Encouragement for Discouraged Teachers of the Bible
If you have ever had the privilege of teaching the Bible consistently to anyone, it is likely you have also known what it is to be discouraged in your Bible teaching ministry. Whether you are a parent working to lay a basic Gospel foundation in the minds of your young children, or a Sunday School teacher in your local church, or a Bible study leader, or a seasoned expository preacher – if you have spent more than a couple of weeks teaching the Bible to any audience at all, I am sure that you know what it is like to be discouraged as a teacher of the Bible. This post is for your encouragement.
I have been teaching the Bible in various contexts now for just over two decades. Over that time, I have taught young children, teenagers, young adults, senior saints, and everything in between. I’ve taught in the Bible in “children’s church” and youth groups, in theology classes and small groups, in counseling sessions and from the pulpit of our local church in our Sunday morning worship services. And this doesn’t include the time I’ve spent teaching the Bible in my own family. As a parent of three kids, I have spent countless hours teaching the Bible in my own home over the past nineteen years as well. Nineteen years and counting, that is.
And truth be told, I have had to fight against some form of discouragement in my ministry nearly the whole time. The seasons when I have felt deeply encouraged as a teacher of the Bible have been remarkably short.
Why is that? What are some of the main reasons teachers of the Bible get discouraged in their ministry?
One cause for discouragement in teaching the Bible is the sense of your own inadequacy as a teacher of the Bible. In Scripture the church has received the personal, redemptive, transforming Word of the living God. The Bible is the revelation of God in Christ. It is the voice of the risen Christ speaking through words inspired by his Spirit about the one true God whom he reveals. The Bible is precious. It is more valuable than gold. Sweeter than honey. Doing more good to the soul than bread does to the body. And it is altogether easy to fail to do it justice when we teach it. Let’s be even more honest than that, however. The fact is, we fail to do the Bible justice every time we teach it. And it’s discouraging.
Another common cause for discouragement in this ministry is the apathy or inattentiveness of your hearers. You try to gather your kids around God’s Word for a few minutes before you put them to bed and all they do is fidget and giggle and fight and cry. You spend a couple hours preparing for that Sunday School lesson and only one student shows up to class, and it’s your own child. You preach a sermon that you’ve prayed would be used of God to renew your church’s love for God, and no one says a thing about the sermon to you after the worship service is over. You spend months counseling a couple struggling in their marriage, only to watch them repeat the same sinful patterns over and over again. You teach that lesson you’ve studied hard to prepare, to students who won’t stop talking and throwing trash around the room and whispering in the ears of their friends. And it’s discouraging.
A third cause for discouragement as a Bible teacher is the apparent lack of fruit resulting from your ministry. You teach about the dangers of sin and people just keep sinning. You teach about the beauty of Christ and people continue to be attracted to lesser things. You proclaim the Gospel faithfully and consistently and people keep living in unbelief, refusing to trust in Jesus. You keep spreading the seed of the Gospel, and nothing ever seems to grow. You keep praying for a harvest, but the crops never seem to ripen. All of the things you long to see happen in the lives of your hearers, you are incapable of producing yourself. The production of true spiritual fruit is out of your hands. And it can be discouraging. I know it has been for me.
But what I want to say to you, if you are able to relate to any of these things and have experienced the kind of discouragement I’m talking about here, is this:
Your labor is not in vain.
How can I say that? Let me give you some solid reasons for encouragement in your Bible teaching ministry.
Your labor is not in vain because God is likely doing things in the lives of your hearers that you cannot see right now.
Had you judged the effectiveness of Jesus’ ministry by taking a snapshot of his disciples on an ordinary day prior to his crucifixion, you would have been forced to conclude that Jesus’ ministry among his closest disciples was not very fruitful. The disciples were a ragtag, hodgepodge group of sinners, who at many points along the way leading up to the cross didn’t seem to really get Jesus at all. Yet would anyone say that the three (or so) years with his disciples leading up to his crucifixion were a waste of Jesus’ time? Not at all. The real fruit of his time with them came later. After he died, even. The disciples that Jesus had to rebuke, and get away from for rest and prayer, and forgive, and patiently bear with for several years ended up being the same disciples to take the Gospel to the nations of the world. Surely it is safe to say that God was doing a work in the lives of the disciples all that time leading up to the Cross that for the most part went undetected until later. And so it will be with you and me.
