Priorities

God calls us all to different areas of His service, and that can lead to some conflict when people who have different calls come together.

My call is not special in the sense that no one else has it, but it is special because it is of God. But what can I do when His call leads me to places that aren't really interesting or a part of my specialties?

I am a mission aviation student here at Prairie; God has called me to serve as a pilot for many years now, and I'm finally able to respond to this call. That's all fine and dandy, but to get the training necessary, I have to do some stuff that I really don't want to do. To start flying, I have to do some Bible college classes first. This makes sense since if I want to be a missionary, I need the exposure to God's word. However, I sometimes wonder how my current classes are any use.

One of my classes is about the Pentateuch (The first five books of the Bible). It could be useful, except that it spends a lot of time on in-depth study which I don't find useful for mission work when the people I'm ministering to don't even know who God is. I won't be explaining his stuff to them, I'll be explaining the basics of the gospel!

Now, I do understand the need for this class personally, a better understanding of scripture is very valuable, but some of it seems like it just makes the Scriptures more confusing. Discussing the symbolism of the Old Testament sacrifices and how they pertain to Christ's sacrifice, and the sins of other Biblical characters is very useful, but spending an hour and forty-five minutes on trying to date the exact year the exodus happened seems a waste of time since we don't know exactly who the Pharaoh was, nor do we know exactly which years the Pharaohs who might have been the pharaoh of the narrative reigned. Honestly, it seems like a waste of time.

Now I know I got carried away there, but it bugs me. Here's what I really want to talk about:

I struggle to memorise the things that my teachers say, all the dates and names go right over my head. But does that really matter? God gave me certain gifts, a love of flight, service, helping. Not the gift of good memory for trivial things. Of course, He did give some people this gift, and I respect these people immensely, but does the fact that I don't have this gift matter?

No.

I know I can get the minimum GPA required to get to fly in January, God will teach me what I need to know, and the rest is in His hands. All I have to do is hold out until I get the practical tools that I came here for. In the mean time, I get to gain spiritual and intellectual tools that I might need in the mission field.

Though I still don't know why anyone cares about the exact year of the exodus...