The Spiritual Gift of Teaching

"Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:19)

Good Morning Oddballers,

Today's Spiritual Gift is on Teaching..and I don't want to focus on school-ish teaching, because I feel like it only covers half of the role of Spiritual teaching. To me, teaching is not only about a Christ Follower teaching others by their actions, but also being open to letting others teach them.

Let me put it to you this way. I know a lot of people that have this spiritual gift that just have a knack at knowing what to say to others to get them to learn something about life and spirituality. They find the perfect way to slip a little life lesson into everything they say, and they always seem to know the right thing to say before they say it. However, they also have the gift of knowing when to stop teaching and just let God teach them something that they can use in their life as well.

In my opinion, I think it is important as Christians to know when we first meet someone to be aware if we have something to teach them, or they have something to teach us. Learning is something that never stops. We are constantly learning new things, broadening our minds, and expiriencing more and more the longer we stay on the Earth that we live in. As people, we need to make sure that however we present ourselves to society, it needs to be something that others can learn off of in a positive way. We need to be able to know when we face challenges how to accept the fact that we don't know everything and we still have much learning to do.

The reason why I picked this Bible verse today is because it really captures some of the things that I wanted to say. Basically, it supports a very common phrase "practice what you preach." If you are willing to teach someone an aspect of Christianity, be aware that the audience you  are speaking too will assume that you practice this regularily and you are teaching it because you do it. For example, if you do a whole presentation on swearing, and then when you stub your toe on the table and swear, then you are undermining every little ounce of credibility on that topic becaues you failed to practice what you were preaching.

Same concept people, we need to be aware of what we are teaching, and whether or not we need to be taught something from others.

Have a thought provoking day :)

Oddball