When I began to teach Sunday School, I wanted to inspire in my students a desire to study the Lesson-Sermon. Soon, I realized that only as the lesson became vitally practical to me in terms of my own living could I persuade my students to discover its usefulness to them.
As I study, I find myself listening, and taking time to pause and think what a word or phrase means and particularly how it bears upon questions that matter a good deal to me. I expand certain statements in each lesson into affirmations or denials that touch immediately upon my own or students' needs for healing, regeneration, or spiritual understanding.
True spiritual growth leads outward, and so these needs I speak of now relate as much to public concerns or issues as they do to more private, subjective concerns. As a Sunday School teacher, I have the interests and problems of my students very much in mind. Toward the end of the week these factors weigh even more intensely as I ponder the lesson.
