Reading Bible stories as a third party, I often wondered why certain characters behaved the way they did.
Walk with me. Did you notice that many of the Old Testament prophets initially resisted God’s call?
They came up with different excuses; Moses said he was a stammerer, Jeremiah told God he was too young, Jonah took the next available flight, sorry, sail, to escape God, and on and on, we see these examples. Now imagine what happens when you find yourself in their shoes and realize that maybe, just maybe, they were right to be scared of the task ahead. You see, while all these people I mentioned gave one excuse, I gave many.
My excuses started with: “Some other people are already doing it”
Guess what happened! Some of those performing those duties relocated.
After that, my excuse was ‘I don’t think I’m grounded enough in the teachings of the church’, but ‘The Catechism In A Year Podcast’ hosted by Fr. Mike Schmitz just happened to start airing a few weeks later.
I was also running an academic program far away from my local parish, so I held on to the ‘I don’t have time‘ excuse, but that program also ended. ‘The Catechism In A Year Podcast and my academic program would come to a close around the same time, leaving me with no valid excuse.
After making short work of all my excuses, God placed the ball in my court and I grudgingly dragged myself to answer that insistent call, sulking along the way.
But as we all know, His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. I joined the Sunday school teachers and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t as difficult as I expected, or maybe I had been provided with sufficient grace for the task entrusted to me; either way, I learned a few lessons.
6 Lessons Teaching Sunday School Taught Me
- Answer that call; God will supply the means.
You know how worried we are when we are planning a project, and some important pieces are still missing? That’s how I felt at first. However, as soon as I decided to join the teaching ministry, help started to show up. I’d be walking through a library, and a certain book would snag my attention, one that contained just what I needed or that answered the questions on my mind at that exact time. I would be scrolling through my social media and run into a post with tips on teaching little children or breaking down Scripture for little ones. From the moment I gave that silent ‘YES’ in my heart, everything I needed to fulfill the task started showing up.
- The work is not mine; it’s the Holy Spirit’s.
The work of touching people’s hearts was never meant for human beings; we are meant only to be instruments of God’s mercy to others. At the time I started, teaching was one thing I was sure I was bad at. But with what I thought was my feeble attempt to explain the scriptures to little hearts, I received unbelievable positive feedback. Little children who could barely string two sentences together babbled to their parents what they had learned at Sunday school. I’d overhear preteens, when playing, saying to each other, “Remember, we were told not to do so and so,” or “We are supposed to do so and so.” It was a beautiful report that could only have been God’s Spirit at work in them. It’s like when Peter the apostle, someone who could be called a practical ‘illiterate’ of that time, spoke and 3000 people got converted in a day. The Holy Spirit, who touched people’s hearts at that time, is still in the business of converting hearts to this day.
- God qualifies the Called.
When God calls, He doesn’t need the best of the best; He needs those who are willing. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians (1Cor 1:26-28), tells us that God uses the foolish to shame the wise and the weak to shame the strong, so that anyone who boasts only boasts of the Lord. If God only used those who were experts in certain fields, a simple fisherman wouldn’t have been chosen for the task of caring for God’s sheep. So the call of God is less a measure of anyone’s capacity but more of an ability to submit to God’s divine plan and providence. The question here is how well do we make ourselves available for God’s use?
- Some days are more exciting than others
In teaching Sunday school, my experience has been that there are some days when the tangible fruits of teaching children can be felt and seen, such as a situation where a child is admonishing another based on what has been taught, and there are other times when it seems as if no one is listening. Some days, the children are full of energy, and every child wants to participate actively; some other days, they seem subdued, and you have to cajole them into participation. At first, I thought I was doing something wrong, but I later realized that that is just the normal rhythm of life. Even the life of Jesus had seasons, the church’s calendar has seasons, real life has seasons, so why was I even expecting a monotony of ‘highs’? And since God is working on both the quiet days and the exciting ones, why did I ever get worried?
- Your purpose is in your obedience
Sometimes, like in my case, obedience is hard for many reasons. But the more I obey, the more I’ve found peace and fulfillment. This just drives home the point that ‘before I formed you, I knew you’, and when we look at it like an inventor and his invention, we can agree that the inventor is in the best position to say what purposes his invention is best applied to. St. Catherine of Siena rightly said, ‘Be who you were created to be and you will set the world on fire’.
- You’ll get better
I look back and see a marked improvement since I first began. As with most activities, practice makes perfect. So if your excuse for not doing what you have been called to is ‘I’m not good at so and so’, I promise you, you will get better. Take it from someone who has been there before but decided to take up the work anyway; you’ll improve. Each time you show up for the work, there will be an improvement from the previous time, mostly subtle, a few times noticeable, but by the time you look back at where you started from, you’ll see that you are way better than what you began with.
Image: Photo by Yosi Prihantoro on Unsplash
