Here is our daughter, Narita Sharma, speaking on: Benefits of Christian Education on her graduation celebration day on July 1st 2012. We thank God for allowing us to home school our daughters on Accelerated Christian Education system, that is profoundly Biblical, a highly academic and structured program instilling not only goodness but godliness in the lives of our children so they are able to live each day in the good, acceptable and perfect will of our Heavenly Father and also are ready to face each tomorrow with the wisdom, strength and courage of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Isaiah 54:13 says: "And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD: and great shall be the peace of thy children." I have continued to claim this verse for our children.
Be blessed as you hear it. This video and speech is copyrighted - Please note that prior permission from the author must be obtained prior to using any part of this speech in any form.
Because of the poor recording quality, below is a word for word:
Prarthna Narita Sharma’s High School graduation Day
speech on:
Benefits of Christian Education – July 1st, 2012
at Swahili Chapel, Chicago: (10 minutes)
Bwana Asifiwe! (In
Swahili) Praise the LORD. Thank you for coming for
celebrating my graduation with me. I’m very privileged to stand before you and
I am glad that God has enabled me - just to share with you—I’ll be sharing with
you, the benefits of a Christian education - found on a Christian foundation.
And I’ll only be a few minutes—I know we’re also hungry for the food; it looks
really nice. I have two passages that I’ll be reading that will pertain to this
speech.
The first is Matthew 7:24-25 King James Version (KJV) “Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and
doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a
rock:” And the
rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that
house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”
And
the second passage is Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go:
and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
Now,
there are five things that I have learned very much from having a Christian
education. I was home-schooled from my mom.
1.
And the first thing is the fear of the Lord.
Can we all say that together? (Congregation’s
response) : “The Fear of the Lord.”
And
the fear of the Lord, Proverbs22:4 say: “By humility and the
fear of the LORD are riches,
and honour, and life.”
Why this is so
important? Because God is at the center of our life, as opposed to some secular
education, where we are the center of our life or who our friends are - are at
the center of our lives. Basically, Humanism is at the center. By having a fear
of the Lord, we are taught by the Lord, making him—(centre of our lives) that
we’re in His hands. And we are taught by the Lord, which will bring, as it
says, riches, and honor, and life, which true riches that I’ll define later.
2. The second
thing that I had is our Identity in Christ.
Can we say that
together? (Congregation responds): “Our Identity in Christ”
So the first thing
was the fear of the Lord and the second thing is our identity in Christ.
So many times we have
examples of identity crises today because people today—what do they find their
identity in? In clothes, in what you wear, you’re what kind of car you drive,
you’re what kind of house you live in, and you’re - what kind of money you
earn, what kind of degree you get…. But our identity as Christians as believers
in Christ… is-- it’s in Christ- so it’s not about using God for ourselves - rather,
it’s being used by God and for God.
In Galatians 2: 20
it says, “I am crucified with Christ. It is no longer I that live, but Christ
that lives in me. The life that I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son
of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” This [something] these two first
points, why they’re so crucial in Christian education, is that they put God
first. There are so many artists and actors, and you see so many of them who,
they are first, their own [life] is first, and of course, that’s a pitfall
because they’re like the man who built his house on the sand. IT will wither
away in the storm.
3. The third
thing that I’ve learnt is - the 60 character traits of Christ. You can search
them - you can look them up on Google if you want. They’re things like honesty,
truthfulness, diligence, trust, love, and faith. The books that we have in our
Christian Education are called PACES and they have two little characters, a boy
and a girl, who we grew up with, so to say. And all those Paces, they have 60
characteristics individually in all of them. It is really helpful to children.
The ones that I remember were very self-sacrificing such as doing something for
someone else, even though you’d like to do something yourself - giving that up; and Thriftiness; That if you don’t have
something, or if it’s too expensive - use what God has given you at that time.
The big thing
about this is that in secular education, they teach you that you don’t have to
go by character or principles; you have to go by, “Desperate times call for
desperate measures.” If bad things happen, you have to do what you can. But the
Bible teaches, and Christian education founded on the Bible teaches, that there
is no other option but obeying God. To use an example of Daniel and his friends:
They were about to be burned to death for not bowing down to idols: because the
Bible has the first commandment, “You shall not have any other gods before me,”
they didn’t have any other option. They would either be delivered by God in the
furnace or they would die in the furnace a martyr’s death - to the glory of
God.