Your labor is not in vain because God is using his Word to teach and change you.
One of the greatest blessings I’ve experienced in my Bible teaching ministry over the years, is the spiritual growth that has resulted in my own personal life from the work of study and prayer that has preceded my teaching (and preaching) of the Bible. I often tell people, “I don’t know if anyone else is benefitting from this study/series, but I sure am.” And it’s true. I truly believe that one of the main reasons God has me teaching the Bible is my own sanctification. I have benefitted from having to prepare to teach and preach the Bible immensely over the years. That preparation has been used by God over the years to deepen my love for him, to convict me of sin, to grow my knowledge of Christ, and to make me a more committed Christian. The “Word of God is living and active” (Heb 4:12), and that’s not only true for hearers of the Bible, but for teachers of the Bible also.
Your labor is not in vain because God is working to humble you through these discouragements.
Believe it or not, it is actually good for you to see and to sense your inadequacies as a Bible teacher and your impotence to bring about the kind of change in the lives of your students that you long for. You are merely a vessel in God’s wise and redeeming hands, that is called to pour out the life-giving water of God’s Word upon his people, knowing full well that you are not that life-giving water yourself. You are not what your students need. Jesus is. You do not have the power to save and sanctify them. God does. So, it is a good thing to see your powerlessness to cultivate passion for God and bring about spiritual change in the lives of your students. It is good to feel your creaturely limits as a teacher of the Bible, for the more you feel those limits, the humbler you will become. And the humbler you become, the more useful to God you will be.
Your labor is not in vain because Christ sees all that is done for him.
What Jesus says to the Ephesian church in Revelation 2:2 he says to all of his faithful people. “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance…” And indeed, he does. The writer of Hebrews says something similar. “For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love that you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do.” If your work in teaching the Bible is done for his sake and in service to souls for which Christ loves, God sees your work and will not overlook it. If your ministry benefits no one, but is done for him, it pleases him and will be rewarded by him. Take heart in that.
Your labor is not in vain because the souls of your students matter.
Whether your students listen to you or not, whether they appreciate you or not, and whether they praise you or not, their souls matter. Where they will spend eternity matters. Their relationships with God matter. So, pouring into them is worth it if for no other reason than that they are made in the image of God and are loved by God and are called to come to God through Christ. Even if they don’t love you, God loves them. For that reason, your ministry to them is not in vain.
Your labor is not in vain because the causes for your discouragement can lead you to deeper fellowship with Christ.
Jesus knows what it is like to be ignored, and rejected, and unappreciated by those he teaches. He knows what it is like to sow the seed of the Bible on hard ground. He knows what it is like to see people walk away from the truth. He has personally experienced seasons of very little ministerial fruit. If anyone knows about these things, Jesus does. And when you get to experience these things as a teacher of the Bible, you have an opportunity to enjoy fellowship with Jesus in his sufferings (Phil 3:10) and grow in you communion with him. And this is a very good thing. It is good for Christ’s people to experience some of the same challenges and difficulties that Jesus experienced while he lived on the earth. It deepens our appreciation for him. It draws us closer to him. It makes us more dependent upon him. It helps us better understand the kind of help we can receive from him. Anything that drives you closer to Jesus is ultimately worth it.
Your labor is not in vain because Christ is risen from the dead.
When Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:58 that we who follow Christ should be “steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain”, he says that because of the resurrection of Christ. Jesus’ resurrection is the reason that ministry in Jesus’ name is not worthless. Jesus’ resurrection means that the Bible you teach is true, the Gospel you proclaim is trustworthy, Christ is coming back, heaven and hell are real, and the message of the Bible is eternally consequential. These things being true, the only thing that would be a waste of time for a teacher of the Bible, would be to stop teaching the Bible because teaching the Bible is hard and often discouraging. If Jesus is alive, teaching the Bible will always be worth it, and will never be in vain.
If you ever find yourself discouraged as a teacher of the Bible, I pray you will call these truths to mind. Teaching the Bible is a grind. It is hard, soul-testing, and often thankless work. But it is worth it. Teaching the Bible is worth it, because the God of the Bible is worth it. So, let us press on in this good work. And let’s be encouraging one another in it.
