teaching and stepping...

I used to hear my friends who were student teaching complain about being tired and having no life outside of schoolwork. I'd think to myself, "yeah right, how could it be that bad?" To all those people who didn't even know I was thinking that, I am sorry. I get it now. You were justified in your complaints and you should get paid millions to do what you do.

School's going good. I gave my first test today. Hopefully the kids did alright, I'm about to grade the second part right now, so I'll see soon!

Teaching is cool, the kids are cool, the other teachers are fun but the OTHER stuff... YUCK! I think there is this underlying concept in the field of education that teachers' time is not valuable or something. They make you do this "fluff" stuff, like go to faculty meetings and have inservice days. I had to cancel working with the kids in family housing this week to go and sit in on a class where all we did was just sit around and talk about our "student teaching experience." Wasted time. I hate it. I guess the focus is, there's people there, so invest, but still, when I have to miss out on other investments to sit and listen to blah blah, i get irritated. Thank goodness I know how to knit. Now there's a way to take unproductive time and make something of it! Anyway, I'll step off the soap box I suppose.

It's really strange how things work out. You can be seeking the Lord with your whole heart, completely full of confidence that you are stepping right along with Him and end up NOT where you thought you were heading or where you want to be. Here's a lil excerpt from my current favorite book, Life as a Vapor, grab your bucket of popcorn, it's a long one:

"THE PATH OF WISDOM MAY NOT BE THE MOST FRUITFUL PATH FOR GOD'S GLORY

We are held accountable for being wise not influential.

The powers of our mind are simply not adequate for deciding which path of life will be most effective for God's kingdom purposes to save sinners, and transform lives, and exalt His name. The reason is that all the signs that we can see may point to a very fruitful ministry in one direction that fits our gifts and seems to meet the greatest need and seems to be a God-given opportunity at this partivular moment, and gets confirmation from wise counselors, and seems to be part of a pattern of divinely orchestrated circumstances, and yet, in spite of all that wisdom, another path than the one that seemed so fruitful, may lead to a single seemingly insignificant event that you could have never foreseen or planned, but which God uses to bring about an effect for the glory of His name beyond anything the wise path would have produced.

For example, what if all the evidences pointed the southern preacher, Mordecai Fowler Ham, away from an evangelistic crusade in Charlotte, North Carolina, in September 1934? What if Scripture and prayer and counsel and circumstances all pointed to a larger, more fruitful ministry in Atlanta? If Mordicai Ham, who has been virtually forgotten by the world, had gone to Atlanta instead of Charlotte, the sixteen-year old William Franklin Graham would not have been converted under his preaching. But as it happened, in the providence of God, Billy Graham became a Christian Because Mordecai Ham came to Charlotte. That conversion was perhaps the most fruitful moment of Ham's entire ministry. No human can plan such things. And no human wisdom can see them coming.

... a seemingly useless path may prove more effective than the best plan we could have made...
...Wisdom means doing the best you can with all the resources at your disposal to discern what the path of fruitfulness is for the glory of God.

This means that we are going to be beld responsible by God to make our choices wisely, because that shows that in this moment our heart is obedient to God's Word and desirous of His glory. THAT is what we are held accountable for. But we are NOT responsible that the choices we make, with the best motives and knowledge available, and with good counsel, will prove to be the most influential or effective choices in producing converts or changing lives. That is God's work, not ours...

We will not be held accountable for whether our planning resulted in wonderful, serendipitous events like the conversion of a Billy Graham.

...(this) should give us an intense passion to honor God in THIS moment of decision-making. It should make us more zeolous in this moment for God's glory to be shown in HOW we make decisions, not how they turn out. And then we should have a deep peace that the final effectiveness of our lives does not hang on our wisdom, but on God's sovereignty.

God will make it His rule to use our best efforts at wise, God-honoring choices to produce the most influential life. But not always. He can break that rule and make even a foolish decision fruitful. He has His ways to keep us humble and fearful of pride. He has his ways to keep us hopeful and protected from discouragement in view of our fallibility. We should be emboldened to move and act in faith, even if we think that our present choice may not have all the data possible, or all the counsel possible, or all the thought and prayer possible.

Our sovereign God is able to take the 80 percent wise choice and make it more influential for Christ than the 90 percent wise choice. This should not make us cavalier about the pursuit of wisdom, since we will be held accountable to pursue it, but it should make us bold that our wisdom is not what determines our influence or our fruitfulness in the end. God is. And He can take the worst detour and, for His wise and sometimes inscrutable purposes, make that route the most fruitful, even though we, in our folly, may be disciplined for taking it. "

-john piper, life as a vapor

I would like to buy eleventy billion copies of this book and distribute them to everyone on the face of the planet.