Start the year with a determination to help the people around you at school whether they’re fellow students, teachers, staff or coaches. Jesus promised: “Give, and it will be given to you . . . by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.” (Luke 6:38)
Don’t take the taunting or negative social pressure of others too seriously — they’re just kids like you are, trying to find their way and dealing with their own issues.
Be humble and be willing to laugh at yourself, knowing that God loves you just the way you are.
And have a great year knowing that God is using this time to prepare you to make a difference for him in others’ lives for the rest of your life.
PASTOR JON BARTA
Valley Baptist Church in Burbank
Let’s use the fire — which is uppermost in all of our minds anyway — to talk about starting up a new year of school.
1. All of those firefighters up in our mountains have shown us what perseverance is.
They haven’t given up, even though they must be miserably uncomfortable and have not yet (at this writing) completed their mission.
Sometimes you may want to give up on school because you feel miserable or uncomfortable, or because school — for whatever reason — is really hard. Life, like fire, doesn’t stop moving forward just because you get tired of dealing with it.
Life and fire both involve picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and getting back in there.
2. Life, like fire, is exciting, even while it is scary. When you graduate, you want to be able to see your possibilities spreading out before you.
If you have already made a career choice, fabulous — you know what it takes to get where you’re going.
