2 Corinthians 3-4

God’s Word is powerful.  It is breathed out by God and truly profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, just as it claims in 2 Timothy 3:16.  I would like to share with you how powerful some of the verses in today’s reading proved to be for me at a time when I needed them very badly. 

When I first graduated from seminary, I began teaching Bible and History at a Christian School in Delaware County.  My seminary degree was in Christian Education, not in learning to be a school teacher.  I was ill-prepared to embark in classroom education.

The only practical teaching advice I received was from the Headmaster of the School in faculty orientation a few days before school started.  He told several of us, who were new teachers, that in order to maintain strict classroom discipline, we had to be in charge from the very beginning.  We needed to be super strict with the students from day one.  We could always ease up later. 

I was very strict for the first two weeks that I taught.  I was also quite miserable.  It was no fun teaching in an authoritarian style.  I was then, and still am, somewhat of a wise guy who loves to kid around, one who can find humor in almost any situation.  

After a few days I wasn’t sure if I could be a teacher.  I was greatly discouraged, even depressed.  My wife Beth tried to cheer me up.  She even tried cooking my favorite foods, but I had lost my appetite.  I dreaded going to school every morning.  I didn’t know what to do.  So I talked with my father. 

He quoted 2 Cor. 3:4-6 to me.   “⁴Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. ⁵Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, ⁶who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

These verses were exactly what I needed at precisely the time I needed them.  I realized that I had no sufficiency in myself – no adequacy or competence as other versions translated the word.  My sufficiency had to be in God.  I would have to lean on Him, the One in whose strength I could do all things.  

The first day of the third week of classes, I walked down the street to my school with a new sense of confidence and peace.  I had resolved to make two changes in my approach to teaching. The first was that I realized I had to depend on God, not myself.  I knew I was not sufficient in and of myself to do anything, but I was more than sufficient through Him.  The second was that I would be myself in the classroom.  I didn’t like the strict authoritarian meanie who was teaching my students, and I am quite certain they didn’t either.   

A new teacher approached his students that day.  I had fun, in fact I loved it.  I taught and coached for three years at that school, and only left because I believe God called me to continue working with young people as a Youth Pastor at a church where a number of my students attended.   

I understood the power of God’s Word.  A few verses that perhaps we read quickly today with little notice turned my life around.  God’s Word has the power to do that – to meet our needs when we can’t; to bring us help when we are weak; to turn our very lives around.  Let’s ask the Lord to meet us in His Word so we can receive the help we need in good times and bad. 

Paul Thompson