Their faces were blank. There were ten of us, give or take, squished into a long alcove with too few seats. Our lesson was on prayer. I could read the room loud and clear: they either just weren’t getting it, or they just didn’t care.
My co-leader and I tried a different tactic. We stopped following the talking points and instead opened the Word, selecting a few verses to illustrate the type of prayer the lesson discussed. From that passage, we made our way to another, and another, and another. I don’t honestly remember what we read. I don’t remember what I said. I just remember the feeling in my heart—in my spirit—as I sat flipping through the pages of Scripture with my girls. Wow, I thought. How cool that it all fits together like this. We finished our rant and sat in silence. Curiosity scrawled over the once-blank faces.
“Wow,” one girl piped up. “How cool that it all fits together like that.”
This brief moment in my discipleship-group-leading years stuck with me. In my writing and teaching, I’ve realized that unless I love God’s Word first and foremost and seek his glory more than anything else, I’m not leading well. While my growth is ongoing, here are a few key elements to help keep my heart in check when I teach or write about the Word.
Before We Teach: Prepare
Our breakthrough probably wouldn’t have occurred had I not been a student of the Bible in the days, weeks, and months leading up to it. The sermons I listened to in the car contributed. Devotions with a hot cup of coffee and the sun rising high contributed. Prayer scrawled in journals, on sticky notes, and breathed aloud contributed. When in the middle of those activities, I had no idea how they would affect that one Sunday afternoon meeting. I just knew the Lord called, invited, and welcomed me to commune with him daily through his Word and prayer. And so I tried to be faithful.
Beyond the everyday moments, there was also the deliberate preparation. We were using a curriculum on prayer, and so before we met, I read the lesson once, twice, a few times. I read the passage once, twice, a few times. My husband and I chatted about the content. My pastor and I probably did too. Oftentimes, there was a temptation towards laziness. After all, all I really needed to do was scan the curriculum as I headed into our discussion time, and we could wing it from there.
But that is not the excellence the Lord calls us to when handling his Word. I think of what James says (and I tremble when I do!): “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 1:3). And so again, I tried to be faithful.
Last but not least, I try to remember to pray before teaching (and I sometimes fail—but he gives a greater grace!). This is way more important than anything else I could do. It is ultimately up to the Spirit to move in these girls’ hearts. At the end of the day, I don’t want them to say, “Allyn changed my life with her teaching!” I want them to say, “God changed my life with his Word.” That’s all that matters. And prayer is essential to that process.
When We Teach: Be All There
Renowned missionary and martyr Jim Elliot once said, “Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”1 This applies to discipling youth. Raised in an age when social media and technology compete for every millisecond of their attention spans, they can recognize a wandering mind in others. If we are to communicate to them that the Word of God matters for them, then we need to give it our undivided attention.
This is easier said than done. Surely most of us have experienced the dissonance that comes when a friend, spouse, sibling, child, or student seemed really interested in what you had to say until their phone makes any noise at all. Our brains register even the quickest of sideways glances, our words falter, and our chest deflates. “If you need to get that, that’s ok.” “Thanks, just one sec, I need to….”
Is that what we’re doing to God? Whether in our quiet times or our loudest teaching, are we allowing our phones to dominate our focus? Our lives and choices demonstrate to our students what we hold most dear, so what is it? Again, like James writes, “not all will become teachers.” So if, by God’s grace, you find yourself tasked with teaching and discipleship, don’t waste that moment. Live it to the hilt. Put your phone away. Be all there.
After We Teach: Pray to the Lord of the Harvest, the Generous Sower
When we finish working through our lesson or passage, we should bookend our time with prayer. Ask the Lord to grant understanding at the beginning—and at the end. This matters not only because of what we pray, but who we pray to: the Generous Sower, the Lord of the Harvest, He Who Causes Growth.
The Bible is brimming with references to farming and the seasons. These physical images drive home a spiritual truth: growth takes time. In a variety of places, Scripture compares the Word of God to seeds planted. In Matthew 13, Jesus shares a parable. His main point is to demonstrate a variety of responses to the Word of God. The Sower is generous: even though he knows that not all the seed will take root and sprout, he scatters anyway. May we too be faithful to share the Word, even among what seems the hardest of hearts.
Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians may encourage us here. We are only responsible for the part we’re called to play. Paul, perhaps the greatest of missionaries and evangelists, also recognized that he only had a small role in the process of conversion: he planted. Apollos watered. But God (some of the greatest two words in the Bible!) gives the growth (1 Cor. 3:6). Paul goes on: “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building” (1 Cor. 7-9).
What a privilege to be God’s “fellow worker!” What a daunting task, too. Before, during, or after we teach, we ought to pray to the Lord of the Harvest. In Luke, when Jesus sends out workers ahead of him, before they left, he exhorted them to “ pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” because “the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Luke 10:2). May God help us labor well alongside him, for the harvest is plentiful, as he gives growth even in the rockiest of soils.
Remember What We Teach: The Word Made Flesh
We do not teach mere words on a page. Even if they were only recorded lines, written for our benefit, hear what King David has to say about them:
The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring forever;
the rules of the Lord are true,
and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb. – Psa. 19:7-10
Perfect, reviving, sure, wisdom-making, right, joyous, pure, enlightening, clean, enduring, true, righteous, desirable over all: This alone is beautiful! Even more beautiful, it is not this alone.
We flip the pages from the Psalms to the New Testament, the third Gospel: John’s. “In the beginning was the Word…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1, 14).
When we teach the Word, we teach about the Son of God, Jesus Christ himself. There is no greater name, no greater privilege. Want your students to love the Word? Love him first. And when we fail to live up to this, praise God for a greater grace: the Word made flesh who lived, died, and rose to cover our trespasses and draw us to himself.
Our latest youth ministry curriculum, The Apostle Peter, takes students through the Gospel of Mark and 1 and 2 Peter, where they will learn about who Jesus is, who they are in him, and God’s abundant grace for them.
