08 Should You Be a Bible Teacher? (James 3:1-12)

Speaker: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word with Krisan Marotta. This is the eighth lesson in a series on the book of James. James warns those who want to become Bible teachers to seriously consider the weight of this responsibility. Krissan examines the purpose of teaching found in James 3, verses 1 through 12. Speaker 1: Well, we are in James 3, 1 through 12, and I bet the vast majority of you have seen a romantic comedy with some variation of this plot. So the heroine is dating Mr. Wrong, and she's completely oblivious to the fact that her best friend is Mr. Wright. And as the plot progresses, it becomes completely obvious to the audience that she is with Mr. Wrong, but she doesn't seem to see it. And finally, in the climactic scene of the movie, Mr. Wrong slips. And usually he says something like, Well, after the wedding, when we ship your kids off to boarding school and put your mother in a nursing home, and you quit your job so you can support my career. And then all of a sudden her eyes are opened, and she, of course, rushes off to the airport to catch Mr. Wright just before he boards the plane out of her life. So you've probably seen that plot, right, like a thousand times. And the plot hinges on words because eventually it's his words that reveal that Mr. Wrong is Mr. Wrong. His words give him away, and it's his true motive come out. So Mr. Wrong can fake it for a while, he can hide who he is underneath all his charm, but eventually his words are going to give him away. And that's the subject of James today, that our words will eventually either give us away, they reveal who we are inside. So let me just set the stage for us again with a little review. In chapter one, James said, consider it all joy when you encounter trials, because the trials test our faith, and this process of testing our faith brings us to maturity and makes us the kind of people we should be. And in chapter two, he argued that if we really have saving faith, it will change us, it will change what we believe, what we say, how we act, the way we think, everything about us, and he begins giving examples of how that faith makes a difference. And he ended the chapter with four illustrations that we looked at last week. There were two negatives and two positive illustrations. So the first negative he gave us is what I called invisible faith, that is, if where I failed to respond to a reasonable request and an obvious need from a fellow believer. So that was the case of the poor, hungry Christians where we didn't do anything for them. So that's invisible faith. I don't really believe something if I live as if it's not true. He says that's no faith at all. And the second negative example, it's the demons who have correct a theology or barren orthodoxy. So they know all the right answers, they have all the right beliefs, but they have failed to respond to those beliefs. They have failed to bow down in humility and submission to them. So faith submits to beliefs as true. And then he gave us two positive examples, Abraham and Rahab, where Abraham showed by his actions that he believed. So when he was asked to sacrifice Isaac, that was an absolutely crazy thing to do from a human perspective, but it proved that he believed the promises God had given him. And then Rahab, who had very little theology, showed that she had belief by the way she treated God's people and sided with them. And then he closed that section with a metaphor of the dead body that just as a soul animates a body, so our faith animates us. It's without actions, without expressing itself in our lives, it's as if it's a dead body. But when faith is real, it's living and breathing and it animates us the way a soul animates the body. And that brings us to our section today. Now, James, I think, is a particularly hard book to outline. I found several good outlines. The way I like to outline it, I think chapter three begins the middle section of the book. So the first section was chapters one and two, and the middle section is for I think the way I like to do it, starts in 3-1 and goes through 4-6, and in that section he focuses on strife in the community. And the section begins and ends with warning about the speech, which is one of his major themes, and it's it that will form, you'll see as we go through that forms a bookend. So let's look at James 3.1. Not many of you should become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. This is always an awkward passage to teach on. It's kind of like, how do you teach on this and not condemn yourself? It's I'm it's just not possible, but I will do my best. Okay, so by teachers, I think he just means people who explain the word of God. And teachers in James' day played a much more prominent role, I think, than they do today, because a larger portion of the church was illiterate, so they relied more heavily on their teachers. Few people could read, few people owned books of their own, so they depended on teachers to a greater degree, where we, you know, you can get on the internet and find anything and listen to sermons from churches all over the country if you want to. But in their day and age, if they were illiterate and they didn't have a Bible of their own, which many may not have had access to the scriptures, they depended on teachers to explain them. And of course, Paul singles out teachers along with prophets and apostles as three of the most prominent ministries in the church. So, like a Jewish rabbi, a teacher's job was to unfold and transmit an understanding of the scriptures. So let me start