Touched to be able to Touch
Psalm 49-51
As a teacher I am forever being made aware that unless the lesson goes through me first it's guaranteed not to make much impact on other learners. Nowhere is that truer than when it comes to spiritual truth.
David's words in Psalm 51 hit me again this morning with the need to examine myself, and to let God examine me, so that what I want to teach will not be highjacked by my own failure to let truth flow through me and touch my own life first.
The psalmist writes (from his own painful personal experience): "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you" (10-13 NIV).
That little word "then" is huge. I'm working on a revision to a series of studies on what the Bible teaches about angels. Just yesterday, in my research, I read a passage from Billy Graham's classic: Angels, God's Secret Agents. He remarked that only to man has been granted the unique privilege and opportunity to share the Gospel because only man knows what it means to be saved. As God touches our lives we are able to take that experience and with it, touch the lives of others.
Every day brings to it the opportunity and the need to lay ourselves open to God and to allow him to apply the salve of the Word to the hurt of the soul, or the surgeon's knife to the disease of the heart. THEN, and only then, can we teach others so that they too can know the Master's touch.
As a teacher I am forever being made aware that unless the lesson goes through me first it's guaranteed not to make much impact on other learners. Nowhere is that truer than when it comes to spiritual truth.
David's words in Psalm 51 hit me again this morning with the need to examine myself, and to let God examine me, so that what I want to teach will not be highjacked by my own failure to let truth flow through me and touch my own life first.
The psalmist writes (from his own painful personal experience): "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you" (10-13 NIV).
That little word "then" is huge. I'm working on a revision to a series of studies on what the Bible teaches about angels. Just yesterday, in my research, I read a passage from Billy Graham's classic: Angels, God's Secret Agents. He remarked that only to man has been granted the unique privilege and opportunity to share the Gospel because only man knows what it means to be saved. As God touches our lives we are able to take that experience and with it, touch the lives of others.
Every day brings to it the opportunity and the need to lay ourselves open to God and to allow him to apply the salve of the Word to the hurt of the soul, or the surgeon's knife to the disease of the heart. THEN, and only then, can we teach others so that they too can know the Master's touch.
Thanks for feeding my soul! Hugs, Rita
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