I am thankful for my Bible teachers

We should be full of thankfulness for those who taught us the gospel of Jesus, like Epaphras had done for the Colossians:

You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf (Col 1:7 NIV)

Thankfulness is a big theme in Colossians, and I am thankful! In my case, I understood so much of God’s grace and its truth from my Bible School teachers.

Of course, I’m incredibly thankful to God for my parents, who took me to church. I was specially blessed with Godly parents. But I also realize that many Christians did not have parents who were especially well-equipped to talk and teach a lot about God.

Also, I learned the gospel from my childhood Bible School teachers. I don’t recall any lesson in particular, but I can still picture the classrooms and I know they cared for me. And I know it was from that young age I realized I needed Jesus on my side as my Friend, Savior and Lord.

And I also remember the songs. “God said to Noah, there’s going to be a floody, floody…”, “The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock,” “Jesus Loves Me,” and so many more. We were always learning the meaning of stories from the Bible, and I cannot remember having much to ‘un-learn’ later on from any misleading early approaches, either.

What do you do to give proper honor and thanks for people, who come to church every single solitary Sunday, with a lesson prepared, to sit in a room full of students and lead them through the intricacies of the Bible, teach them, raise them up, pray for them, and ultimately lead many of them to saving faith in Christ?

These are the teachers and helpers you want. They are the ones who sign up every year, and who volunteer to substitute, and to teach VBS. They are the ones you can’t ever pay back for their time, treasure, and talent they have given away.

So I thank God for my Bible teachers, many whose names I’ve now forgotten, and I am sure some of them have now died without ever perhaps knowing how much they did for me. As Paul said of Epaphras, they were “faithful ministers of Christ”!

I salute the teachers, youth leaders, and other great leaders who faithfully modelled 1 Thessalonians 2:8 to me:

We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. (NIV)

The only way these beautiful servants will ever get the reward they deserve is when they get to heaven and our Lord, Jesus Christ, tells each of them, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.’ Matthew 25:34