by what James is not talking about. I don't think James is trying to discourage faithful, godly believers who love the word of God from sharing it with others. I think he would strongly encourage that. So he is not saying that you have to be a super Christian to become a teacher and that, you know, ordinary believers can't teach. He's not saying only the cream of the crop should become teachers. I don't think that's what he's got in mind at all. He is saying that before you seek to be a teacher, consider the responsibility, and woe to you if you have the wrong motives for becoming a teacher. I think that's gonna come through. There are clues in this section where it suggests he's writing to a church where people are ambitious to be teachers and leaders because they want power. He's gonna con as we go through this section, he's gonna contrast the wisdom from above with wisdom from below, and he's gonna talk about motives being selfish ambition and jealousy, and that's I think the theme for this, he's this section, and he's gonna contrast that with kind of a humble godly wisdom. So, of course, the first area where you see strife on display in a church would be among the teachers, right? Where else? And I think as we go through this, he's gonna say, you have people who want to be teachers and leaders, but their motives are selfish. Their motives are ambition and jealousy. They want to use that position to wield power, and they see teaching as a platform from which to fight for power, and the result is gonna be bickering, backstabbing, and schisms in the church. So, as we go, some of this is in next week's section, but I think it's all tied in. It's hard to break this section. I think that's the kind of motives he's gonna warn about. So becoming a teacher out of evil motives is only gonna win you greater condemnation. So it's bad enough to have evil motives, but it's worse when you have them as a teacher and you spread them like cancer through an entire church. So he says, he gives us warning and then he says, For you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. So that's real encouraging. It's like, okay, what's going on with that? I think the idea is they're going to receive a more severe judgment in the sense of a stricter account. I don't think the word we should think of judgment as condemnation in this setting, but a trial or an accounting or a judgment. And the warning is not that those who are public teachers will be condemned, but that they will face a more strict accounting of their actions. And before you seek that position, you want to duly reflect on that. In that sense, I think James is echoing the words of Jesus in Luke 12, 48, where Jesus says, Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more. So he's saying, look, teaching carries a responsibility. Teachers are presuming to explain the word of God to other people, and they ought to take that responsibility seriously. So he's warning folks, before you become teachers, consider there's this responsibility. So teaching is not an achievement to be prized or a reward to be earned or a glory to be gained. It has a purpose, and that purpose is to explain the word of God. So you should want to teach for the right reasons. Your motives ought to be God-centered and other-centered, not self-centered. So just like an evangelist, if you seek to instruct others in the faith, you better be living it yourself, and you ought to want it for the right motives. Now notice how this fits in his argument. He's been writing about the disconnect between who you say you are and what you do. So he's been talking about making a claim to faith and then living like it's not true. Now he's kind of flipping that theme a little bit, and he's talking about wanting to do something for the wrong reasons. And he's warning that eventually your wrong reasons are going to be revealed by your words. Because teachers deal in words. It is a kind, it's the kind of public visible gift that you can want for the wrong reasons. And he's saying, consider carefully before you seek the job, because eventually, if you're teaching out of wrong motives, your words are going to give you away. Okay, let's look again at one and two. Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness, for we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man able also to bridle his whole body. So having warned that you want to become a teacher for the right reasons, he acknowledges, look, we're all going to fail, we're all going to sin, we're all going to stumble. That's the human condition. The human condition is one of stumbling. So in our natural state, we will trip ourselves up and we will show through what we do that our motives are selfish, unloving, and ungodly. So left to ourselves, none of us are very promising candidates to become teachers. Now, obviously, we don't want unloving, ungodly, selfish fools as teachers, but the problem is that eliminates the human race right off the bat. You know, we're apart from the grace of God, that's where we all start. We are all in that position. And left to ourselves, without the intervention of God, we should all just sit down and be quiet. So he's saying, before you become a teacher, start with this basic understanding of the gospel that you're a fool. And without God, you're trapped in your sin, you're selfish, unloving, and without wisdom. And then the idea of perfect, I think, is not as without moral flaw, but like what we saw in chapter one, where it's mature, complete. The one who is perfect is the one whose faith has grown into and reached a level of maturity and become that which it