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The Price of Following Jesus




By David Paine


Editor’s Note: Names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals mentioned in this article.


In May 2016, I was fired (and then agreed to resign) from a teaching position at a residential home and school for troubled children in Virginia. I resigned because I would not agree to a lie. Most children there had suffered abuse and neglect directly from parents or indirectly through absentee parenting. All had deep hurts and bad habits. As my wife says, “It’s not kids who have changed; it's parents.” The job was challenging but also very rewarding. Philippians 4:13 was one promise I clung to each morning as I prepared to teach: “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”


The home and school had conservative roots, and God increased my boldness over time. While I taught world history, I increasingly gave my students a biblical worldview. They asked if I was a Christian. “Yes.” They also began to experience the freedom to bring God into classroom discussions. I’ll never forget one student saying, “We can't talk about God in public school, but we can here.” Most of the students appreciated this freedom. Many good discussions followed over the years—about God working in world history and our individual lives.


Just as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton changed, this school also changed. The founding director retired, and the Christian and conservative values went with him. Not overnight, but soon enough. In 2012, supervisors began talking with me about keeping God out of the classroom. “It’s the chaplain’s role to talk about God,” they said. But I discovered the chaplain wasn’t even a Christian. So I had to make a decision. Would I remove God from my classroom or continue to include Him even though faith was now forbidden? Ultimately choosing the latter cost me my job. But God gave me four more years to plant many more gospel seeds.


In 2016 a transgender boy entered our school and my classroom. I had no problem teaching him, but I would not pretend he was a girl, let him into the girl’s bathroom, or allow him to sit at the girl’s lunch table. I had taught for over eight years, but I was gone within eight weeks of John’s arrival. They counseled me and tried to change my thinking instead of the other way around. I presented my case and requested an exemption, but the leadership refused to bend. As a Christian, I could not agree with the wrong of this on so many levels. God gave me the courage to stand up and leave.


God’s next assignment for me was in a public school. It involved helping elementary children learn to behave (a strange job in a public school). Behavioral disorders are now one of the three special education categories. And once again, the question of worldview became primary. The public school’s humanistic worldview is that if you fix the environment, you will fix the child. This is an overly simplistic explanation but hopefully provides some insight. A Christian worldview involves training children to adjust to the school environment, with some flexibility when working with special needs. And that's what I decided to do. Here are the rules; if you follow them, there are blessings, but when you don’t, there are negative consequences. This was hard because these were not my kids nor my home. However, during the first two years, God blessed me with a decent amount of covering from the school principals. Also, my two assistant teachers were believers and agreed with the conservative approach. My wife, Elizabeth, worked in the same school as a teacher’s assistant and provided much encouragement and prayer support.


It was a beautiful thing to become a father figure to the boys in Room 132. (God only gave me boys.) I taught reading, writing, and math. There were play breaks throughout the day. I shared the gospel and prayed with them before they entered their regular education classes. They sat in time out with me when they refused to work or bit somebody on the playground. While in time out, I taught them right ways and encouraged them that with God's help, they too could learn to behave. I got to shepherd their hearts. It was such a special, unique time, and many faculty and families saw the heart and behavior changes in these young boys.


Jesus said that the world would hate believers in Christ just as it hated Him. And once again, as a teacher, I experienced this truth. The principal, who covered me significantly during my first two years, moved on. The new principal was far less friendly to a Christian worldview and its practice in the classroom. The experience was similar to the previous job: Original leadership allowed for a significant amount of Christian practice in the classroom, and new leadership shut my efforts down within a short period. This time it was within a year.


The Faithfulness of God


God opened wonderful doors of opportunity to minister to troubled and hurting children. It was a burden and a blessing going through those doors. It’s challenging to lose jobs and painful when leadership and co-workers turn against you or simply remain silent. Following these challenging times, I testify that God is faithful to His promises. He provided all of our family’s needs, including education costs for our children. Someone anonymously put $2,000 into our school account. A month or so after that, a friend came up to me and handed me another $2,000 in cash. These are just two of the many examples of how God used His children to encourage us and help pay our bills during those difficult days.


God gave me a passion for teaching children and His truth. He has called me to minister in secular settings. Has God given you the same passions? Be prepared because He most likely wants you to be bold in those settings and do things His way. He may even ask you to speak His Word. And when you do, you may also be required to pay a price. Nothing is free. Bread has a price. Milk has a price. Following Jesus has a price. This is nothing new for disciples of Jesus. In fact, His first followers had to pay a price, and they rejoiced “that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus” (see Acts 5:40-41). This pattern has continued for over 2,000 years, right up to today. May we all continue to stand firm in His truth and encourage one another as we take risks to be bold for Him because it is worth the cost.





David Paine met his wife, Elizabeth, while both serving in the military. After some bumps and bruises getting to know Jesus and one another, God brought much-needed healing and maturity. Today they reside in Virginia with their adult children. They both love to teach children (and families) and help them overcome the same challenges they encountered growing up. Also, they love learning the history of America, living on mission, the beach, and playing with their gaggle of grands.


2 Kommentare


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