Some like to think of God as a teacher
- I am self-taught. In other words, God is my teacher. Akiane Kramarik
- Without God, life is like a school without a teacher. It is a wire with no current passing through it; it is a body with no soul. Sathya Sai Baba
- There are two gods. The god our teachers teach us about, and the God who teaches us. Paulo Coelho
- Those who study the stars have God for a teacher. Tycho Brahe
- I am self-taught. In other words, God is my teacher. Akiane Kramarik
- Without God, life is like a school without a teacher. It is a wire with no current passing through it; it is a body with no soul. Sathya Sai Baba
- Nature is schoolmistress, the soul the pupil; and whatever one has taught or the other has learned has come from God – the Teacher of the teacher. Tertullian
- The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything. God is the ground, the substance, the teaching, the teacher, the purpose, and the reward for which every soul labors. Julian of Norwich
- We speak, but it is God who teaches. Saint Augustine
- If God does nothing random, there must always be something to learn. John Calvin
- Where God takes such pains to teach, we ought to be at pains to learn. Charles Spurgeon
- Who teaches the soul if not God? John of the Cross
- Body cannot teach wisdom; God only. Ralph Waldo Emerson
- May the strength of God pilot us, may the wisdom of God instruct us, may the hand of God protect us, may the word of God direct us. Be always ours this day and for evermore. Saint Patrick
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God as teacher fashions a learning environment for us
- If God is our teacher, then God’s will fashions a learning environment for us. Learning environments include structure and step by step instructions or exercises to move students along in knowledge and skill. Flora A. Keshgegian
- God has a lot of things to teach us in Heaven, things we didn’t learn in this life. David Berg
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God as teacher guides us towards growth and development
- Another relational metaphor, which is less parental but still portrays God as helping us to develop and mature, is that of God as an educator or a coach. This God teaches us and guides us toward knowledge and maturity. She trains us and encourages us to do well. Flora A. Keshgegian
- God as teacher or coach provides guidance toward growth and development. Flora A. Keshgegian
- I seek the lessons God wants to teach me, and that means that I ask why. Elisabeth Elliot
- Here’s good news: God is even more committed to your change, your growth, and your transformation than you are. Kevin DeYoung
- God not only sees where you are, He sees where you can be. Joyce Meyer
- God wants us to grow and achieve our potential. Carlos A. Godoy
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God teaches love and forgiveness…
- God teaches you to forgive people when they mistreat you. Anthony Macias
- God teaches us to love by putting some unlovely people around us. Rick Warren
- Dear God, Please teach me to forgive myself and others. Remove the walls that keep love out, behind which I am a prisoner. Heal my guilt and remove my anger, that I might be reborn. Marianne Williamson
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…and many other lessons and skills
- Dear God, teach me to be careless. Hanif Kureishi
- Let God and all his creation teach you what your sins are. Johannes Tauler
- The way God teaches us to live by faith is He takes away our feelings. Rick Warren
- The only power a god can teach is the power of doing without happiness. George Bernard Shaw
- God instructs the heart, not by ideas but by pains and contradictions. Jean-Pierre de Caussade
- God teaches me about reality, so when he tells me to do something, I do, because I’m led to. Lauryn Hill
- Teach me, my God and king In all things thee to see And what I do in anything To do it as for thee. George Herbert
- Sometimes God teaches us how to solve our problems. Sometimes God teaches us how to face our problems. Nicky Gumbel
- God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one. Rumi
- You must learn, you must let God teach you, that the only way to get rid of your past is to make a future out of it. God will waste nothing. Phillips Brooks
- Teach us, O God, that nothing is necessary to Thee. Were anything necessary to Thee that thing would be the measure of Thine imperfection. Aiden Wilson Tozer
- God wants to teach men and women how to walk together in union and be great-to teach this people how to be bound to him and to those that he sets over them, and to teach his Saints how to reign in the house of Israel as his servants. Erastus Snow
- God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives. J. I. Packer
- my God, teach me to be generous to serve you as you deserve to be served, to give without counting the cost, to fight without fear of being wounded, to work without seeking rest and to spend myself without expecting any reward but the knowledge that I am doing your holy will. Ignatius of Loyola
- Suppose God wants to teach you to say, “I know how to be abased”–are you ready to be offered up like that? Are you ready to be not so much as a drop in a bucket–to be so hopelessly insignificant that you are never thought of again in connection with the life you served? Are you willing to spend and be spent; not seeking to be ministered unto, but to minister? Oswald Chambers
- How does God teach me love? By putting me around unlovely people. How does God teach me joy in the middle of grief? Not happiness, which is based on happenings. How does God teach me peace? Not when I am out fishing and everything is going my way and it doesn’t get better than this. But in the middle of chaos. How does God teach me patience? By putting me in His waiting room. Rick Warren
- God, teach me to be satisfied with my own helplessness in the spiritual life. Teach me to be content with Your grace that comes to me in darkness and that works things I cannot see. Teach me to be happy that I can depend on You. To depend on You should be enough for an eternity of joy. To depend on You by itself ought to be infinitely greater than any joy which my own intellectual appetite could desire. Thomas Merton
