In a few weeks I’m teaching a passage of scripture to a group of women, and honestly, prepping for my time with them has been a joy. Not an easy joy. More like a hard-earned, thoughtful, considerate, butt-in-my-office-chair-for-hours kind of joy. It’s the kind of learning and re-learning, assessing my language choices, returning to sources and then double-checking my references type of thing. More simply: it’s teaching.

God bless the teachers. They need it. WE need it.

Teaching is an enormous privilege, and as I prepare for an hour’s worth of teaching on Hebrews 10, I’m reminded of the many ways God has brought me to this point. I think of my training to become an educator. How many hours of classwork was spent on pedagogy, childhood development, professionalism, and dreams of my future classrooms? Not a moment of that was wasted—though I kind of wish someone could’ve informed me that I’d head back to working in the church and not so much towards middle schools. I think of the many many learning experiences in biblical knowledge… from scripture memory as a kid, to training at Horn Creek camps in high school, from some profoundly important teaching at Covenant College to my courses at Covenant Seminary… it comes flooding back at the moment I need it.

I found myself on my hands and knees this morning, digging through a seminary notebook for just the right answer to fill a question I had in my mind. I didn’t find it, therefore there’s a gaping hole until I can scratch that particular itch. But even as this knowledge comes flowing back through my mind, I’m aware that at some point in this process I will have to put my pen down. Or really, I’ll have to step back from the keyboard. I’ll have to submit the discussion questions. I’ll have to quit editing, quit questioning whether I’ve prepared enough, quit imagining all the things that I won’t get to say and I’ll have to commit. I’ll have to trust I’ve done the work and I’ll have to relinquish all I have and all I do to the work of the Holy Spirit.

“Faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see.”

That’s my own translation of Hebrews 11:1 apparently. I haven’t seen the verse printed that way anywhere, but as a kid who grew up in the church and has spent her life there, this is the version that stuck. So there it is.

My hope is in Christ. I teach knowing that I am not enough to enlighten someone else’s mind, but the One who is will be at work. Throughout this process—and during each other time where I’m teaching God’s word—I trust all I do to the Holy Spirit. He alone has the power to enlighten, and he will be working perfectly where I’m working imperfectly. Having faith means taking a leap of sorts. It’s moving from a place of surety in one’s self to a place of surety in God and the work he is doing all the time. I’m trusting that “he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it” (Phil 1:6). To God be the glory.