Pre-Qualified

Welcome to the Midweek Encounter!

(The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are a reflection on Sunday’s message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/hear-a-message)

I’m a high school English teacher, and about once a year I endure The Dreaded Confrontation. Now, one does not maneuver through The Dreaded Confrontation with grace, nor does one emerge from the experience unscathed. Every time it happens, it leaves behind a wound that is slow to heal. An attack of The Dreaded Confrontation might look like this:

Me: “Here I am saying intelligent things about a text that we are reading. Intelligent things coming from my mouth. I am so smart. Listen to what I say and write it down. I am the best. Write that down.”

Student: “Um, excuse me, but I think you’ll find that a simple Google search will disprove everything that you have just said.”

Me: “Oh, but Google is so unreliable. So many idiots out there posting falsities. I am right, the Internet is wrong.”

Student: “Well, I’m actually on the author’s site, and she claims that you’re the falsity.”

Uh-huh. Pause.

We’ve all endured that moment where someone—perhaps a classmate or teacher or colleague or parent or spouse—makes it clear that we are ridiculously unqualified for the task at hand. During the summer before I began my first year of teaching I would tell people that I obtained a real teaching job and, inevitably, acquaintances would reply with “really?” or “you’ll be a full time classroom teacher?” I didn’t much care for their tone.

Insecurities hold us back from too much in life. We’re afraid that if we change careers we’ll be somehow worse off—we won’t like the new career or it won’t earn enough money or it won’t have the right hours—so we stay where we are. We’d really like to move out of state after college, but we’re afraid of living alone in a new place. We’d like to tell that friend about Jesus, but we’re afraid of seeming self-righteous or judgmental. We’d like to tell a marginally Christian friend about Jesus, but we’re really afraid of seeming self-righteous or judgmental.

Luckily for us, Jesus holds all of the qualifications for us, and he invites us to share in his success. Because he already defeated our deficiencies, we can act boldly. Because he already conquered our past and our future, we can face today without fear.

I talk to my high school students a lot about their futures. I teach mostly seniors, and they’re giddy and nervous over the prospect of college, careers, finding a spouse, and also smaller-but-no-less-important tasks, like finding a date for the prom. But they always feel the need to qualify their responses to me with phrases like, “Well, I don’t know if it will work out, but I would really like to be pre-med at U of M.” Or, “Hmm, in a perfect world I would…” Or, “My family runs a business so I don’t know about…”

Christ has crushed our insecurities and has made a way for us. What’s left for us to do is to believe in him and to follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it’s a nagging, recurring thought, and other times what we ought to do is blatantly obvious. What’s left for us to do is to read our Bibles, listen intently, and respond in faith.

[Kristin vanEyk attends Encounter Church (myencounterchurch.org) and teaches English in Grand Rapids, MI. She is 29-years-old and likes to run, drink bold coffee, talk about Jesus, and spend time with her husband, Dirk, and her two kids, Lily and Colin. She can be reached at kristinvaneyk@gmail.com]