Small Group Bible Study
THE TEACHER’S INNER LIFE
Small Group Bible Study
THE TEACHER’S INNER LIFE
The teacher’s heart-life must be held up and honored by the study group. If not, the efforts of teaching will eventually be fruitless. No one can piece through to reality as quickly or as surely as a keen-eyed, zealous Bible student. On the other hand, if you are a genuine, truth-seeking believer, a sincere lover of Jesus Christ, you can almost dispense with any other teaching quality.
Want to be a Small Group Bible Study teacher? Then first closely examine your inner life. Are you serving God because you long to please Him, because your whole soul goes out to Him, or merely to conform to family or the custom of a community, or merely from a sense of duty? What are your inner feelings and desires when you are by yourself? How do you think your inner life is rated by the all-wise eye of God?
In order that the answer to these questions may be what they should be, the teacher should spend much time in devotional reading of the Bible. The teacher’s constant temptation will be to let preparation of Bible lessons suffice for personal Bible reading. In lesson preparation the teacher reads the Bible thinking how to present a certain theme or subject to others and not as a direct message from God to the teacher’s own soul. Being of the Book means that the teacher will gain from it the wisdom, strength, and good cheer without which teaching will not continue for long, but with which your Bible lessons will be a well of water springing up in the hearts of your study group unto eternal life.
In order to attain genuine Bible teaching success, the Bible teacher must also be prayerful. Being of the Book also means that the teacher is filled with prayer. The Bible teacher needs help from the Holy Spirit; help to take from the Book the things of Christ; help to show them to others. Yet, the Holy Spirit comes only through communion with the Father in loving, long, and frequent prayer. Spiritual insight and truth is obtained on our knees. On our knees we become friends with God. On our knees we find spiritual power. The best Bible teachers go from their closet of prayer straight to the class; face shinning like the face of Moses after he had talked with Jehovah.
In this way, the teacher’s upper life grows more real and blessed. In this way the Bible teacher will be enabled to set it forth in convincing and winsome terms. We cannot give what we do not possess; but if we rejoice in the Lord others cannot fail to note it, desiring the same blessed experience. The Bible teacher’s inner life is truly the main source of outward victories.