was intended to be. And it's interesting to me that he puts this the perfect person in verse 2, and we think, oh, well, that's hypothetical, but for James it wasn't hypothetical because he was the brother of the Lord and he grew up in the same household with Jesus. So he actually saw the perfect man in action all those years growing up. For us, it's hypothetical, but for James, he had a living example. So he says we all stumble and our words are going to give us away. We can't think without words, we can't plan without words, we talk everything through in our minds, and our words are gonna give us away. They're gonna reveal who we are on the inside. So who do you want to be a teacher? The person who's been a believer long enough to face the kind of trials which test your faith and has been shown through that test to have a strong mature faith. And then he gives evidence of that. What is evidence of a strong mature faith? And that is a more bridled tongue. So the mature person is not morally blameless, not without sin. The mature person is still going to sin and will say the wrong things at time, but that person has reached some level of maturity such that they have a deeper understanding of scripture, and that will be expressed in how they speak and how they talk. Alright, so one of the markers, how do you recognize that kind of face? One of the markers is someone who can control their speech. Mature, they've reached a level of maturity so that your words reflect that. And how we speak, what we say, how we say it, who we say it to is a key indicator of who we are. What we say gives us away who we are in the inside. And if we have a mature faith, that will be revealed. And if we are fools, that's going to be revealed too. So remember, he's been contrasting what you say and what you do, and his claim so far is that what you do may reveal that your claim to faith is just an empty claim. And he's been looking at those who claim to have faith, but their actions deny that. Now he's flipping the coin and saying, the other way you can see this is in what you say. Your speech can reveal positively your level of maturity or negatively your level of maturity. So what you say reveals what is true about you. And those who have been tested and grown in their faith and reach this deeper understanding of God will reveal that in their speech. So we can all be religious hypocrites and make a claim to faith that is not true, but ultimately our words are going to give us away. And I think he picks speech because words are particularly important giveaways for teachers, because teachers are constantly talking. That's kind of the nature of a job. We deal in words, we stand up in front of people, and we talk a lot. And in the course of that talking, we're going to reveal who we are on the inside. So we use our tongue, and that's the part of the body that can give you away like no others. So he's saying, before you seek that position, be careful. Think about your motives. So in chapter one, he connected faith and wisdom and was talking about the mature perfect man, and now he's connecting faith and controlling your tongue. Those are markers of maturity. It's the same idea. The wise person whose faith has been tested and grown through that test will begin to reveal that in how they speak. Okay, let's look at his metaphors. And the key thing in all these metaphors is the big thing or the little thing controls the big thing. So look at James 3, 3 through 5. If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also. Though they are large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire. So in all these metaphors, you have the small thing that controls the big thing. So the one who controls the tiny bit in the horse's mouth controls where the huge animal goes. So you know, stand behind a horse and push, and you're not going to get him to go anywhere he doesn't want to go. He's not going to move if he doesn't want to. But if you control the bit in his mouth, you can make a horse five times your body weight go wherever you want it to go. Similarly, a rudder can steer a 500-ton ship. So you could get in the water with a rope and try to pull it, but you couldn't get it anywhere. But if you control the rudder, you control the boat. And then one small match can burn down the entire forest. So in his metaphors, in each one, there's this little thing that controls the big thing. So just as the bit changes the direction of the horse and the rudder changes the direction of the chip, so the tongue reveals the direction of the believer. My speech reveals whether I'm moving toward God or I'm moving away from God. And the analogy works because of the close connection between what we say and what is inside us. So if you think about it, we have these big bodies that run marathons and scale buildings and lift weights and operate heavy machinery, but the most sophisticated tool we have is our speech. I can do all kinds of things with my speech that I can't do with my body. So I can use my speech for my purposes to persuade, to argue, to rebuke, to encourage, to explain, to issue orders, to give praise. And in the process of doing all that, I open a window into my soul. So in each case, he's saying what we say and how we say it, what we say and how we say it reveals who we are on the inside. It reveals what we're passionate about, what we think is true, what we think is important. And we can be hypocrites for a while, but sooner or later our mouths are going to give us away. So James is saying, whatever controls your tongue controls all of us. Just like the bit controls a horse and a rudder