Page 3 - English Grammar and Composition-Student Textbook short

English Composition and Grammar
By Paula Tibesar, B.A., M.A.

Study Section 1: Articles

1.1 Connect

God’s work is all about communication. We communicate our passion for the gospel through speech
and the written word, and we communicate our love for others through our actions. Therefore, we can
never take effective communication for granted. God’s word is a unique written document meant for
us to read and study and savor. It is preserved as a written document because, in its true form, it
represents God’s unchanging message for us.

Aren’t you glad that God wants to communicate with us? The Bible that He walked with Adam in the Garden of
Eden and that they had rich fellowship daily. But sin shattered that relationship and communication broke down.
But God continued to talk with mankind through direct communication or through His prophets. God wrote down
what He wanted us to know. And then He sent His son who was Emmanuel, “God with us.” God certainly has made
it plain that He wants to have a relationship with us through communication. You need to develop your
communication skills to enhance your ability to relate to God and others. That’s the purpose of this course…

1.2 Introduction

The following excerpt is from a message written by John Piper on the importance of writing:
…I think it is wrong not to want to influence people when you write. Paul said, “Let all that you do be done
in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14), and he said, “Do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). So, when we
are writing, either we are loving people, or we are not — we should be seeking to love people. And we are
either seeking to glorify God or we are not — we should be seeking to glorify God.
And I think the way you love people is by influencing them, persuading them, winning them, awakening
them to delight in God above all things. This means that whenever you write, you should be writing in such a
way as to make God look better than anything else in the world, to make the path of sin look worse than
anything else in the world, and to make the path of righteousness look beautiful in spite of all the difficulties
that the path of obedience might bring.

So whether you are writing fiction or whether you are writing a blog or a poem or a book, or a theological
treatise, it seems to me that love and the glory of God dictate that you cannot be indifferent to whether you
want people to be affected by your writing. You want them to think true thoughts about God and life, and
you want them to feel appropriate affections for God and about sin and life. And therefore, writing is simply
an extension of living, and all of life is to be lived in love for people and for the glory of God (Piper 2013).

So we learn to write clearly and effectively in hopes that our work for God’s kingdom will have the very best effect.
My experience has been that good writing is never easy but always yields a satisfying result. I have endeavored to
choose content I’ve judged to be most useful considering the structure of Bantu languages. Let’s begin the hard
work of improving our writing.

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