Day 50 – Preparation, vision, and action…
In Proverbs 18:16 it says, “A man’s gift makes room for him…”. When I really started my journey with God, I had no idea if I had any talents or gifts. As I have said before, I would always find myself leading or being in charge of things at a certain point which, I later learned was the nature of my name “Duke” meaning “Noble or Leader”. (Day 7 – A name to live up to…)
In the early days, I certainly had no leadership roles or an ego about being a leader. My upbringing and especially my father’s ridicule of me, left me with doubts as to my abilities and worthiness. This produced a major internal conflict. I was a natural-born leader in many things, but I had been “trained” to feel unworthy.
Finally, in college after connecting with God and my father not being a part of my life anymore, I broke out of my self-imposed prison and started to grow. This is when I realized I needed…preparation, vision, and action.
In 1970 after my personal “spiritual revival” I wrote about (Day 37 – Finding God), I knew that I wanted to be a major contributor in the organization I was a part of which meant at some point, I would need to teach the Bible.
That may not sound like a big deal to some, but for me it was monumental. I think I mentioned before that I had Dyslexia, so reading anything publicly, much less the Bible, was terrifying. But I knew I had to do it, so every night in the summer of 1970 after working at my Stepfather’s factory, I would sit in my room, read booklets or chapters from books that had teachings from the Bible, I would make my notes and then sit at my desk and reteach that information to the wall in front of me.
I could see the people sitting there in my mind, it got to the point where I could feel their reaction and if I messed up the words reading, there was no one there to confront me, giggle or be disappointed. I did this night after night the entire summer and by the time I got back to school, I wasn’t bad at teaching. I had prepared. I had a vision. Now, it was time to take action.
Since that summer, I’ve taught to one person and to thousands of people and it thrills me every time. I get so involved in the preparation at times that I can spend hours lost in the wonder and amazement in what I am seeing and understanding.
Over the years I have done many things to challenge myself to get better. I realized that analogies really helped people understand many truths from the Bible. I think that’s one of the reasons Jesus taught so many parables.
When I could paint a vivid picture with an analogy, it would make the message lock-in. Once I presented a teaching called “Rose-colored Glasses” about how looking through “rose-colored glasses” (very popular in the hippie days) made the world look different and if we view our lives the way God saw us, it would be like the rose-colored glasses. The point is, I had people come up to me years, and I mean years, after that teaching and tell me they still remembered it…now that’s impactful.
To push myself at some point, during the presentation, I would get a picture in my mind of what that scripture represented, and I would “go off script” and explain the concept with an analogy. It was a little scary at first, but I began to trust the process and then I could use that analogy again later. I never “pre-thought” the examples I would use, they just popped up and when they did, I shared them.
At one point in time, I was teaching about 4 nights a week in different places all year long. I had picked a theme for that year which was about “love”. In order to push myself, I committed to presenting a new teaching about love every night. I can’t remember exactly how long I did this, but I am sure it was at least six months…now that was challenging, but it helped me greatly.
The thing I found out was, there are a lot of treasures in the scriptures and the more you dig down, the more they reveal themselves. If you don’t dig down, you can walk right over them and never realize the glorious hidden treasures right beneath your feet. The admonition, “Seek and you shall find” is priceless and the more you seek, the more you will find.
To me, God in not only confined to the Scriptures…God is way too big for that! I’ll write soon about God and Science, but for now let’s just say God created everything, so when I study the Quantum realm or nature or the animal kingdom, I can find God and all his wonder, so the resources to see God in a bigger light and in every part of this creation are never limited.
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