Learning from elders

All praise and glory to God for all the elders who share their wisdom and experience for building up the members of the church!

And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)

One must be open to all wisdom from those who are your elders. They are those who have walked the walk of faith in Christ for many a years. They have faced challenges and have encountered various temptations and yet stand stall in the grace of Christ. These are champions of the Christian faith and not wimps that I’m talking about.

You must be humble enough to ignore their lack of certain skills that you might possess. Like you are well versed with computer skills, can move quickly, play the guitar, ride a sailboat and have a great collection of Christian teachings. Yet, they might have things you still need to learn from, like ministering to children, casting out demons, surviving blizzards, refuting heresies etc. Christianity is never about perfect people, there are no perfect people who were perfect all the time but there is the Lord whom we trust in and he is eternally perfect. With that said, we are to help build up each other in Christ instead of being proud of our achievements.

There are certain ministries such as counseling, healing and deliverance where you need to learn from those who are experienced in the field. So do give a listening ear to those who are veterans in those ministries. You might not have to like everything that they say as you have the right to discern instead of taking things at face value. Just take a note of what they said and verify if that is consistent with the Bible or not. You can then accordingly apply their wisdom to your ways of ministry, no matter how small or big it is.

Usually elders have a thing which can be the deciding factor passing on their knowledge to you. One word; respect. If you don’t respect them they won’t be in the mood to teach you. Simple enough. Instead you might get a good old-fashioned rebuking. That’s how it goes. Don’t make fun of them. The aging process might have gone down on them but one must have patience in such matters. The more you respect them by being polite the better it is for you.

Like I mentioned earlier, you are to learn from those elders who are not wimps of the faith. Be eager to learn from those walk the talk of the Christian faith. This would mean taking due diligence in deciding who is worth learning from. Pray to the Holy Spirit that you get the right people and that if any wrong person comes then you are able to say no to their incorrect logic.

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