Who's Teaching Who?

I get to teach the Kindergarten-2nd grade sunday school class at my church once or twice a month. I love getting to spend time with the kids, and I've always loved teaching in general, but the thing I find most humbling is that, even though my audience is 5-7 year-olds, and the stories are the same ones I've heard since infancy, I am still learning and benefitting from the same truths that I am teaching to the children. The craziest part is that I usually don't realize how much I needed to hear that lesson myself until Sunday morning, as the words are coming out of my mouth and the Holy Spirit is pricking my heart and saying "listen!" It makes me marvel and rejoice at how timeless the truths of God are. It is simple enough for a child to understand, yet deep and complex and meaningful enough that we will never be able to plumb the depths of it's wisdom.

This week I taught the story of Jonah, and boy was I convicted! I felt like such a hypocrite, telling these things to the class when I myself hadn't been thinking about or following these words for much of my week. I'm so thankful to God that He never stops teaching me, and always finds creative ways to do it!

Here are a few of the lessons we all learned yesterday:

1. God wants us to marvel at His creation. And He wants us to remember that it all points back to Him. Anytime we admire stunning beauty, magnificent power, awe-inspiring magnitude, perfect order, mind-bending creativity, heart-warming goodness, or anything else that makes us smile or think "wow!" that it all comes from HIM, and is just a dim reflection, a tiny preview of His beauty, His power, His magnitude, His order, His creativity and His goodness.

2. God made the world, and He called it good, and he cares for everything He has made, but He cares most about people. He cares about even the WORST people. Jonah was angry at God for allowing a shade-giving plant to die, but the thought of an entire city being destroyed in a fiery explosion didn't bother him at all. Isn't that the same for me? Don't I so easily get frustrated when I lose something that provides me with comfort or makes my life easier? If I care so much about these things, then the least I could do is care for people more--even the hard-to-love people that drive me crazy. If God cared about the people of Nineveh, who were sworn enemies of God and His people, the same people who attacked and enslaved the Israelites, then I can show compassion on those around me, no matter how frustrated with them I feel.

3. Absolutely nothing happens outside the sovereign will of God. There are some things that He actively ordains to happen, and some things that He simply allows to happen (that's where our free will comes in), but if He really doesn't want something to happen, it simply cannot happen. God actively sent Jonah to Nineveh, and when Jonah tried to refuse, he was stopped in the most remarkable supernatural ways. Not only was there a storm that stopped as soon as he was tossed overboard, but he was somehow preserved alive in the belly of a giant fish for days before being vomited back onto dry land, of all things. I mean, seriously? There's no doubt in Jonah's mind how this all happened, and you'd better believe that the next time God told him to go, he went!

4. It is possible to obey God's commands with a bad attitude, but the only person suffering is you.  (see chapter 4) I really needed an attitude check last week, and this was a pretty good kick-in-the-pants reminder!

So what about you? What and how has God been teaching you these days? :)