Teacher & The Principle of Responsibility – Describing the Gift – Part 3 looks briefly at Why and When we learn in our bearing this grace gift. The School of the Spirit is redemptive from the inside out. Holy Spirit does not fail.
Why We Learn
In Teacher portion fashion, this three-part description provides background – and that, not exhaustive by any means. Rather, I see these overviews as priming the pump toward renewing your mind to the way in which God designed you. Romans 12:1-2 remains the gifts’ bedrock. In a how you learn moment, I share below the same word of truth related in two different translations. Your soul may be predisposed, Teacher portion. Your love for doctrine treated correctly is part of your design. But that too is deposited in seed form to grow up in the Truth. These translations and others state Christ’s truth that Holy Spirit taught Paul so he would leave us with the why:
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (The Message)
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Brothers and sisters, in light of all I have shared with you about God’s mercies, I urge you to offer your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice to God, a sacred offering that brings Him pleasure; this is your reasonable, essential worship. 2 Do not allow this world to mold you in its own image. Instead, be transformed from the inside out by renewing your mind. As a result, you will be able to discern what God wills and whatever God finds good, pleasing, and complete. (The Voice)
“When things are coming apart, study to know how God designed them to work.”1
Throughout scripture, the fairness of God is detailed time and again wherever He clearly states what to do. The Word is succinct about a great many things; no surprises. Just because we don’t understand everything He is doing at times, doesn’t mean we can’t understand anything. Holy Spirit teaches us when we have a willing heart.
Romans 12:1-2, reverse engineered, tells us that –
- Knowing the will of God in increasing measure is directly related to having our mind renewed.
- The renewal of our mind produces inner transformation – God working change from the inside out.
- We have two choices: being molded by the world into its image or taking to heart that we are created in Elohiym’s image and embracing our design for redemptive living – that which brings Him pleasure,
- for it does not bring Him pleasure when we live with feet wearing shoes aimed in opposing directions.
- Paul urged his Christian believers to present (offer as a spiritual “reasonable” divine service to God) their body (all their faculties, a sound whole: II Timothy 1:6-7) – and that,
- in the light and view of the mercies and compassions of God. This was Paul’s – and our – starting point.
“If God be all we profess to believe, He is worthy of all we are.” (F.B. Meyer)
When We Learn
At points, Paul in his epistles takes a selah moment, then exhorts believers, “Make up your mind.” From personal experience he understood the way the mind blows affects the way the will goes. Considering Paul learned it straight up from the Lord Himself, he lived on, purposed to “a long obedience in the same direction.”2
Innumerable resources abound for help, instruction, and encouragement in all we have, want, or need to learn. There is no dearth of teaching aids for body, soul, or spirit. The balance scales one day will prove the virtue or the dragging weight of what we have taken in Intellectually → Emotionally → Spiritually → Relationally.
Woven into the very fibers of that equation is the reason that Romans 12:1-2 has power to strike as a hot anvil:
We are in a spiritual school of learning at any given time in any given area of the Spirit’s working the will of God. Part of growing up in Christ includes growing wise in rightly discerning where His Holy Spirit detects our need.
Is He focused on what we’re taking in intellectually? or below the surface to how we are reacting emotionally? Is Holy Spirit concentrated on the deeps of our spiritual being?3 indeed, our human spirit that has the capability to connect intimately with God, our Creator and Father of life. Perhaps it is relationally that Holy Spirit is active. Then there are times in His working together all things for good, we begin to realize His work is a thorough work.
We Can Learn at Any Age – in spirit, in soul, in body
When I first embarked on the Teacher portion overview, I shared a personal backstory entitled Luy Thua V – God’s Exponential Grace. It was one of many perfectly timed episodes of seeing God’s fingerprints.
Recently, after re-engaging the Teacher articles, my husband asked me one morning if I had ever heard this Word of the Day – “opsimath”. I had not. He read me the definition, and it was another confirming Fingerprint –
An opsimath is a person who begins or continues to study and learn late in life. It comes from the Greek words opsé (meaning “late”) and manthánω (“learn”).
It describes this type of person as defying typical expectations or timelines. I love that, because as often as I said it before in my life coaching days, I never tire of reminding us all: we can learn and grow until our last breath. Late Bloomer (2015) was written in the midst of those most enjoyable coaching years. The rest of the opsimath definition shared examples such as mastering a skill; curious about a subject all their life; earning a college degree late in life…or as I am passionate about here, our identity as God wove each one – spirit, soul, and body.
As we continue, I pray Holy Spirit will cause His clarity to hover over each reader. That there is no expert, expectation, or affirmation from fellow flesh and blood that can compare to the uncommon teaching of Holy Spirit in each of our lives. To know Him experientially Spirit to spirit is to learn in His exponential grace.
Luy Thua V, my friends.
~ Nancy
1 the art of reverse engineering, coined in Describing the Gift
2 Friedrich Nietzsche in his 1886 book Beyond Good and Evil
3 Psalm 42:7 – Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.
Click for a printable PDF of this article: Teacher & The Principle of Responsibility – Describing the Gift – Part 3
Nanc
what a wonderful reminder to do and give my ever day to Him.
needed that today.
CP