The Excellent Spirit

It works that same way in the church. You’ll never feel adequate to teach, just as I did not, and sometimes still don’t think that I can be good enough to teach. What we must realize is that your ability to teach isn’t as important as the fact that Jesus is with you and the Holy Spirit will anoint you, and God will help you to bring forth the Word that needs to come and the Holy Spirit will do the teaching, not you. God only uses your tongue, your mind and your body to do the work, but the message comes from Him and from His Word. Once I learned that, and began to have the knowledge and the wisdom to use that knowledge, then the ability to teach became much easier.

Of course, one pre-requisite for teaching is that you have to have the knowledge in the first place and that only comes through applying yourself to reading, to study and to a time of preparation for the job God has called you do.

You can’t have the excellent wisdom and knowledge if you don’t allow God time to put it in you first. And you can’t expect to teach if you haven’t spent time studying and learning.

I do a lot of substitute teaching in the schools around our area and I have had to keep reminding myself of this fact. I didn’t go to a university and pay the price to become a certified teacher, therefore I can not expect to be equal to those who have in many ways. But at the same time, I have traveled life’s road and faced many things, learned many lessons that most of those teachers have not, and in that manner, I can teach a few things better than they can. The school of life and the Word of God are the best instructors around and there’s a lot to be said for these grey hairs and the things I’ve learned while earning each one of them.

Hebrews 5:12, "For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat."

You can’t live off of the milk of the Word and develop an excellent spirit. You have to get down, dig deep and really apply yourself to study and learning; get into the real meat of God’s Word, then you’ll begin to develop an excellent spirit.

Knowledge is gained by applying yourself to learn and wisdom is the ability to use that knowledge for the betterment of mankind and everyone you come into contact with. Knowledge comes quickly but wisdom is often learned only through the school of hard knocks. But if you are going to have that excellent spirit like Daniel had, then you have to pay the price to develop it. How bad do you want it?

Another thing that helped Daniel to have an excellent spirit is that he had an understanding of science. Now in the natural realm there is much to learn about science. Some of you have mixed some cleaning chemicals and found out that you shouldn’t have when they gave you a headache or ran you out of the room. It would probably do us all some good to understand the natural science or physical science a little more. But that kind of understanding implies a lot of time spent in learning, and most people say that once they get out of high school, they don’t have to read anymore.