Suppose God had a No Child Left behind program, how would it work?
   Suppose God said he would reward or punish churches and their leaders if the members of their churches did not score well on a Ten Commandments test that would be given at the end of the year. Churches that score well, their leaders, preachers, and Sunday school teachers would be highly favored. Churches that scored low would be placed in corrective action and in the interim its members would be given the choice to go to other churches. At the beginning of each year, the church would immediately begin to teach, preach, and lecture about the Ten Commandments. 

There would be plays about the ten commandments, after work tutoring sessions on the ten commandments, Saturday instructions about the ten commandments, not to mention Ten Commandment teas, programs, rallies, bible studies and the annual big ten picnic. At the end of the year, the church would take practice ten commandment tests, and a lot of instruction about how to guess on the big test if we still didn't know. When in doubt...circle C.

When the results are reported we will all celebrate that we are a church of excellence where everyone scored approaching basic to mastery of the Ten Commandments. In the process though only a few of us learned how to pray, serve, worship, or could even recite the Lord's Prayer or the 23rd Psalm. We didn't learn them because the big test only focuses on the 10 commandments.

Those who didn't learn the other things on their own would be left behind.

Thank goodness, God does not measure us by a standardized test; every one of us would flunk. No child of God is ruled unacceptable. No child of God gets a bad grade, because His grace is sufficient.

As Christians we have the assurance that our God, will never leave us alone. He will never leave us to struggle because we have fallen short. He promised never to leave us, never to leave us alone.