- God, teach me to be patient, teach me to go slow, Teach me how to wait on You when my way I do not know. Teach me sweet forbearance when things do not go right So I remain unruffled when others grow uptight. Teach me how to quiet my racing, rising heart So I might hear the answer You are trying to impart. Teach me to let go, dear God, and pray undisturbed until My heart is filled with inner peace and I learn to know your will. Helen Steiner Rice
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God also teaches through God’s word
- God’s Word does provide life lessons to teach us how to live. Jennifer Rothschild
- God’s Word instructs us, teaches us, guides us, encourages us, convicts us… Craig Groeschel
- He has learned that God uses solitude to teach us how to live with other people. Paulo Coelho
- The word of God teacheth lowliness of mind; it teacheth us to know ourselves. John Jewel
- Theology is taught by God, teaches God, and leads to God. Thomas Aquinas
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Sometimes God teaches through trial and suffering…
- Whenever we undergo strenuous training or the learning of difficult skills, we may experience a certain measure of suffering along the way. Such suffering is for the sake of accomplishing the goal. It is part of the process of development. God neither causes the suffering nor takes it away. To the extent that it will help us accomplish our goal or accompanies the necessary risks we undertake, God does not intervene. Flora A. Keshgegian
- God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons. John Muir
- The medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich, wrote about suffering in this way. Just as a child cannot learn to walk without falling, God as mother, suggests Julian, may teach her children by allowing them to take risks and to fall, but never to the point that they are unduly harmed. In the end, declares Julian, “all will be well.” Flora A. Keshgegian
- God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way. C. S. Lewis
- When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship – when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us. Oswald Chambers
- God teaches the soul by pains and obstacles, not by ideas. Jean-Pierre de Caussade
- It is not true to say that God wants to teach us something in our trials. Through every cloud He brings our way, He wants us to unlearn something. Oswald Chambers
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…and sometimes through discipline
- At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God’s hand until we learn to hear Him…Watch where God puts you into darkness, and when you are there keep your mouth shut. Are you in the dark just now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? Then remain quiet…When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else when you get into the light. Oswald Chambers
- People sometimes punish to exact judgment for past actions. God disciplines in order to teach and always in the interest of those whom he disciplines. Max Anders
- I have to come to realize that God does not want to punish us, but rather, to fulfill our lives. God created us, loves us and wants to help us to realize our potential so that we can be useful to others. Benjamin Carson
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God as teacher is a metaphor that denotes a less controlling deity
- From God we learn the basic principles of life and are given the skills and resources necessary to accomplish the tasks before us and to grow into full maturity. As a coach, God encourages us and even cheers us on. However, God does not step in or intervene in the final outcome. This God is fully in charge-as a teacher or coach might be-of the learning and training environment but not of the whole process or its goals. Flora A. Keshgegian
- With this metaphor for God, we have begun to shift direction. The universe is no longer necessarily hierarchical, a vertical grading of power and of value. We are moving horizontally. The playing field is more level, though not completely so. God is still the parent or the teacher, the grown-up who knows more and whose job it is to take care of us. In turn, our role is to be taken care of, trained, and taught. Flora A. Keshgegian
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God as teacher starts to break through the male, patriarchal imagery of God
- God as a nurturing parent may be either male or female, so this metaphor begins to break through the necessarily male and patriarchal imagery that has attended the metaphors for God considered in the previous chapters. There is even room for moving away from familial and paternal renderings of God by imagining God as teacher or coach or even as spirit. What is common to all these conceptions is a relational focus that is more centered on the world and its needs. Flora A. Keshgegian
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God as teacher suggests we are dynamic works in progress
- All is in process. God affirms that we are not finished products; neither is the universe and ultimately neither is God. The process is open-ended. Everything and everyone are becoming, in dynamic motion. This is a particularly important strength of this metaphor. Change can then be viewed as a good thing, not simply as loss or decay. Change is to be embraced, rather than feared. Flora A. Keshgegian
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God as teacher suggests our relationship with God continues to be based on need
- As long as God is a parent or a teacher or a coach, our relationship with God continues to be based on need. Children are, by definition, dependent on the adults in charge. They may have freedom of will but only in a limited way. Students and those in training are also dependent; they need teachers and coaches. The adults, whether they are parents, guardians, teachers, or coaches, maintain more power. They make the rules and expect children to obey them. Parents, however attentive to children’s desires and needs, ultimately decide what is best for their children and may discipline and even punish them. Teachers may work hard to educate their students, as may coaches to train their players, but, in the end, teachers give grades and coaches cut players from their teams. They set the goals toward which their students and players are to strive. Judgment remains with God. Flora A. Keshgegian
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On a lighter note
