What’s the Secret to a Strong Start to the School Year? (Part 1)
The anchor is crucial to navigation, preventing a ship from drifting off course in stormy seas, dangerous currents, or strong winds. Either by hooking into the bed of the sea or just by sheer mass, the anchor has holding power. Raising children, especially in our increasingly secular culture, can also get stormy at times. But God is right there with us and He promises to be our anchor. If we let Him.
Hebrews 6:19-20 says this: “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf.” Yet so often, we rush into adventures, like a new school year for example, without clinging to the “anchor of our souls.”
The author of Hebrews identifies hope in Christ as the “anchor of the soul.”
In this stormy life, we all need an anchor sometimes, don’t we? Being weak and imperfect, we so easily drift into thought patterns or actions (or inactions) that are out of alignment with Biblical teachings. Or we might get caught in an emotional storm of wrong thinking, and pretty soon we are carried away by dangerous currents and find ourselves rationalizing our behavior. Days become weeks, weeks become years, until suddenly we realize that our personal walk with the Lord, and maybe even our faith and our family’s faith, is far off course. The Bible calls us to be strongly anchored to Christ because He is the only One who can truly anchor us. Jesus is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Jesus is the One who keeps us safe in the storm. When we are anchored to Christ, our eyes are fixed on Him and our lives honor Him.
When we start the school year anchored to Christ, we model to our kids what’s most important in life and it helps them cling to the same anchor. In our culture, it’s tempting to become distracted by new schedules, sports, clothes shopping, meal planning, just getting out the door. We can easily lose our anchor. So why not just commit right now to keeping Christ at the center of the school year. Start with your own walk with Jesus, keeping time in the Word central and praying for the Holy Spirit to help guide your priorities. Discuss with your kids that your aim is to keep Christ as the anchor of your family this year. Trust me, they are often good at keeping you accountable. Research has shown that how we walk out our faith greatly impacts our kids—see our next blog post for more on this critical topic.