Teacher

For a lot of years I wore a lot of hats in the church. Sunday school teacher, youth leader, Director of Education, elder, small group leader. Recently someone asked me when I was going to start teaching again. I think it concerns people that I don't teach at the moment. I'm not sure why it is but today, I feel the Lord is impressing upon me to talk about this.

There was a time when I dreamed of being a Joyce Meyer. I thought the perfect career for me would be a teacher of God's word, a counselor for Christians. I've never felt called to the proverbial Africa but always to teaching other believers. I discovered within myself a surprise, that I loved to speak about Jesus in front of large numbers of people. As a lifelong socially awkward loner, I know this could only be the Lord. But what about now?

I won't pretend to know the why but for about 5 years I have felt no desire to do this teaching that used to so define me. In fact, I pushed myself for a bit to continue and realized that I was forcing something that was my own will being done. The last few times I taught I felt it, not the withdrawal of anointing but something else. The presumption of anointing.

I've worried, within my flesh, that others would see me as distant from God. I'm sure that is what compelled me to take those last few opportunities to teach. This is who I am and what I am expected to be. Around this time, God was making many changes in my life. My gramma passed away. I got a new job. We moved. Nothing I was seeking and yet; one thing after another was shifting. In the shift was the change; no longer was I compelled to teach as I had for so long.

It seems this would be a sadness but it isn't. What has also shifted is that I have discovered within a deep deep peace that I have never known before, even when I believed myself to be peaceful. There is a confidence in Jesus that I have never experienced, even when I thought I had complete confidence in him. The desperate prayers I used to pray have grown into intercessory prayers spoken in faith rather than fear. Even though I thought it had always been so.

My gramma loved Jehovah, God of creation. She loved Jesus and the Holy Spirit and salvation and the words of Paul but above all, she worshipped Jehovah. If you aren't sure what I mean, well, I'm not sure how to better explain it. Except that I love worship Jehovah too. Jesus promised that if we seek him, we will find him. I have a new sense of finding him over the last few years and it reminds me of the way my Gramma related to the Lord. She would hold an apple picked in an orchard and it would be a sacred moment to her. She would always have soup cooking or be anxious to make a cup of tea for me and on the coffee table would be her Bible open to 2nd Chronicles and it was the most church-like church I have ever experienced because she was so completely immersed in Jehovah. This is where I am finding my spirit leading me as well. God is all around me and like David, I feel the trees of the field applauding him.

I wonder, I hope, I pray I might become one of those women who intercede quietly and know deeply the things of the Lord.

And the teaching? I really don't know. This Jehovah peace I have found doesn't require knowing. I once fretted over such things, over tomorrow and in a year and what-if but it seems to have all melted away from me. Sometimes there are still moments to teach and I am always glad when they happen. Usually now it is one to one and never becomes more than that. When I, on occasion, think I should start a Bible study or a group or even sit down and write a spiritual blog post; the Lord gives me a quiet calm to be still. Be still and know.

Maybe all those years I was teaching myself and I have finally applied the lessons.

I feel that the enemy wanted me for a long time and worked very hard to tear me apart. More me than others? I don't know. What I do know is that I have always had a deep sensitivity to spiritual warfare and that my life in God has felt like training and combat and training and combat. Combat that was hard and bloody. Victory always came but was hard-won. I still have that deep sensitivity but the victory no longer feels hard-won, it feels already won. Fear is far from my heart. Worship is the language of my thoughts and the fragrance of the Holy Spirit permeates the air.

I see evidence of Jehovah God everywhere and, it is well with my soul.