One common problem associated with teaching is the tendency to be self-conscious. Do I know enough? Am I loud enough? Am I too loud? Is the lesson long or short enough? What will people think? On and on the questions go.
If you struggle with this, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones gives us good advice in his classic work Preaching and Preachers. He writes that our rule for teaching is:
[B]e natural; forget yourself; be so absorbed in what you are doing and in the realisation of the presence of God, and in the glory and greatness of the Truth that you are preaching, and the occasion that brings you together, that you are so taken up by all this that you forget yourself completely. That is the right condition; that is the only place of safety; that is the only way in which you can honour [sic] God. Self is the greatest enemy of the preacher, more so than in the case of any other man in society. And the only way to deal with self is to be so take up with, and so enraptured by, the glory of what you are doing, that you forget yourself altogether (p. 264).
In other words, it is not about us. We are clay pots with a royal message from heaven. God is the main attraction. We, therefore, labor to point others to him. Be absorbed in this and forget yourself. Then we will see a real difference in our classes and services.
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Shane,
ReplyDeletethis is so true, when i first took over the college/career class i was terrified, and to try and take over what you had already brought to these young adults i thought to myself theres no way but God intervened greatly and gave me a type of confidence i had never had before. Even now on Sunday mornings i'm nervous but as always God takes over and the words just flow out as he would want them to, how great he is, how great his love is for us, i could never thank him enough for what he has done for us and could never thank him enough for sending us you and your family, thank you for everything you all do and your a true friend, thank God for you.
Jeff Derrick