If Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, the city of Carbondale and the people of deep Southern Illinois consider Wednesday’s SIU Board of Trustees vote a victory, they are making a grave mistake.

Here’s a link at the Southern Illinoisan.

How Does Prayer Work?

By Rick Warren

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us — whatever we ask — we know that we have what we asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15 NIV).

Have you ever wondered if prayer really works? Maybe Satan has whispered to you, “Prayer is a waste of time. Forget it! Who do you think you are? What do you think you’re doing? God isn’t even listening.”But here’s the truth: Prayer works because God is in control.

In fact, the basis of all miracles is God’s sovereignty. What does that mean? It means he is God Almighty, who has all power in Heaven and on Earth, so his purpose and his will prevail. We learn to trust his wisdom and his goodness. We learn about his loving nature and his generous character.

And we mature in faith as we understand that God has a better view of our circumstances than we do, and that he knows what is best for us. He can see our future, and we can’t. The Bible says, “But his plans endure forever; his purposes last eternally” (Psalm 33:11 GNT).

God’s unlimited resources are available to you. Twenty times in the New Testament it says, “Ask.” Isn’t it encouraging to know that things out of our control are not out of God’s control? You may not be able to change a situation, but you can pray and God can change it.

You may be thinking, “If I can pray and ask God to change things, and if God is really in control of everything, why don’t I get everything I pray for?” Here are three reasons:

God is not a genie

Just because we pray, that doesn’t mean we get whatever we want. If every prayer were answered, we’d be spoiled brats. If you’re a parent, do you give your children everything they ask for? Probably not. As an adult, you know what’s best for them. You can see the bigger picture. If we can see the bigger picture for our kids, how much bigger is the picture that God can see for us?

Sometimes Christians pray in conflict

Sometimes Christians pray for different outcomes, even though they’re praying about the same thing. Which prayer is God going to answer? God can’t answer every prayer in the same way at the same time.

God knows what’s best, and we don’t

The Bible says, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us — whatever we ask — we know that we have what we asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15 NIV). That’s how Jesus prayed: “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine” (Luke 22:42 NLT).

Prayer works. It isn’t a waste of your time. God is in control, and he wants to hear your prayers — he is listening!

PLAY today’s audio teaching from Pastor Rick >>

Talk It Over

• If you’ve ever wondered if prayer really works, how did God show you that he was listening and that prayer does work?
• How can your prayers change, knowing that God is listening and that he will answer?
• What does it mean to ask according to God’s will, as 1 John 5:14-15 says?

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Today’s devotional is an excerpt from Rick Warren’s study, “Experience God’s Power Through Prayer,” available here[JW1] .

I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Isaiah 61:10 (Read all of Isaiah 61:10) New International Version

By Walter V. Wendler

On the very best days, the very best universities treat each student distinctively. Universities are in the business of creating, developing and nurturing human capital. This is true when faculty and staff are hired for their unique skill sets to contribute special value to the institution. Responsive universities will treat students similarly.

The process is complex. No two students begin university study with the same set of characteristics, capabilities or aspirations. As an outgrowth of this high “feedstock variability,” universities perform best when the idiosyncratic characteristics of the leadership, faculty and staff are responsive to heterogeneous students by meeting every student where he or she is—responsibly.

Generation Z may be many things, but there is a surge in the idea of individuality, entrepreneurism and expectation. You get what you earn. It is not greed—Forbes says Gen Z’s are team players—rather, it is what’s right.

There are many manifestations of such a perspective of university life. Because unique faculty and staff work with unique students, the costs of personalized responses to need, ability and aspirations vary dramatically. In fact, radical individualization would mean that no two students will learn exactly the same thing, nor should they pay the same price for an educational experience. Is radical individualization required for fair treatment of all?

The accounting and record keeping process of this approach would be a bureaucratic labyrinth. It is possible that a university with 10,000 students could have 10,000 different pricing structures based on individual student aspirations, commitment, engagement and success. For example, the number of credit hours students take to achieve the 120 credit hours required for a bachelor’s degree varies dramatically. Some students end up with 160 hours of coursework for a 120-hour degree requirement. The willingness of students to accept responsibility for their actions. Surprisingly, students are willing to accept their responsibility in choices, reminiscent of the “Silent Generation.” Institutions should match that willingness to accept corporate responsibility.

If a student takes extra hours because they are interested in subjects not required for the major, maybe that student should pay more for those hours. Public and private resource streams all support a student’s diversified interest on the one hand, or lack of focus on the other. Differential costs are associated with both.

Incentives or rewards for early graduation leading to efficiency in consuming educational resources and efficacy in costs and time-to-degree would recognize focus and completion for an individual. The importance of six-year institutional graduation rates might recede.

Precise calibration of scholarships and financial aid are possible, even if simultaneously challenging for institutional record keeping. The award and management of scholarships are stubbornly unchanging—a student performs in an exemplary fashion in order to receive a merit-based scholarship. A more precise and effective utilization of scholarship dollars might include incentives that stipulate performance bonuses above the general expectations of maintaining a scholarship. Likewise, there could be a diminishment of resource flows based on a lackluster academic performance. This is radical individualization of rewards and effects.

To put the concept in even a brighter light, imagine a university that rewarded performing students with lower tuition and fee charges based on current achievement.  People change. This perspective challenges current views of costs and performance and their calibration in the attainment of an education.

The complexities are beyond this reflection, but the concept is simple. The job of universities is generating human capital. Human capital starts with individuality and grows in response to the arrays of experiences and abilities that students provide to universities, and vice versa. Only sensitive and complex instruments would allow appropriate and fair assessment of a full palette of considerations—the reality of the human condition.

Current views and monolithic processes treats everyone the same, creating cost burdens to both the state and the student. Coupled with the generalized notion that going to college and earning a degree guarantees anything is a debilitating truth evidenced by $1.5 trillion in educational debt. The roadway from campus, littered with pizza boxes, used textbooks, broken aspirations and books of promissory notes is full of potholes. Universities have unintentionally worked to shield students from the notion that hard work, commitment and achievement have great inherent value to individuals and are the foundation of entrepreneurship and innovation that powers communities and societies.

The risks, rewards and benefits for genuine performance should provide both internal satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment. Moreover, external recognition that places material consequence on the differences between success, merely adequate performance and failure is required. The coming generations of students expect that consequences for work and achievement have real impact. This is not to be confused with greediness or self-centeredness, as is often the case. Generation Z’s own passion and pragmatism may be a 21^st century reincarnation of The Greatest Generation.

“Wanting to work is so rare a merit, that it should be encouraged.” Abraham Lincoln