I am a Nursery Nurse and apparently I have to do 24 hours of training a year. I started my job and have done nearly 12 already. Last week my company held a day's training for all staff to attend. We listened to a very interesting Keynote speaker and then had 3 seminars to attend. We got to choose and were able to do 2 of our choice. I really enjoyed the Music in the outside and Forest School ones. It was great to be taught new ideas of how to teach little ones.
Now I could attend the obligatory training, listen to the advice and then never adapt my practice accordingly. This lesson is something that I am also learning in my Christian life. I may not have been to a 'school' but I have learnt a lot of lessons about God, myself and other believers over the past few years. I know that all these lessons could be neatly filed away in the space that is my brain and not used to adapt how I live. I find it easy to look to others and see how they are doing things that don't meet the specifications I have set out for life but that isn't how God has called us Christians to live. We are to point out in love where our fellow Christians are living outside of His plan but we are not to judge just because it is different from us - the bible has got to be our guide for that. So if I see things in my church or other Christians I am not keen on the first thing I should do is see what in me needs changing. I was not put on this life to change everyone else - that is the Holy Spirit's job. I have to learn from my bible, godly Christians and the lessons of life to adapt how I behave, speak and think about others. I have to be the change that I want to see in others. And I also have to be willing to take gentle advice from other Christians who notice in my heart things that aren't Christ-like. The Christian life is exciting: and during it we will learn a lot of lessons. By God's Holy Spirit we can use them to make us more of the kind of person that reflects God to a dying world OR we can become bitter in a self-righteous Christian way. I know the way I desire to use the lessons.
