Cambodia, Days 7-8

The last two days, Jack and I completed the teaching sessions, covering the topics

the example of Jesus as the great teacher
the various methods of teaching
how to prepare a lesson to teach

A couple thoughts as we have finished.

I had a professor in seminary who had several graduate degrees, and who was an expert in multiple Semitic languages. His wife also had a Ph.D. And they taught elementary-aged Sunday School classes. Why did someone with so much education and knowledge teach the youngest of children? Because, he said, if you can’t teach Biblical truth in terms that a child can understand, then you don’t know it adequately well. Teaching children forced him to work on his communication skills like little else.

Sothiy — an excellent translator with a winsome and ready smile!

Similarly, teaching these truths have reminded me of principles that have been tucked away in the recesses of my mind, but not in the forefront. It has been helpful to be reminded of them, and to be forced to communicate them so that Sothiy, our translator, could understand, and so that the students who have few academic tools and Biblical training can also understand. It has stretched me and been good for me.

I’ve also been encouraged by the maturity and depth of trust in God by those who have few spiritual “advantages.” They don’t have the advantage of resources — books, the internet, linguistic tools — or the advantage of the heritage of a long-standing Christian church, or the advantage of Bible school educations. So they have had to lean on the one tool they do have — the Scriptures. They have been forced to learn their Bibles, and they are well-worn and well-used. And that has been to their advantage.

Pastors Soy and Sothiy — it was the testimony of Sothiy that led Soy to salvation in the early 90s.

These days with Jack and Susie have also been so encouraging. It has been a delight to see their delight in serving these people, and in their purposefulness and wisdom in caring for the needs of these people. It would be easy to be distracted by all the physical needs (health and medical, food, clothing, and financial). The needs are almost all legitimate and significant. Yet, Jack and Susie wisely note that their purpose is not to meet all those needs, but to train a generation of godly leaders, and that is what they must not be distracted from doing; so everything they do must positively answer the question, “will this help us develop leaders who will do the work of the ministry in the next generation?” That question may keep them from doing some good things; but it will also enable them to continually address the best tasks.

This afternoon also produced the most humbling comment/request from any of the students this week. As one of the students thanked me for the week, he asked (through Sothiy’s translation) how the church in America is doing. “We have our problems, but overall, we’re doing okay,” I responded. Evidently that answer didn’t address his question, so he tried again — “I am praying for the church in America that God would continue to prosper you so that you will be able to give to us for our needs.”

Before I left, I’d been doing some reading and thinking about that topic (pretty logical, given the financial ups and downs of the past few weeks): “Our problem,” I assured him, “is not that we don’t have enough. Our problem is that we have too much. We are too quickly tempted to desire things which we do not need. We still have plenty to give to care for both your needs and the needs of many others. If you pray for us, don’t pray for more prosperity, but pray for greater wisdom to give more generously.”

To hear him talk is so very humbling. He and his wife live on perhaps $125-150 per month. That’s more than many in this city. And more than many in the villages. The poverty is beyond comprehension — words and pictures are wholly inadequate to communicate the depth of the needs. Yet they pray for us to have more. The comment from John Piper in Desiring God comes to mind (I’m paraphrasing to the best of my recollection): God does not bless us with more financially so we can upgrade from Chevy to Cadillac; He blesses us with financial gifts so we can pour those gifts into ministry and people so lives are transformed.

Oh that I would be able to maintain this perspective in the weeks and months to come after I return.