There is an unexpected side effect of continuously growing with God: after a while, you can’t teach people how to do what you do anymore.
It’s too complex, too multi-faceted. It’s dependent on many years of being led by the Holy Spirit into growth. What’s more, the Holy Spirit’s teaching plan becomes highly customized as we specialize into that which our calling requires us to be.
The result is that we can no longer be teachers for the body of Christ.
What Is A Teacher?
Ephesians 4:11 mentions five of the “offices” in the church: apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher. There are one million interpretations of what this scripture even means, so I will share my current understanding for your prayerful consideration.
I believe that the office of a teacher is held by a person who explains, step by step, the practical side of walking out one’s walk with God. A teacher may explain the basic beliefs of existence:
- who created us
- what we are made of
- what we are created to be and do
- how we heal, grow, and get power
- what is the course of our current life and beyond; etc.
If you think about it, all of the things American churches “do” fit into that list, including: Bible study, group worship, prayer, healing classes, deliverance/exorcism ministry, confession, communion, etc. These rituals/practices/traditions were originally designed to help people connect with the living, SPEAKING, relational God, Yahweh. Once a person gets connected with God directly (with no dependence on pastors, priests, or other leaders), God can lead that person into their personalized growth journey by surpassing these rituals.
How to Surpass Rituals?
It’s easy at the beginning to explain the basics to a new believer: a “5-step prayer model”, a “4-step exegesis model”, or a “2-step communion model” are simple to grasp. That is because human beings can physically replicate spiritual actions (and even have some success) long before we actually understand what it is we are doing. This modeling-before-understanding is how children learn, and that is how adults learn, too.
What happens when you gain real understanding, though? I mean the kind of understanding that you can only get by deep meditation, incessant prayer, hearing God explain it to you clearly, and testing your understanding until you get 30, 60, and 100 times the success other people get in this area? You have surpassed the ritual.
This means you no longer serve the ritual, the ritual serves you. You can take it or leave it, and you’ll still get the benefits of it because it’s not the ritual that matters, but the internalization of what it is teaching you.
Examples of Surpassing Rituals
Here are two examples of how God has led me to surpass rituals in my life:
1. Communion. The ritual I was taught was to take a wafer of cracker and a thimble full of grape juice, read the scripture about Yeshua explaining the communion at his last supper before going to the cross, eat and drink, and say amen. But once God explained to me the purpose of the cross, communion became something I do through prayer (and often without the crackers or juice) every time I wanted to see someone free of something that is hurting them. I no longer need to do the ritual with the food to receive the power of communion.
2. Bible Study. The ritual I was taught was to observe, interpret, correlate, and apply scripture through various means (concordance, multiple translations, and commentaries—Logos Software, anyone?) I also learned to read through the Bible once per year. But once God showed me the significant dilution of God’s word through biased translations of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and the New Testament (Christian Bible), I changed how I interact with them. Today, I can only read forty verses per year because I dig into the translations and pray for Holy Spirit revelation about every single word. Once I feel God has given me the understanding I need for today, I meditate on that scripture for weeks, sometimes months. Once the scripture is internalized, I begin asking God how God wants me to apply it in my life. I also give God permission to quote scripture out of context, much like Bumblebee the first Autobot, and to also use extra-scriptural quotes (or images, or sensations) to augment my understanding. This is no different than God giving Peter an extra-biblical vision of the unclean animals described in the Tanakh, and telling him to eat, for nothing is unclean for him anymore (Acts 10:11).
What Now?
Now, I find myself having so much to share with the body of Christ but so little confidence that anyone will understand what it is I really mean. (Sigh.) That’s why, as I continue on this God journey, I must rely on the Holy Spirit even more in what I write, how I write it, and when I share it. I can no longer expect to be able to write an “N-step Model” to easily transfer what God has taught me, but I can share the words God gives me, and allow the Holy Spirit to do the teaching in her messy, convoluted way. If I commit to doing this, I will not fall into the trap of control and programmatization (is that even a word?) that quenches the Holy Spirit. Instead, I will give the Holy Spirit room to do what only she does best: customize every word of God for the individual hearer.
So be it. Amen.
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