controls the ship, ultimately our tongues are going to reveal who we are. So we can change some of our outward behavior for a little bit with a great deal of effort, but eventually our mouths give us away. You know, if we're tired or stressed or pressured or we let our guard down for a moment, then oops, those words slip out before you have a chance to stop them, and you reveal what's in your heart. Remember, the topic is folks who want to be teachers out of selfish ambition and bitter jealousy, and the chief tool of a teacher is words. And he's saying, before you let someone teach, consider how that person speech. Does her speech reveal a tested mature faith, or does it reveal the glossy charm of selfish ambition or maybe the arrogance of a fool? And he's saying, What controls my tongue controls me. The more mature I am, the more I will have control of my speech because God has been at work in my life. The more wisdom he's taught me, the more that will reflect in what I what I say. So the tongue boasts great things because it can affect great things. It has great power to hurt, to persuade, to build up and tear down. So just like a match will start a huge fire, so our tongues can do these big destructive things, which is of course where he goes next. Look at six through eight. And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird of reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison. Well, that's a pretty bleak picture. You may think he made his case a little too well. You know, he's got this restless evil full of deadly poison set on fire by hell. We can tame all the animals in creation except our tongues. It's not a very pretty picture. So his metaphor suggests that the tongue affects all of us all the time. It affects all of human existence from beginning to end. It's powerful, it's destructive, it's full of deadly poison. No one is unscathed, everyone is stained. And that word restless in verse 8 is the same word that was translated unstable in 1.8, when he was talking about the double-minded man, it has the idea that it's changeable, it's difficult control, it's going to break out at any moment without warning. So you read that and you think, well, if no one can ever change the tongue, how can any of us hope to teach anyone anything? If no one can change the tongue, what are we all? I mean, we're in trouble. But notice he says no human being can change the tongue, but thankfully for us, God can. So he's argued that we have this new birth through the gospel, that God matures our faith by taking us through trials. He starts out by saying the one who's mature has control of his mouth, and none of us can control our tongue, so how do we get from no control to some control? It's the grace of God. God at work in our lives to change us. So we all start as fools, but God makes us wise. And the distinction he's making, I think, is between those who are still by nature unredeemed and unrepentant, and their mouths reveal that, contrasted with those who, through the intervention of God in their lives, have arrived at some measure of faith and maturity, and their mouths reveal that. So he's painting a pretty bleak picture of the natural state of man, but that ought to just inspire us what God overcomes to get us to faith and maturity and inspire gratitude for us. Okay, look at 9 through 12. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing, my brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. So he's contrasting the highest form of speech, blessing God, with the lowest form of speech, cursing God. And he's saying these are opposites, but there's a similarity in what we're blessing and cursing. We're blessing or cursing the image of God. So either God or people made in his image. And he's highlighting that inconsistency. And then he asks two rhetorical questions, both of which expects the answer no. Can the same spring give sweet water one minute and brackish water the next? And can the same tree produce both olives and figs, or the grapevine produce both figs and grapes? And you say no. But our mouths do that. They speak both blessing and cursing, and it ought not to be so. Speaking to the Pharisees, Jesus echoed the same theme. This is Matthew twelve, thirty-three through thirty-seven. Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment, people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. So our words condemn us in that they reveal who and what we are on the inside. And when he says in 1234, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. For the unredeemed heart will speak evil, the redeemed heart produces good. So only a renewed or redeemed heart can produce good, though not perfectly yet. Now, I don't know about you, but we could read this and all be convicted. You read that and you think, okay. I still have sin in my life. We still sin, we still disappoint. Every genuine believer in Christ will say and do things that reflect the reality of their faith sometimes, and they will say and do things that reflect the reality that they have not yet been completely freed from sin. So if we disqualify those who sin from leadership, we're not going to have any leaders. And I don't think he's talking about, by his analogy of the fig trees and the sweet water and the brackish water, the idea is not that you can never sin again, but he's talking about a more fundamental hypocrisy. The hypocrisy that says I love God, but my daily behavior consistently shows a pattern of unrepentance and rebellion to God. So at the foundation of being a believer is this realization that I have not loved God as I should, I have not loved my