Four years ago, I walked into my new Spanish room –with nothing.
I knew Spanish and I knew teaching, but I had never put the two together until that day in August. Searching the room, I found nothing but a few games and two sets of outdated textbooks. So I started writing curriculum and building my classroom from scratch.
Today I sat back and admired six newly completed and substantial stacks of notecards. On each card is written one teaching activity. A lot of work went into accumulating these ideas, but even more prayer was involved.
Begging prayers.
“God help me,” prayers.
So I stared at those stacks of cards, and then I bowed my head to say a long prayer of thanks.
James gives us this fact:
Every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights . . . (James 1:17a).
Every good teaching idea has come straight from above. I have asked God hundreds of times if he would please help me become an outstanding teacher, and I know every creative game and teaching tool in those stack of note cards is his response to me.
Good and perfect gifts from the Father can stack up one at a time, like note cards and take a person from having nothing to having a lot of somethings.
I am coming to understand that God makes a point of regularly putting his people in positions where they have inadequate resources to live. He does this. On purpose. Here’s your rock. Here’s your hard place.
When we have empty hands and can see that what we have is a whole lot of nothin’, it should cause us to come asking for help in a desperate, clamoring way. Then the Lord opens his hands—his very full, resourceful, generous hands. That’s when our story gets good.
King David sings to the Lord:
“You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing” (Ps. 145:16).
So let’s talk about that area of your life where you are completely lacking—maybe financially or in a relationship or in the knowledge of how to do something. Could I convince you to trade in your frustration and anxiety for prayer and hopeful expectation?
Open up those empty hands of yours and ask for help. Add to that your own elbow grease where you know you need to do your part. Then watch how God will open his hands and give you stacks and stacks of exactly what you need for your situation.
