Beyond Our Wildest Imaginations
On the journey of faith, we often find ourselves earnestly praying for specific outcomes, believing that God will answer our petitions in a certain way. However, God determines the way that He will answer our prayer requests, and sometimes this happens in ways we never imagined!
About a year ago, a teacher at a school I used to work at called to tell me that God had answered my prayer and that the number of students we had been praying for the past two years had been reached, exactly reached! This put it on my heart to begin praying a similar prayer in Oklahoma for our schools.
My prayer was that God would fill our schools with students. No number attached, only that God would fill each school to the capacity for which each building could hold. For some, this meant about 150 students while for others it meant 20 students. I was praying this prayer in anticipation that the next prayer would be that God would provide more teachers to meet the needs of growing schools. We began to pray this in our office at the Oklahoma Conference.
This prayer was rooted in the faith that our schools are God’s sacred training ground for His young people and a belief that when we pray to ask Him to fill His schools He will work to accomplish this. God’s work is far superior to whatever humans can attempt to do.
God began to answer this prayer in May of 2023 with the passing of the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program.
This program provides a refundable income tax credit to send their children to a private school. Families could get up to $7,500 to pay for tuition and other fees. This would cover the entire year’s tuition for many of our Adventist schools in Oklahoma. What a blessing for families, both for those currently enrolled and for the many families that see the cost of tuition as the barrier to sending their children to an Adventist school.
Our schools are seeing large growth! We are at the point now of needing to hire more teachers to meet the needs of growing enrollments. God continues to prove that “the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10) are His and His resources are limitless.
Would you like to be a part of God’s answer? Being a teacher is a challenging and yet eternally rewarding profession. Perhaps God has been putting it on your heart to make a career change into education. If you are interested in talking with me about our opportunities in Oklahoma, please contact me at ALittell@okadventist.org.
This experience has shown me God’s plan and power are beyond my wildest imagination. “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.” Isaiah 55:8. Our schools are not completely full yet and we do not yet have all the teachers we need to meet the needs, but I know God is faithful to provide. They are His schools, His teachers and His students. He will provide for His work to be done.
By Adam Littell
Superintendent of Education for the Oklahoma Conference
