Teaching Gideon For A Season

I'm co-teaching a ladies' Bible study on the Old Testament hero, Gideon, at our church every week for the winter session. 

We are using Priscilla Shrier's Gideon workbook and videos. 

We have close to forty ladies in our class. 

The book and videos make it very easy to led the group. 

That said, I'm still taking the opportunity to dig into the material for myself as a learner and grow spiritually. 

I do the workbook for my own morning devotions then personally wrestle, think, and pray through the Biblical text on my own. 

This particular portion of the Old Testament is very challenging to me. 

The Bible reading is provoking questions in my own heart that the Gideon workbook is not asking or answering, so even though my personal questions aren't likely to come up in class, I'm reaching out to friends/ scholars and dusting off/ digging into other resources I haven't used in years, maybe since Bible college. 

I'm also simply praying about my questions and waiting on God to answer one way or another. 

I am so thankful to have a class to teach again in this season! 

I felt led to stop leading Classical Conversations a few years ago. 

At CC, I was always needing to teach some group: a Challenge level, an Essentials class, a group of moms at a teacher-training event, etc.  

After putting out my fleece about one million times, leaving CC felt like the right decision or about one million reasons in that season. 

Nevertheless, I still grieved the loss of my students and the loss of the opportunity to use my teaching gifts in community. 

But it can be the right thing to make a change when seasons of life change, and it can even be right to stop using your primary gifts for a season. 

Instead of teaching in public, I focused on my own homeschool more. 

I went to grad school and became the student again. 

I freed myself to visit and serve my aging mother and my aging mother-in-law more, since I had less teaching commitments. 

But now, I am truly thankful to be teaching again. 

This time, it's for church, not co-op. 

So it's a different group, a different subject, but it is another right way to use my gifts to bless my community.