Sorry I haven't written lately. I've recently started school and with working, being a youth pastor, and going to school something was bound to drop out. But this is still something that I feel was God's idea for me to do, so I may not write as often as I was, but I do still want to write.
As I mentioned, I recently began school. I am in my first semester of a general transfer associate's degree at the local community college. But my plan is to eventually be certified as a teacher. God brought me back to the same word from Him that I mentioned in my first post
Undeveloped Dream. The first thing I ever heard from God was 'You are to be a preacher, teacher, and a writer.' Now it's interesting how we try and explain things in our own term. When I first heard that I was twelve years old and I was certain that the 'preacher' and 'teacher' were separate callings. People would say, "maybe that means a preacher and teacher of the Word", but I was sure that the 'preacher' was referring to the Word, and the 'teacher' was referring to a school setting.
Well over the years I have done my best to follow God in each step that I have taken. I went to Bible school right after high school, then I worked for a year, then God led me to Germany for four years with YWAM. The further along in life I went, the more I looked at that Word that I received so many years ago, and began to redefine it. Even in my post, that I linked to above, I told you that I had developed my preaching and teaching skills and the only one left was writing. Well since then my wife and I started talking about school. We began talking about how nice it would be for us to go back and get our degrees, and as I prayed about it, guess what I remembered; this Word. I remembered God speaking to me fourteen years ago, and I remembered what the immediate interpretation was.
Did God give me a heart for full-time ministry? Yes of course! But He also gave me a heart to teach, to help develop young people in their education. Help them to find their passion and inspiration. This is something that I can and will fulfill as a youth pastor, but now God has put me in a place to receive the training and the skills to do it in a school setting.
There are still a lot of questions as to how this dream will be fulfilled. Will I be teaching full-time or part-time? Will I teach in a Christian school, where I can also use my Bible knowledge to inspire young Christians to make a difference? Or will I teach in a public school in which I can be a positive Christian role model while having to be careful what I say? Will I teach in the United States, Ethiopia, Germany? I don't have it all figured out yet, but God has provided my wife and I what we need to be in school right now and if there is one thing I know about God, it is that He will make the right path clear, at the right time. Until then, He leaves us in suspense!