6 Tips for Making a Difference in Your School

1. Bring God to School. Teachers may not be able to talk about God in school, but there's nothing stopping you from bringing God into your school. When you accept Jesus into your heart, the Holly Spirit makes a home there and you become Gods' temple. "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body." 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. A temple is a place where God lives and, since you are his temple, he lives in you. Since God is with you everywhere you go, through the Holy Spirit, you can ask him to help you bring him into your school. Ask him to guide you with how to talk to others about him, what he wants you to do for him that day, or how to love your enemies the way he loves him. When you acknowledge the presence of God and allow him to make choices for how you spend your time while you're there, you are allowing God to use you as his hands and feet to influence your school.

2. Make specific, measurable, and attainable goals. Don't create vague goals like, "My goal is to make a difference in my school" or "To talk to more people this year." or even, " Become friends with everyone in my grade!". You can't measure your success with two of these goals, two of them don't provide you with an action to complete, and the last one is a goal that may not be attainable. Come up with something specific that you would like to complete this year, like writing encouraging letters to everyone in your class or your goal could be to sit with at least 3 different groups of people at lunch every week. These goals give you an action to take, a way to measure your success, and they are attainable.

3. Show people the love of God through your actions. What kind of actions do people take that make you feel loved? For me, it's when a friend will take the time to ask me how I'm doing and genuinely wants to know the answer. I feel loved when I have a special activity, like a ballet performance or a birthday party, and my friends or family members show up to support me and encourage me. When someone calls me or messages me words of encouragement I feel genuinely cared about. Those actions show me that they love me, even if they don't actually say that they do. How can you make the people in your school know that they are cared about? Maybe you can take some time out of your day to hangout with them, go to one of their special events like a sports game or recital, or maybe you could sit with them at lunch or include them in conversation with your friends. Ask God to reveal to you someone who needs a friend or a little extra attention and then reach out to that person. These little acts of kindness truly do make an impact and let people know that you love them and that God loves them too.

4. Reach out to people from a variety of social circles. It can be really easy to fall into a specific group of people and spend all of your time with them. I think it's great to have a group of friends that you hang out with. However, this can lead to forming a comfort zone where you miss out on the chance to influence more people because you already have your own group of people that your comfortable with. God has a habit of telling people to go out of their comfort zone, like Abraham and Jonah. There are huge blessings that come when we obey God and reach out of our comfort zone. Abraham listened and obeyed God's wishes when God told him to move to a strange land that he had never been to before. God blessed him and gave that very land to Abraham's ancestors (does the land of milk and honey sound familiar to you?). However, we miss out when we disobey God, like Jonah did. When Jonah decided to runaway from God instead of traveling to Ninavah, like God wanted him to, he got swallowed by a big fish. Total bummer....

5. Love your enemies. 1 John 4:20 says, "Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen." I have to admit that this verse made me stop and really think about whether I loved God or not. In my mind, God is easy to love because he has done so much for me and has never and will never hurt me. But what about that old friend who hurt me? Could I love that person? Could I really love those who have teased me, annoyed me, and hurt me? I must admit that those people are a lot harder to love. Until we love our "brothers and sisters" we cannot truly love God. I really want to love God. So how do you begin to love someone who you hate? It all starts in your heart. Whenever I feel a dislike for someone I sit down with a journal and my Bible and talk to God about it. During this time I ask him to reveal to me how he views this person. I don't write down my frustrations because that only feeds bitterness. I write about the good things that I see in them and the good things that God sees in them. I take a deeper look into that persons life to "walk a mile in their shoes" and I often find that there are reasons why they did what they did or said the things they said. I ask God to break the bitterness that I have in my heart towards that person. God then reveals to me ways that I can encourage and bless them. I don't usually feel like encouraging or blessing the person who has hurt me, but when I take the actions that God has asked me to, my heart softens towards them. I no longer see an awful person; I see a broken child of God who needs a friend. I then ask God to mold me into that friend. It is a difficult and slow process, but I am always thankful and blessed when God helps me love those whom I once counted as enemies.

6. Pray for your school. My last tip is to pray for your school. Many people don't realize the power of prayer, and sometimes I am one of them, but I promise you that prayer works. I now know that prayer is powerful from what has happened in my parents life and in my own when we have prayed. Pray for the students attending your school. Pray about the problems you see in their lives. Is depression, drugs, or bullying a problem in your school? Then ask God to help those things break and leave your school. Pray for the school faculty. Ask God to give them wisdom on how to deal with the problems that the students are facing. Give your school up to God and ask him to place the desire to influence your school in a positive way into the hearts of other believers in your school. Pray without ceasing and there will be a difference, whether you see it right away or not.