“Why! It’s Josh Jones,” I said.
“Yes. And he’s good,” my husband said.
Wow. Josh’s Internet video brought back memories to me. I remembered when he was in about the sixth grade. His age group at church did not have a Sunday School teacher.
One day at church I saw another sixth grader obviously looking above counting the ceiling tile during the Sunday School hour. He was apparently “bored out of his skull.”
When I arrived home, I said to my husband, after describing the situation, “Honey, we’ve got to do something.” I prayed, but no direct leading came. That’s when I remembered Samuel’s advice to Saul.
The day Saul got some good advice from Samuel -
Samuel told Saul that he would see some signs come true so that the latter would know that God was going to make him the king of the land. When the things occurred, Saul would know that the prophecy would come true. In I Samuel 10:27 Samuel gave Saul this advice. He said, “Do as occasion serve thee.” (KJV)
In other words, do what comes to you at the time, and just do it! When you are seeking God’s will, do what comes to your mind, especially if you don’t get a direct word from God otherwise.
When I prayed about the sixth graders, no direct guidance came. But a plan began to form in my mind. I could envision a class for them using the old acrostic a Baptist church once used for my little daughter’s class, M & M’s class. It stood for “Music and Missions” because that is what they taught.
Yes! I could do a sixth-grade class on “Music and Missions.” I could use the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) large picture stories about missionaries to tell them about famous missionaries they had never heard of, like Mary Slessor or Hudson Taylor. I could use my old guitar and my limited playing ability to teach them songs they did not know, using the large song booklets from Child Evangelism Fellowship, some that I owned and some that I could borrow from the CEF office in town. I could conjure up M & M treats for class each week. It would be fun. THE THINGS OF GOD ARE NEVER BORING!!!
I volunteered and was accepted as the brand new sixth grade teacher. Everyone else was burned out.
Soon I was accepted. The class got rolling. There sat Josh Jones and his little friend who was the ceiling-tile counter. I threw out a challenge to the class. If someone would memorize the books of the Bible in order, I would offer a prize. Josh accepted the challenge and won. He was very loving toward me and made sure his mother brought me a Christmas gift. She came by my job to deliver a large tin canister full of flavored popcorn (It fed my crowd well over Christmas.) When I told her, “You didn’t have to do this.”
She responded, “I know, but we wanted to.”
It was my pleasure to deliver the prize to Josh for taking the challenge. I think it was a gift card to a Christian store, as I remember.
And there he was a gown man on the Internet video, doing an online presentation. My husband commented, “He’s good.”
Here’s his link so you can see for yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwFKlG3VojQ. The last I heard his little friend, the tile-counter, had grown up to become a hotel manager and (I’m sure) knows the state of all his ceiling tile.