In my last year of teaching, I taught in a public high school. That year I taught science to all of the special education students in the school. Frequently, as I was teaching, God would inspire me to share something with the students.

I remember one day when the biology lesson that I was teaching was about hearing. The closing paragraph in the chapter went something like this: "Your hearing is a beautiful thing. Take good care of it. Once it is gone, it is gone forever." As I read that sentence aloud, God impressed upon me that I should share what he had done at church the night before.

The night before there was a healing service at our parish. My wife, Lydia, and I prayed as one of the prayer teams. A lady who had come up in our prayer line was totally deaf in one of her ears. When we prayed for her in the name of Jesus, she was instantly healed and her hearing returned. I related this incident to the students.

I told them that we do need to take good care of our hearing but, if anyone ever loses it., there is always another chance with Jesus. Just then, one of my students blurted out, "Oh, come on man! You're supposed to be teaching us biology and all you ever give us is Bible, Bible, Bible. Don't you know that I could have you fired?"

Several days later, I had a message in my mailbox that one of the assistant principals wanted to see me in his office "before I did anything else that day." It didn't take a genius to figure out that he wasn't going to give me the Teacher of the Year Award or an all expense paid vacation to the Bahamas. Either one of those could have waited until clear past lunch time. This meant trouble.

As I walked to his office, I prayed. I remembered the words of Luke 12:11-12: "When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say." I told the Lord that I was depending on him to give me the right words to say in this meeting.

As I sat down in the assistant principal's office, he said, "I hear that you have been teaching the Bible in your classroom. Is that true?" My heart almost stopped. It was easy to depend on the Holy Spirit for the right words to say because I was speechless. "Yes," I said, "that's true." Then the assistant principal asked, "Don't you see that teaching the Bible in the public school could lead to serious problems?” If I ever needed inspired words, I needed them then. “Yes,” I said, “ I can see that teaching the Bible in the public school can lead to serious problems.” The serious problem that came to my mind most immediately was my getting fired. The assistant principal seemed satisfied at my answer and let me go on to class. I thank God that he didn’t want me to tell the assistant principal that I would never again speak the truth of the Gospel in my class. Otherwise, we would have had a serious problem that very morning.

As l walked to my classroom, I prayed: "Lord, help me to follow your perfect will. If there is something that you want me to say in my classroom, let me know. Give me the courage to speak it out." I asked God to help me know for sure when he was leading me or when I was speaking on my own. After all, I figured, if I was going to lose my job, it ought to be over something that God wanted me to say and not over something that I had conjured tip on my own. As the weeks went by, God continued to give me things to witness about to the class. Most often, the leading to witness would come during the biology class from which the complaint had come. I would pause for a minute, ask God to give me the courage to speak out, and then say what I felt God wanted the students to hear. I kept expecting another note in my mailbox, but it never came.

One day, while we were in a meeting at church, a girl from the youth group came in and told me that there was a boy who wanted to talk with me. It was Tom (not his real name), the boy who had complained about me to the administration at school. He was too shaken up to talk. Tom's friend (also a student of mine) had come with him. The friend spoke up, "Mr. Trainor, I brought Tom here so that you would talk to him. He told me that he is going to kill himself tonight. He said that he'll listen to what you have to say."

We went back to our house. Lydia and I talked with the two of them. We told Tom that God loved him and had a beautiful plan for his life. We explained the Gospel message, telling Tom that he could share life in heaven with Jesus forever. We told Tom that God could greatly change his life that night if he would open his heart and give God the chance. Tom let it us pray with him.

I thank God that he gave me the courage to continue to witness to my class in the face of the fear of losing my job. I know that, because I was able to speak up, there is one young man who is alive today and walking with Jesus Christ. Shortly after that night, he was baptized in one of the Christian churches in our town. Praise be to the Lord Jesus Christ!