God definitely has used my time here to ignite my passions. Only I didn't know how many things He would make me passionate about. First and foremost being His grace. I've written about grace many times, and I thought I understood it well. While I recognize there are still significant aspects of it which I will never comprehend, studying Romans (chapter 6 especially) for my sermon allowed God's Spirit to show me how much I missed the point. But not only did He show me, He graciously impressed a further understanding upon my heart. The hymn really isn't lying.
My heart was not ignited in every area as much as fanned. I love kids. While the office time has been enjoyable, the most joy came while ministering to the children. I started to relearn this at the beginning of the year when I found myself still in the classroom. While teaching academics was not a passion, interacting and building relationships with kids was. Here I got to experience it to a greater degree. I am looking forward to seeing how God will use my passion for kids as I return home.
Teaching the missions and Bible classes fanned my love of teaching. As I prepared for the lessons, I thanked God for the education I received. I had people say my progressions were natural as I moved through the lesson. I felt the children were able to understand and engage. God showed me my travels to get to this point were no accident. My high school years saw me flirt with teaching, college had me learn it, graduation saw me practice it, and now God is showing how to use it to tell people about Him.
Similar, and yet different, preaching intrigues me as well. I love the preparation that goes into it. I find God preaches to me first before I can even begin to think about preaching to anyone else. He used to time to expose my flaws, break me down, and then build me up. As a result, the preaching has a more personal flavor to it. Now I understand every sermon will not go this way solely because my heart will remain hard at various times. But the chance to pour out what God has poured into me is something I am interested in delving further into.
One thing I also learned last year, which I forgot until now was my passion for hurting children. I love all kids. They can be sick, healthy, poor, rich, or anything else. I still find them entertaining to be around and a joy to engage with. My one struggle last year revolved around being powerless within the classroom to help students in agony, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. I didn't get the chance to dive right into meeting such needs here, but simply playing and talking with kids to see them smile made me want to do more. I saw myself get angry at people taking advantage of, neglecting, and abusing them. I shed tears over them because of the pain facing them and the joy they found in Christ.
These are not the only things which God showed to stir my heart. There are others. I know God will continue to change my heart to ignite over other things as well. It's part of our becoming more like Christ. Christ wasn't passionate about one thing. (Well technically He was: the Father's will and glory. But it manifested itself in a multitude of ways like healing, teaching, rebuking, serving, etc.). God may use one of these, all of these, or none of these for the ministry He wants me to serve Him in. I will say it has been a joy to watch God shows me the depths (both good and bad) of my heart over the past two-plus months. I still have just under two weeks left, and God is probably not done with this aspect of my heart just yet. To be honest, I'm a bit excited to see just what He has in store.
No comments:
Post a Comment