. Satisfied. A little shy and quiet, but no longer closed, no chains, no prison, no bars. Happy.

And, most of all, waiting to see who's going to be freed this year.

I can trace who I now am back to a hot summer in July, 8 years ago, when a 14 year old captive set foot on a little campus in the sticks of Washington. God, through Young Disciple, has made the difference in my life. It's taken a captive and brought her to a calling.

Every once in awhile, I see counselors run past the window. And I smile. I wonder whose life-journey is going to begin here this year....

Those Juniors, Part 8: Which Comes First?

by Eric B. Hare

Last week: A teacher and instructor must take great pains to avoid the “specter of crude humor” in his pupils. Students are grouped into two categories, and within these two there are many variations. One must approach his class in a way that will reach and touch all students.

"Attention may be described as a concentration of consciousness upon any idea.” “Interest is the pleasure-pain tone that accompanies attention.”* These are typical definitions to be found in psychology books, but ordinary individuals are very little the wiser after reading such definitions, and continue to confuse attention with interest in both their thinking and their speaking. What is attention? What is interest? Here is an analogy which will make it plain and enable you to differentiate between these words always—

INTEREST : ATTENTION :: THIRST : DRINKING

The Beauty of Brokenness

I never realized brokenness could hold such beauty. That is, until I found Him there.

His feet were barely visible through my falling tears, but there they were. Quiet and still, yet horribly unwelcome. Couldn't He see what a mess I was in? Why didn't He just leave? Why would He possibly want to be with me? Why did He care enough to love me, the one who failed Him...again and again?

He didn't leave. In fact, He appeared quite content to stay there and wait. 

And wait He did.

Memory Texts for July 6–12

Key Thought for Lesson 2, "The Privilege of Prayer"
The solemn, earnest, active prayer of a person who is right with God has great power.

Memory Text:
“The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16).

Project: Memory
“That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man” (Ephesians 3:16).

Those Juniors, Part 7: Natural Phenomena, Part 3

by Eric B. Hare

Crude Sense of Humor

Let us hope that the crude sense of humor seen in children is the seed of the sunshine of optimism in later life. Otherwise this sense (rather, nonsense) would seem to defy all attempts to be harnessed, and we would take note of it only in order to avoid it. For in the least-expected place, at the most inappropriate times, something tickles their fancy, and they giggle and laugh.

Limitless Promise

by an unknown Christian

Early one morning when I was a student at a Christian college, a fellow student burst into my room holding an open Bible. His face glowed with mingled joy and surprise. “Do you believe this?” he practically shouted. “Is it really true?”

“Believe what?” My friend was still a young convert to Christ. The Bible was a new book to him, and as a result he often made a discovery.