neighbor as I should. I can't really come to the cross in belief if I haven't confronted the fact that I am sinful, that I need a Savior, that left to myself there's nothing I can do. So the first step in faith is realizing how deep my sin goes and where my hope is to be found. And that then affects how I interact with other people. So he's saying, yes, we all sin, we all fail, but believers and unbelievers will react to that differently. Those with faith are willing to acknowledge that was wrong, that was sin, and they're grieved by it and long to be changed, where the person without faith doesn't really care how he treats others. He lies, he cheats, he pushes, he demands, he believes he's perfectly justified in doing so. Now believers may lie, cheat, push, and demand, but ultimately they're gonna regret it and repent of it. Ultimately, they're gonna come to a point where they say, That was wrong, and I need forgiveness. So on the one hand, every one of us will sin, every one of us will act selfishly, and our words are gonna reveal that, and yet faith is a genuine thing. We will see ourselves growing in that. We were learning to see ourselves in a new light. We are learning to show grace and mercy and forgiveness, and that will start to express itself. So I think James is talking about a more fundamental contradiction between people who have not yet come to a place of faith but are making a claim to it versus those who have. So they think they ought to be leaders, yet their selfishness and jealousy shows they have nothing to be arrogant about. And the picture I think he's painting is look, I see too many immature, selfish people in your midst. So let not many of you become teachers. This you're not there yet. You haven't arrived at that level of maturity. Consider the responsibility before you seek the gift. So God works in the lives of genuine believers to mature our faith, and that maturity will lead to wisdom, and that wisdom will be expressed in how we speak. So it's not a unique wisdom for the ultra smart, but the wisdom of the ordinary, faithful believer who's learned to understand life from God's perspective. So the gospel confronts us with those issues of mercy and grace and sin. And when we understand it, it begins to change us, our perspective changes, what we value changes, how we think changes, and that will be expressed in what we say. Okay, let me just wrap this up with a couple of points of application. I do want to emphasize again that teachers are not super Christians. That is not what he's saying. All he's saying is teachers need to be genuine Christians whose lives have been changed, and that change is starting to become obvious in the way they speak. And there's a sense in which everyone in this room is a teacher, because every one of you will be called on at times to explain what you know, what you believe, and why you believe it. Especially if you're a parent, you're a teacher, or if you're a mentor to anybody, you're a teacher. So parents teach their kids daily by their examples and their words. And he is not saying you have to be a spiritual giant to be a teacher. Teachers don't stand up in front because they think they're better than people. We're here because God has given us an understanding of the Bible and some desire to speak it and shown evidence of faith. So you don't have to be a super Christian to be a teacher or a leader in the church. You just have to be a real Christian with tested faith. And it's not even a superabundance of faith. It's not like teachers have faith everybody else doesn't have, it's just normal, ordinary, everyday faith that has been tested and shown through that test to be the real deal. And I think that's important to note because we often throw brand new believers up front to tell their story, especially if they're public figures, or they have some dramatic high-profile conversion. And I think we ought to be careful that we don't push recent converts into responsibilities they're not ready for because they haven't been tested yet, and God hasn't been at work at them very long. So the second thing I'd like to emphasize is that whether or not you're a formal teacher or a leader, I think we ought to take seriously the seductive pull of this kind of jealousy and power, and is warnings that all of us can be deceived and seduced into this kind of uh selfish ambition and jealousy, and that we are all susceptible to that. Maybe you won't be up front teaching, but you can still be taken in. You know, we can all gossip and slander and politic for our favorite teacher or make sure that those we like best get the power, you know, and that happens in homeschooling groups and churches and businesses and Bible studies, and I think we ought to take seriously those warnings because we tend to overvalue the public gifts like teaching, and we tend to underadmire those gifts that are behind the scenes. And I think it's natural. Everybody wants to make an impact, everybody wants to have their life make a diction a difference, find some measure of glory and honor. And it's so it's easy to overvalue the kind of upfront public, widely visible gifts. And I don't, you know, when we secretly review the catalogs of gifts and imagine ourselves having them, we rarely long for the gentle, quiet spirit of service, and yet that gift probably makes more difference than teaching. And if teaching worked, all of us would eat five fruits and vegetables a day, be at our perfect weight, and have perfect cholesterol, right? Because we know what we are supposed to do. We've been told. But it's those quiet acts of compassion that are often