Why?: As a teacher, do you ever feel like you are alone?

What?: In many teaching ministries, it is easy to feel isolated, to feel alone. We may not meet regularly with other teachers as we plug away week-by-week. If you feel alone, there is good news. It is recorded at the end of Matthew’s Gospel. Immediately after giving the Great Commission to His first disciples, in the last words recorded by Matthew, Jesus assures His first disciples, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The dilemma comes in reading at the end of Luke’s Gospel and at the beginning of Acts that Jesus was then taken into heaven. If He promised to be with us and then was taken away, maybe all believers, including teachers, have cause to feel alone.
Well, we’re not! Jesus promised to send His Holy Spirit to indwell us so that we have God present in us as believers. But, how is that Jesus being with us? Perhaps the answer is the church. Consider that the Spirit unites all believers as one church and that united church is called “the body of Christ” a visible body that we can see in local congregations of that one church.

So What?: We can legitimately say that Jesus is physically with us in the local congregation and spiritually with us in the Holy Spirit. We are not alone.

So What Now?: As a teacher, when you feel alone, remember that you’re not. You have Jesus’ promise that He is with all believers until the end of the age.

Why?: Why do you think your teaching is authoritative?

What?: Some teachers think their teaching is authoritative because of their position in the church. Others, because they know and communicate the Bible well. Some even think that if they speak in authoritative ways— whatever that is — that their teaching has authority.
The truth is that we speak authoritatively when we speak with Jesus’ authority. In Matthew chapter 28, verse 18, just before giving the Great Commission to make disciples, the resurrected Jesus said He had been given ALL authority in heaven and on earth. And in that authority, He was sending the church out to make disciples. In other words, Jesus has given us His authority to continue His work of making disciples.

So What?: It is Jesus’ ministry to make disciples who grow to look more and more like their Savior. He has redeemed them. Through His Spirit, He transforms them. The fact that we are operating on His authority rather than our own should keep us humble as we are used to carry out His work. Our teaching fails when we do it on our own authority. Our teaching succeeds when we rely on the authority of the One who commissioned us in the first place.

So What Now?: When you start getting a little full of yourself thinking you are really special as a teacher, will you repent and humbly submit to the One who has real authority and who has sent you to His church with that authority? Only then will your teaching be authoritative.

Why?: Does teaching in the Great Commission apply to every Christian in the same way?

What?: At the end of Matthew’s gospel, he records Jesus’ Great Commission to the church to make disciples by having a heart to reach the lost, baptizing new believers, and teaching all disciples to obey everything Jesus has commanded. That commission for the church applies to every individual believer in the church; we are all to teach. And teachers are to teach. Isn’t that the same thing?
No! In Ephesians chapter 4, verses 11 to 16, Paul tells us that Jesus gave certain gifts, including teachers, to the church to equip every member for ministry. So, all believers are to teach by modeling the Christian life and passing on God’s truth. But, those who are gifted to the church as teachers have a larger responsibility to teach the church so that every believer CAN teach. Although there is certainly some overlap, a simple way to describe the difference is that every believer is to teach in private settings — for example, in the home; but teachers are to teach in public settings — for example, in Sunday school classes.

So What?: As teachers we are publicly to teach how all believers can teach privately.

So What Now?: Don’t be satisfied if your teaching ministry teaches others truth unless you have taught them how to pass on that truth. Teaching them to teach, you will be the gift Jesus intended for you to be when He gave you to His church.