I Now Know WHY I am Such a Good Teacher!

If you don’t know me very well you might think that is both a pompous and egotistical statement! However, it really isn’t! The truth of the matter is, I am a good teacher! Let me give you a couple of statements to verify this premise.

When I was student teaching back in 1971, a team of professional educators, who were presenting an experimental program to the Malone Central School District, came in once a week to run their “tests,” using the Fifth Grade class I was assigned to. On this one occasion they came a little early, and sat in as I was conducting an English lesson. As the time for them to “do their thing” came before my class was supposed to end, they apologized feverishly for having to interrupt what I was doing, saying that they had never seen a class conducted that generated such excitement, enthusiasm, and participation! Thanking them, I, like Mary, “pondered in my heart” what had been said. For me, this “pondering” has taken place for some five decades!

I learned just recently that Dr. J. Patrick Otto, Chair of the Education Department at ORAL ROBERTS UNIVERSITY in Tulsa, Oklahoma has, on several occasions, stated, “Floyd Allen is the best Junior High/High School teacher I have ever seen.”

So, I am going to ask that, based on this information, you will, in fact, accept that I am a good teacher! Now, the thing that has always intrigued me is that I have been a good teacher right from the get go! I mean, I was only a Student Teacher when I received that heady compliment from the visiting team of educators! Down through the years I looked at my own life in awe regarding my abilities as a teacher.

Well, just like God told me why I had been created as a fool when I became THE BIBLE GUY, He recently revealed to me why I am was such a good teacher from the very first day I stepped into a classroom. The epiphany came from a sermon by one of the more popular TV pastors – – Dr. Charles Stanley. I was listening to Dr. Stanley one Sunday morning as I was preparing to go to ONE CHURCH SCOTTSDALE and teach my SUNDAY UNIVERSITY Class, and heard him say this: “From the time you become a Christian the Holy Spirit starts working on you and developing your Spiritual Gift.”

There it was! I had discovered through the course of time that my Spiritual Gift is teaching (Eph. 4:11&12 – ¹¹ And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; ¹² For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ). As I had become a Christian when I was ten years old that means that the Holy Spirit had been developing my gift (teaching!) for nearly twelve years before I ever stepped into a classroom! No wonder I came out of the chute at a full gallop!

The GOOD NEWS for you today, however, is not that I now know why I was such a good teacher at such an early age. Rather, the GOOD NEWS is that as soon as you became a Christian, The Holy Spirit started developing your Spiritual
Gift, too!