Go…And Be Perfect?

I’m not sure what I’ve gotten myself into.  I love leading Bible study.  I mean I LOVE IT!  I enjoy meeting with this community of women (Table 8) I’m surrounded by who love the Lord and have a desire to know Him better every day.  We’ve used the Beth Moore Daniel study and studied the Names of God by Kay Arthur.  We learned how to Open Your Bible with She Reads Truth, and read Romans with the Time-Warp Wife.

But I’m in whole new territory.  To quote the ever popular FB post going around, ‘Never Have I Ever’… studied a book of the bible on its own.  Like, with no help or answer key.  No prompts or suggestions.  Why, Erin?  Why did you agree to this?!  (Just kidding about that part.  Obviously it’s because God directed me to go there.)

We started studying the book of Colossians last night, and I’ve prepped for this for weeks.  I have a designated “Colossians notebook” for notes and thoughts.  I purchased a commentary on Colossians.  I have three different bible translations to see the difference in how the verses are worded.  I took copious notes on Paul (the author of the book) and Colossae (the town) so that everyone would know the background.  I even bought maps to show ‘then and now’ to get a feel for the area we’re learning about.

And when we started last night, we started with a bang.  I talked F.O.R.E.V.E.R.  If you ask Table 8 how I did, they will lovingly tell you I was wonderful.  But friends, I was NOT.  Don’t get me wrong…I wasn’t horrible.  But a lot of the information I had written in my notes, and thankfully I didn’t share all of it, was random.  Much of it as I looked to share had nothing to do with what we were talking about at the moment.  And my notes were less organized than I had remembered!

I didn’t even remember to tell them that Colossians is considered a ‘prison epistle’ because Paul wrote it while he was in prison.  That may not seem to matter to some, but for the story as it relates to Paul’s life, it’s a big deal!  Thank you, Dianne, for bringing it up with the group!

I beat myself up a little about it, and then the Holy Spirit reminded me of a wonderful verse:

Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.  Mark 16:15

God gave me a calling, and I’m following it.  I’m living out this command.  God was in the middle of those two hours, and He knew exactly what was going to be said and who would say it.  He didn’t say “Go, but your delivery better be perfect when you talk about Me.”  He simply said, “Go.”  My weakness is His strength, and He’s right there assuring me that He will cover that weakness.

This gave me a completely different outlook on last night’s study.  I still have all three of my bible translations, my maps, and my commentary.  I’m still taking copious amounts of notes!  (I am, however, simply streamlining said notes to be more effective and helpful.)  But I’m reminding myself that Jesus told me to go and that’s exactly what I’m doing.  He’ll do the rest.

~Erin