Weekly Teaching – An Ancient Rhythm of God’s People
It dates back thousands of years B.C. – the evidence that teaching has been a part of the People of God’s routine…
From Psalm 132:12:
12 “If your sons will keep My covenant and My testimony which I will teach them, their sons also shall sit upon your throne forever,”
to Acts 2:42 “…they were devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching,…”
Why is teaching such an important part of following God and being a part of his Kingdom? I think the key is this: Our lives are guided by the way we hear, and tell, our story. The transformation of a life requires a tranformation of the meaning of our story, and teaching provides us with the new narrative. The challenge is that there are so many parts to our story – and all of them need redeeming! We need to to hear from the Spirit of God the answer to the question: “What did this mean to you, God?” so we can adopt His version of our story.
It’s the version where we find out how many times He saved our lives, and that nothing we have gone through is wasted.
It’s the version where we discover that God’s love and attention to our lives never let up – not once.
It’s the version where we finally see how He has been drawing us to Jesus our whole lives, so He could be our “Papa” forever.
This is the power of the teaching ministry – its an audible reinforcement of the voice of God in our hearts. Do we always hear the words that God is saying to us? Of course not – Sometimes we hear one thing with our ears, and the Spirit of God responds in our hearts with something like…”well, I am not so much agreeing with that – but try this version on for size.”
When teaching is speaking the current message of God, I think that is what Acts 2:42 is referring to as “apostles’ teaching”. It is like bread to our souls (Matthew 4:4). It continually redifines our story with meaning God gives to it.
We in the Journey group have begun leaning back into this ministry since January, and we are already experiencing good fruit on Saturdays from 4-6:30. Check out the events tab for more information.
Bob