Teacher & The Principle of Responsibility – Introducing the Gift provides background for the third of the seven pillars hewn out by Wisdom as she set about to build her house.1
As with any of the overviews, I encourage you to read through Lady Wisdom – The Voice of Understanding, this time with the redemptive gift of Teacher in mind. It is stunning – in a lifegiving way – how much Wisdom epitomizes the Teacher grace gift. She is Teacher. Her ways lead to life and health. The foundation of the Teacher and the Healer.
Introducing the Gift
It would be lovely if the Teacher gift could be all neatly wrapped up and tied with a bow. That would certainly be in keeping with the Teacher portion’s tendency to want to know the end of a process before they begin. However, that is not how the principle of responsibility works. While listening some years ago to one of Arthur Burk’s audio teachings on identifying one’s dominant redemptive gift, he made a statement that landed with me:
Most people think they are Prophet, while the truth is that most people are Teacher (my paraphrase).
I mentally filed it, bearing in mind the redemptive and negative expressions of the gift. It landed because it confirmed what I had discovered and come to believe about leading with your life 2. Someone is watching and we are teaching by influence and example, with or without saying a word. I think that well describes gift of Teacher.
Head Knowledge and Heart Healing
As we explore the gift in the unfolding overview, we will see that Teacher shares some similar traits with Mercy. That can at times lead to confusing the two gifts. Which is why the Teacher and the Healer bestows a glorious weight of grace when understanding comes.
Teacher tends to lead with their head; Mercy tends to lead with their heart. And they need each other in the community of the human spirit. In our world and a culture of social contracts that promote ‘question everything’ and ‘believe no absolute’, the Teacher gift gets worked over, ever needful of God’s exponential grace.
This Wisdom gift is motivated by Teacher’s need to validate truth. A good mind and a love for knowledge is a God-given behavioral characteristic of this gift. Teacher portions make great evaluators and monitors, but without Holy Spirit’s access and ministry to one’s Mercy portion, Teacher can become dogmatic.
God’s incredible gift of knowledge, no matter how doctrinally correct or theologically sound, remains academic (head knowledge) unless and until the Teacher comes to increasingly know God experientially (heart healing). The Teacher and the Healer, embodied fully in Jesus and exampled in pattern by Luke, are spiritual comrades. When working together rather than resisting Mercy’s redemptive grace, Teacher can grow in their birthright.
Teacher’s Birthright*
“To know God’s deep truths that can only come through intimacy.
To know God experientially and to incrementally dispense what God reveals.
To reveal the manifest presence of God to others by knowing who God is and to live in God’s will,
to reveal the presence of God to the world and enthrone the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Teacher’s wisdom admonition
~ the Apostle Paul to his son (spiritual offspring) in the faith, Timothy ~
The saying is sure and worthy of confidence: If we have died with Him, we shall also live with Him.
If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny and disown and reject Him,
He will also deny and disown and reject us.
If we are faithless [do not believe and are untrue to Him], He remains true
(faithful to His Word and His righteous character), for He cannot deny Himself.
Remind [the people] of these facts and [solemnly] charge them in the presence of the Lord to avoid petty controversy over words, which does no good but upsets and undermines the faith of the hearers.
Study and be eager and do your utmost to present yourself to God approved (tested by trial),
a workman who has no cause to be ashamed,
correctly analyzing and accurately dividing [rightly handling and skillfully teaching] the Word of Truth.
But avoid all empty (vain, useless, idle) talk, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness.
And their teaching [will devour; it] will eat its way like cancer or spread like gangrene. “…”
But the firm foundation of (laid by) God stands, sure and unshaken, bearing this seal (inscription):
The Lord knows those who are His, and, let everyone who names [himself by] the name of the Lord,
give up all iniquity and stand aloof from it. [Num. 16:5; Isa. 26:13.]
II Timothy 2:11-17a,19 (Amplified)
going forward …
Teacher & The Principle of Responsibility – Introducing the Gift is a decidedly broad stroke with a yellow paintbrush. The II Timothy passage above is a charge that elicits a yea and amen! from many Teacher portions.
What God has imparted by His will and His design is worthy of our finest expression. But not a one of the seven Wisdom principles is constructed and lived in overnight. The Teacher is a student is a teacher. Going forward, the overview will include time spent with the Wisdom principle of Responsibility; the spiritual authority God has designed Teacher to walk in; and description of Teacher’s redemptive outworking and areas of weakness.
There is much more. Meanwhile, studying Jesus’ Teacher and Healer expression in the Gospels, and especially in Luke, is an excellent way to spend some discretionary time. Learning. Unlearning. Relearning. Growing Wisdom.
~ Nancy
1 Proverbs 9:1
2 Use the website’s search bar by typing in Leading with Your Life, for a variety of relatable archived coaching posts.
*A. Burk/C. Wales description of Teacher’s birthright
Click here for a printable PDF of this article: Teacher & The Principle of Responsibility – Introducing the Gift
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