Page 69 - Youth Discipleship Student Textbook

6. Your life must match what you teach.

We have a Sunday School teacher at our church that smokes cigarettes. He smells when
you get near him and his skin is leathery from the effects of nicotine over the years. He
is literally killing himself with this awful habit.

So when he comes to teaching Romans 12:1-2 (Therefore, I urge you, brothers and
sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God--this is
your true and proper worship) or I Corinthians 6 (Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the
Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?) He would have a
difficult time standing before the class and teaching them to present their bodies as a living sacrifice to
God, when he is killing his own body with his habit.

None of us is perfect, that’s for sure. As a teacher, you will come to a passage of Scripture and find that
you have not been obedient to it. You may have to tell your class that the Holy Spirit has used this
lesson to convict you of sin and to make some changes in your life. Just because you don’t have it all
dialed in does not mean you cannot teach the truth to your class. But you had better not stand up like a
Pharisee of Bible times and present yourself as a Holy man of God when you are disobedient on the
inside!

Paul set some goals in his life about his teaching. Here they are:

Acts 26: 29 Paul replied, "Short time or long--I pray to God that not only you but all who are listening to
me today may become what I am, except for these chains."

Romans 15: 18 I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me
in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done—

Do you see what his goals were? He wanted to make sure that He was living the passage before he
asked others to do the same. He asked his class to become just like him!

Do you want your students to become just like you? Most of us would have to say, in some ways, “yes,”
but in a lot of ways, “no.”

“Be like me as I am like Christ!”

So, when you come to a portion of Scripture that you have not mastered in your life, you have one of
two options. Admit where you are, seek the Lord to apply the lesson in your life BEFORE you teach your
class, and be honest with your students. The other option, which I have taken many times, is to skip the
passage and move on. That’s not the best plan, but it works.

7. Understand attention spans

People are limited on how long they can listen to you!

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