The Hidden Gift of Teaching: How Leading Keeps Me in the Word
Here’s something I’ve noticed about myself. When ministry slows down—like in the summers, when my group isn’t meeting—my time in the Word can start to slip. Without anyone to teach, the accountability disappears, and it’s easier to drift. I have to be more intentional about showing up to Scripture on my own.
And that drifting matters, because time in the Word is how my dependence on God grows and my love for Him deepens. When it slips, I miss out on that deepening fellowship with the Lord. I notice that connections in Scripture don’t come as easily, and my daily life isn’t as fruitful.
Which is exactly why I’ve come to be so grateful that God placed me in teaching positions. Knowing I’ll stand before my group holds me accountable in a way my own willpower often doesn’t. It gets me into the Word week after week, and it pushes me past the surface—to wrestle with the text, sit with the hard parts, and become as much of an expert as I can for that week. Not for my own glory, but because I want to do well by the people I’m leading.
And here’s the gift in it: the very study I did to teach them ended up deepening my own walk with the Lord. The push to teach better has grown my own faith and my gratitude for who God is.
In teaching others to follow Him, He keeps drawing us closer to Himself.
So if you teach, I want to challenge you to see it for the gift it is. Every week you sit down to prepare is another invitation into the presence of God. Don’t squander it by winging your lessons. When we “wing it,” we don’t just shortchange our group; we rob ourselves of the very study that would have grown our own walk. Show up to the Word. Wrestle with it. Prepare like it matters—because it does, for them and for you. (For more on that kind of preparation, see Teaching With Confidence: How to Lead Without Reading From a Script.)