where lives are changed. The one-on-one meetings, the things no one may ever see often is where lives are changed. But we tend not to value those gifts. So the primary business of our lives, I think, is to commit ourselves to the truth of the gospel, that our faith calls us to be different, it calls us to think differently, and remember that the cross is our only hope, and that the kingdom of God is the only place where life can be found, and then to remember that we're not such hot stuff. James is focusing on teachers, but I think the attitudes can apply to all of us. If God were to give us what we deserve, we'd all be in hell. So the only place we have to boast is in the cross. Each of us has something about us that everyone else has to put up with. Hate to tell you, but it's true. We all have that annoying trait that everyone else in our lives has to overlook. Now, some of us hide it better than others, but it's usually obvious. So I think we ought to take his warning seriously. Remember, we're we are all here by the grace of God, and we are not that hot stuff. So at the risk of being of revealing how unqualified I am to be a teacher, I thought I would tell you my how I came to be here. Because I think one reaction to James III is to take this warning so seriously that you run from the idea of teaching and will never even consider it. And I think teaching is like parenting. If you wait until you feel ready for it, you're never going to do it. So when I was a new believer, I was part of a small church in my hometown, and the pastor had all of us in the church take a spiritual gifts test. And this particular test rated us as rated each gift as highly developed, possible but not developed, somewhat developed, or don't even bother you're hopeless. So guess where I scored on teaching? The don't even bother you're hopeless category. No natural ability, not in your wildest dreams. Now, I was a brand new believer. I knew nothing. I had no business telling anybody anything because I knew nothing. And I think that test accurately reflected that at that point in my Christian life I should not consider teaching because I was too young in the faith. I didn't know anything about the Bible. So I still have that test. And whenever I get too full of myself, I pull it out and I look at it because it reminds me that left to myself, apart from the grace of God, I would not be here. I'm not the kind of person that should be standing in front of you. So armed with my test results, I went back to college where I was a volunteer, small group leader with the high school group at my college church. And the high school pastor asked me to co-lead a co-ed Bible study with this really cute guy named David Murata. And I said, wait a minute, Pastor, you don't understand. I just took this test and I know I'm not cut out for this. And he said, No, you're not, but I'll train you. And he began this process of teaching me how to study the Bible. And I fell in love with Bible study, and incidentally, my co-leader, who's now my husband, but God grew in me this intense joy over Bible study. And I just, it's like I can't not do it. I study and I study and I get, it's like filling up a balloon. If I don't tell somebody what I learned, I'm gonna burst. And I started out with baby steps, explaining, you know, this little tiny measure of wisdom that I had. And then as I gained a maturity, it just kind of grew. And before I knew it, I was teaching. So all that is to say, none of us are qualified left to ourselves. Don't let that deter you from stepping out and using any of your gifts. Um, but be open to what God might have for you. I still am in touch with that pastor, and I feel like, you know, he's the one that believed in me and started me on the path and said, first, we're gonna start out with the Word of God. You need to learn how to study, you need to learn how to what it says, and from there it just grew. But underneath it all, I know I'm a fraud. Because apart from the grace of God, I would not be here, and I have the test to prove it. So let's take James seriously, consider his warnings. But if you think God's calling you to teach or use any of your gifts, just go take that first step. I think part of the best way to figure out your gifts is to try it and see what happens. And if God's gifting you an area, then it'll start growing. All right, let me pray for us. Father, thank you that that you don't leave us in our sins. That we know that apart from your grace, none of us has any hope of being a leader, a teacher, or or uh any kind of having any kind of wisdom that we start as fools and we start as rebels. But that through your cross you sent your son to die in our place to pay the penalty for our sins, and you have begun that process of maturing us. We just thank you for that and pray that we would always remember that it comes from your hand and that what we have is from you, and that we would be content in what you give us, not be worried about how slow the progress seems or how fast or compare ourselves to others and their progress, but that we would just trust that you have us in your hand, that you are making us the people you want us to be, and that we would walk each day knowing that you are our Savior and our Lord, and have us where you want us to be. In Jesus' name. Amen. Speaker: We're glad you've been with us at Wednesday in the Word with Krisan Marotta. We hope you've been encouraged and challenged to depend on the Lord. Please let us know if you have questions about this study. We are on the internet at wednesdayintheword.com, where you will find this and other Bible studies.