Living with Conviction.

On Saturday night I checked my voicemail around 9pm. It was my teacher for Sunday morning, explaining that her and her son were sick, her husband was out of town, and she couldn't make it. By "chance" I had printed out the curriculum earlier in the week and took it home with me. 'Dang it', I thought, 'Now I'm going to have to go home and study the lesson and not just sit and relax...the kids are going to be sick of me because I just taught last week...I thought it was going to be a relaxed Sunday morning and now it's not...(insert more complaining...more complaining).'

I got home and began looking over the lesson. Since we teach the same character quality all month, and I had just taught, I knew it was going to be on conviction: standing up for what is right even when others don't. This week the "bottom line" or main point was when we stand up for what is right, we show others who God is.

The passage was Acts 4 where Peter and John are brought before the Sanhedrin for preaching in Jesus' name. Verses 13 and 14 speak so clearly to me: "When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say."

I was able to share, with 12 little pairs of eyes staring back at me, that Ms. Abby wants to live the kind of life that when people look at her, they see she is someone who has met with Jesus. That when they see her showing love to others and caring for others, that it is because she has been with Jesus. That, in the end, they will have nothing to say about her testimony because it is clear that she lives with conviction.

How easy it is for me to get distracted! How easy it is to complain and shift the focus off of Christ and onto myself. 'Well, it's not convenient for me...Well, it would make my life a lot easier if I didn't have to...Well, that just ruined my plans.' God knew exactly what I needed to hear yesterday morning- exactly what I needed to re-teach myself as I passed it along to 12 little pairs of eyes.

It's not about me, it's not about me.