4. The fourth
thing that I have learned is -- learn to love of memorization of the Bible.
Our PACEs that we had - each of them had about 12 PACES and there are 5
subjects, so each of them had a verse for all these years. Additionally, my mom
would also have us (memorize)—we’d sit down every morning and read chapters or
books. It’s not about competition that you memorize big chapters of the Bible
or something. It’s about getting the Bible rooted in your heart.
This morning a
pastor at our church, he had said that when the devil tempted Jesus in the
desert, Jesus did not - He didn’t bring a Bible from His pocket and start
flipping through the pages. “Let me find a verse I have to tell you!” No! What
did He do? He recited it from His mind. It was [only/truly/really] because He
loved the Bible so much, that he kept it in His heart. And similarly, we
should, too.
5. And,
finally, what I have learned is getting true success. The world’s
definition of success is defined by how rich are you? What kind of degree did you get in school? What kind of school are you going to? Or, like in my situation
as a student, it would be “How many A’s do you have?” which is not necessarily
a bad thing, but with God - definition of true success is in Proverbs. (Proverbs
8:10-12) It says, “Receive my instructions and not silver, knowledge rather
than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things that
[make you desire?] are not even compared to it.”
So, while the
world goes for things like silver and gold and rubies and money, and you know,
like, jewels, God instructs us to go for things like wisdom, and to follow His
words and to follow Him. The definition of wisdom is described as: We look at -
we can look at ourselves and say ‘If Jesus was living as myself - as Narita
Sharma, what would He do with my limitations, abilities, and talents? If Jesus
was living as you, what would He do? If Jesus was living as you, what would He
do? And in thinking that, we find – that- What Would Jesus Do, and find that in
our life by following Him, by making choices that you know He would make.
So it comes to
this: what is our foundation? Is it temporary things, such as money, or fame,
or goods, (for) which we will have the same consequences like the man who built
his house on the sand? Or is our foundation on Christ? A theologian by the name
of Dietrich Bonheoffer - he has a quote that goes along the lines of “When you
are a believer in Christ, you are--it’s a death to yourself.” He says, “I have
been crucified with Christ” You are crucifying your old self onto the cross and
He gives you His new self and the Holy Spirit. There is a song that says, “All
of my ambitions, hopes, and plans, I surrender these into your hands” – into
God’s hands. Right now, in my life, I can say that I don’t know where God is
going to take me. He has not – He’s chosen not to reveal that to me. In His
time, he will reveal to me. But the main thing is that all of them are in His
hands. And the key word is obedience. Whatever He tells me to do, wherever He tells me to go, it will be in obedience to Him. That is the Christian life:
building your foundation on Christ. And I’d just want to invite anybody who does
not know Jesus as their personal Savior, if you would take this time to receive
His invitation and accept Him in your heart; will you make the choice to build
your foundation on the sand, which will wither away when the storm comes, or on
Christ? Another difference that comes between Christian education and secular
education is: If you’re doing a math test, and you forget the problem, in
secular education, it’s “Oh my gosh, I forgot the problem! Let me see if he
(the person sitting next to you) has the answer, I can write that down.” or you
can look it up on Google. But when you’re a Christian, you bow your head and
say in true humility, “God, I don’t know the answer’ and later on in life He
carries you through tough trials that you may have to face and you’ll say,
“God, I can not go through this. Give me your strength so that I can go through
this. And thank-you that you’re able to be with me through this.” And so you
make the choice for what foundation you have built. If you have already built
your foundation on the Rock, whatever time you’re in, whether it’s a joyous
time where God has really blessed you or where you’re in a trial where God’s
refining you, you can trust that you are on the Rock and come rain, come stormy
days, come sunny days, or cloudy days, you are on the Rock and that will not
fail.
I want to thank
you again for coming for my graduation and I hope that you will continue to
pray for me, that not only will I know where God wants me to go, but that I
will stay rooted onto Him. If He - wherever He takes me, whether it’s a big place,
or small place, I pray that-- pray for me that all that would come out of me is
Jesus. Thank-you so much
© Prarthna Narita Sharma
© All rights reserved. Kalpana and Bharat Sharma.© Prarthna Narita Sharma
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or try: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F3o48HvFRA
