Devotions for Teachers: You Are Worthy. How Do You Show It?
God has really wanted me to pay attention to Ephesians 4. My grandmother passed away this past weekend, and we are currently staying with family in Michigan in order to attend her funeral. So, we attended the church that much of my family attends here. The sermon was on Ephesians 4.
Then, my husband (who is back at home), started messaging me that the sermon at our home church was powerful, and he really felt like I needed to hear it. I listened to it last night on my computer…and it was also on Ephesian 4. It of course seems like a coincidence. But also…when God wants you to hear something, He will make sure it is loud and clear.
Here’s what the first couple of verses say:
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.
There’s a lot to unpack in just the first two lines. Specifically, ‘prisoner for the Lord’ stood out to me first. Paul is quite literally a prisoner for the Lord. Ephesians is a letter he is writing to the people of Ephesus, while in a prison in Rome.
Can we pause for a moment and just reflect on this? The man has been IMPRISONED, and he’s still trying to advance God’s kingdom. I’m going to be totally honest and say that I probably wouldn’t have done that. I’m not a Paul. If people are so angry about something I’m saying that they are threatening to lock me up, I’m probably going to shut up. My people-pleasing self doesn’t even like to know that someone might be slightly annoyed with me.
But this is why Paul lived in the era he did, and his letters live on to teach us all how to be bolder. He was the ultimate ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ guy, before that was even a slogan.
Moving on to the next part: “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received”.
Worthiness is something our culture is obsessed with. We all feel like you have to work hard enough to earn what you have. Hand-outs are evil. Hard work is king. We do things in hopes that we will be recognized, admired, and held in high regard for our actions.
But Paul turns all of that on its head. He says you are already worthy. You have received a calling, simply by being born on this Earth. The real trick is living your life in a way that is worthy of that calling.
You are already worthy. You don’t have to earn it. What a beautiful thing.
Now, Paul isn’t talking directly to you and I in this letter. But based on the way it unfolds from here, I can tell that the people of Ephesus were basically the people of America. The things he starts asking them to do in order to live this ‘worthy life’ are so very basic.
Here’s a brief list:
-Be humble
-Be gentle
-Be patient
-Love each other
That’s it. The most fundamental traits of an overall kind person is what makes your life worthy of the grace God has given you. But it is SO hard. We’ve been struggling with this for literal centuries.
As we go into our work weeks, I want to challenge each of us to live a life worthy of the calling we have received. We have been called to be humble, gentle, patient, and loving. This isn’t just a nice way to live, it’s our calling. God sent Jesus to model it for us. And when people still didn’t listen, He called Paul to basically write an instructional manual.
And yet it’s still hard. There will be times when you feel like you’re working 120% day in and day out, and your teammate is taking advantage of your hard work and copying your plans so she doesn’t have to work as hard. You will be working so hard with a student, only to have their parent send you an angry email. You will pour your life into these students, only to have it go unrecognized and taken for granted. I know. I know it all.
Which is why I think a worthy life of God’s goodness is considered a calling. Funny enough, in the midst of all of the funeral planning, this passage brought me back to my grandmother. A woman who, on her death bed, oozed humility and patience and love for each person who came to visit her. As pancreatic cancer was tearing her organs apart, and she was in so much pain, she was praying out loud for ME as I held her hand in her final days.
The classroom is hard work. But it’s not prison. It’s not cancer. God gives you the strength to be patient, humble, and loving even in the darkest of situations. We can certainly find His light and spread it in our schools. I’ll be praying this week that we each are able to do exactly that.
