This month, we have gotten the chance to do a lot of preaching and teaching of the Word. It has actually taught me a lot of humility. I got to teach at a Bible school, which was an interesting position to be in, considering the people that I’m teaching probably have a lot more credibility teaching the class than I do. I’ve never been to a Bible school class in my life. I don’t have any special scriptural knowledge other than what I’ve heard in church or learned on my own. Not to mention everyone in the class is older than me, some of them considerably so. They seem to think that, since I am a white American missionary, that I have some sort of special extra knowledge on the Bible or something. They would ask about all the more challenging passages of scripture. I had absolutely no earthy credibility to be teaching at this Bible school.
Going into it, I thought I was ready. I had prepared a lot of teaching that was supposed to get me through an hour and a half of class. I was actually very excited. I love to talk about things that I am passionate about, like Scripture. But my prepared teaching only took up about half of the class time. I had a moment of panic, knowing I was going to have to fill up the rest of the time with something, but I had no clue what I would talk about. So, I opened it up to the students and asked if they had any questions. They asked some really good questions, and for each one I had a personal story to share along with my answer. Some of them I had literally just been thinking about the answer during my quiet time recently, having no clue that I would end up getting asked about it in Bible school later that week. And the rest of that time was even better than the part that I had planned for.
It was God telling me that I shouldn’t be relying on my own knowledge to teach, but to rely on Him to give me words. He stripped me down to the point where I had nothing from myself, so that He could use me to say what He wanted to say to those students. Not to say that you shouldn’t necessarily prepare for such opportunities, but that you should be more aware of what God wants you to say, and to be fully surrendered to whatever His purpose is for you there.
Later in the month, I had to preach at a church on Sunday. I went into writing my sermon knowing what I thought I wanted to talk about, but God took me a different direction. As I was writing, I kept being reminded of different passages of Scripture that tied into what I was talking about, and God took me on a trail through the Bible. I ended up at a completely different ending point than I originally intended to, but it was so much better than what I had planned on. Instead of forcing it to line up with what I wanted to say, I allowed God to say what He wanted to say.
I challenge you to be listening to the voice of God and to surrender to His will over your own. And trust me, you will be all the better off for it. God’s way is sooooo much better than yours. Give in to it.
With love,
Ethan
