Changes
May 17th, 2009 § 2 Comments
It’s time for a change. After five years of working in a large Sunday School class at our church my wife and I decided we needed a change. The people are great and the teaching is good. There’s nothing wrong but we feel we need a break. A sabbatical from serving if you will.
Today was our last day. In spite of the fact that I have been looking forward to losing the responsibilities that came with serving in that class, it was hard to leave today. We’ve all had those moments where we knew leaving something was the right thing to do but were torn about actually leaving and walking out that door.
I’m also making another change on a more personal level. For close to 10 years I’ve had the habit if reading the Bible through cover to cover each year. It takes me about 15 to 25 minutes of daily reading to cover the entire Bible in 365 days. Today I am going make another change. I’ll keep my daily Bible habit but this time I’m going to drink deep at the well of God’s word.
My goal is to truly study the four Gospels and Acts for however long it takes. With the Bible in one hand, a stack of commentaries in the other I am going to see where it leads me. Right now I am thinking it may take the next six months to a year or so to really do those five books justice.
I’ve got my ESV Study Bible which is one great resource for this quest. I’ve also got bookshelves full of reference materials both in print and in electronic form. It’s been years since I last did something like this. In fact, the last time was when I took some seminary courses. In fact, I spent one entire semester on the Gospel of John doing that before. I learned a bunch about John’s Gospel from that course.
For those of you who were in Sunday School with us, we’ll miss you. If you don’t see or hear from us it probably won’t be because we’ve fallen off the edge of the earth.
Change is sometimes tough, but I know it needs to happen on occasion. I am not necessarily applying this to your service in the class, but I know sometimes we have to step back and ask is this the best place to serve, am I doing it just because I always have, is God calling me to something different? People do not always understand change, but it is part of our growth (or at least it can be). Y’all have been great sacrificing servants in that class for a long long time. Well done!
Thanks. We’re looking forward to recharging and to see where we may be led.