Coffee With The Lord

HERE’S SOMETHING I LOVE TO DO… TEACH GOD’S WORD!!!  Few things are as gratifying to me as structuring a learning experience designed to help someone discover what the Bible teaches, implement it, and then see the light come on in their eyes as they experience DISCOVERY! and then finally apply the truth to their lives.  I LOVE to see discovery and insight happen!!  I don’t know how to say this appropriately so I’ll just say it… Seeing someone experience an “aha moment” in the study of God’s word “turns me on!” – It’s not heaven, but it comes close!  I love to teach!!!

Yet today, in my Bible reading during “Coffee with the Lord,” I had a sobering moment… The Bible says, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers (and sisters) for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness!” (James 3:1 ESV)

TEACHERS HAVE GOT TO BE WILLING TO ACCEPT THE ADDED BURDEN OF NOT ONLY SPEAKING TRUTH BUT LIVING IT!  Teachers have got to realize it’s not enough to explain truth… our lives must model it!  God helping me, I never want distort truth either with my words OR my life!  I want the learning experiences I structure to not only be cognitive (lead to the intellectual grasp of truth) or the love and appreciation of truth (the affective embrace of truth)… I want desperately to be a living case study and example of the truth I teach (a behavioral model leading the way to the discipled life)!

Oh God help my teaching ministry to be more than “Blah, blah, blah” – words, words words and more words.  Help me take others by the hand and lead them to authentically follow in the footsteps of Jesus!  Although it sobers me, I’ll accept the additional responsibility of being a teacher!  I love to teach!

A periodic Spiritual leadership observation…

This morning during my time of “coffee with the Lord” I read the passage that is quoted below and made the following observation…

“These Godly leaders didn’t have to hire a “consulting firm” to address “systematic racism” in the ancient church… The Holy Spirit was at work among them, they were sensitive and responsive to Him, and He led them to a Godly wise solution!

“In those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists [Greek Christians] arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.  And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, ‘It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God and serve tables… Pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.  We will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.’  And what they said pleased the whole gathering… [and that is what they did] … These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.  And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly!” (From Acts 6:1-7 ESV)

As I was reading my Bible this morning I thought of a car I once purchased. Nice car, new model, great customer satisfaction reports. But I began to have trouble with it the very first week. It would run fine until I hit a bump, went over a railroad track, or experienced anything that would jar it in any way. Then the motor would begin to cough, begin to die, I’d have to pull it over to the side of the road and have it towed. Over 40 hours of shop time (thank God it was under warranty)!! They tried everything! Couldn’t find the problem, examined everything imaginable, took this off and then that, replaced this and then that, one day I came into the shop to discover they had removed the entire dash assembly trying to find the problem. Finally they discovered the difficulty… a faulty tiny computer microchip smaller than a dime that was “shorting out” (actually a minuscule sliver of metal that shorted the microchip in the dash)…

Although the examples given in Scripture aren’t the same as mine, the truth they teach are the same…

“If we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way! We can make a large horse go wherever we want by means of a small bit in its mouth. And a small rudder makes a huge ship turn wherever the pilot chooses to go, even though the winds are strong. In the same way, the tongue is a small thing that makes grand speeches. A tiny spark can set a great forest on fire. And the tongue is a flame of fire. It is a whole world of wickedness, corrupting your entire body. It can set your whole life on fire, for it is set on fire by hell itself.” (James 3:2-6 NLT)

Little things can have a big impact! Help me Lord! “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight!” (Psalm 19:14)