There's something unsettling about realizing your role is shifting in your own story. For years, I stood confidently in my role as a teacher within God's kingdom, believing my purpose was to impart wisdom, share knowledge, and guide others through carefully crafted lessons. Yet recently, a quiet but persistent voice has been whispering a different truth: I am not merely a teacher—I am an instigator for Christ.
The word "instigator" might make you uncomfortable. In our culture, it often carries negative connotations of troublemaking or stirring up conflict. But what if instigation could be sacred? What if the gentle art of provoking thought and inviting others to discover personal insights was actually a divine calling?
This revelation arrived in a moment of dramatic clarity, yet had been forming over time. It emerged quickly during my own introspective thought during a teaching at church, like dawn breaking over a landscape. I noticed that my most meaningful conversations with fellow believers weren't happening when I was teaching—they were occurring when I was asking questions that made people pause, reflect, and dig deeper into their own hearts.
An instigator, I've come to understand, is someone who provokes thought in the most loving sense. Not to create chaos or doubt, but to kindle the kind of introspective fire that burns away complacency and illuminates truth. Personal insight, I've learned, holds immeasurable value in questioning our actions as believers. It's one thing to know the right answers; it's entirely another to wrestle with how those answers transform our daily choices.
Here's what I've discovered in my own journey: our actions as believers are easily overridden by our quest for knowledge. We become so focused on accumulating biblical facts, theological concepts, and spiritual insights that we forget the ultimate goal isn't information—it's transformation. Knowledge is right and needed, but it cannot be a substitute for behavior. The gap between what we know and how we live is where many of us get stuck.
True behavior emerges when our actions and attitudes align with our knowledge. This alignment is the sweet spot of authentic faith—when our hearts, minds, and hands work in harmony to reflect Christ's love. But here's the crucial insight that shifted my understanding of my role: this alignment cannot be solely accomplished through teaching.
Don't misunderstand me—teaching is valuable and essential for our growth. Scripture, wisdom, and biblical instruction form the foundation upon which we build our faith. But even the most solid foundation needs something more to become a living, breathing structure. Growth needs instigation, a catalyst to become visible.
And that's where the instigator's role is needed. While teachers provide the building blocks of knowledge, instigators provide the spark that ignites transformation. They ask the uncomfortable questions: "What would change in your daily routine if you truly believed God loves your neighbor as much as He loves you?" "How does your spending reflect your stated values?" "What fears are keeping you from stepping into the calling you sense on your life?"
This visibility of growth is seen in our actions—not hidden in our minds. Faith lived only in our thoughts remains incomplete, like a song composed but never sung. Our minds need to be prompted or instigated by introspective questions that push us beyond comfortable theology into the sometimes messy, always beautiful realm of applied faith.
I'm learning to embrace this calling as an instigator for Christ with both humility and courage. Humility, because I recognize that the Holy Spirit is the ultimate instigator of hearts, and I am simply His willing instrument. Courage, because asking probing questions requires vulnerability from both the asker and the receiver.
In a world that often rewards quick answers and surface-level spirituality, perhaps we need more instigators—people willing to lovingly disturb our comfortable assumptions and invite us into deeper waters of faith. Perhaps my role isn't to have all the answers, but to ask the questions that lead others to discover God's answers for themselves.
After all, Christ Himself was the greatest instigator of all, constantly challenging religious norms and asking questions that turned hearts inside out: "Who do you say I am?" "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?" "Will you also go away?"
Today, I embrace my calling as an instigator for Christ—not as a troublemaker, but as a loving catalyst for transformation, someone who helps make the invisible growth in God's kingdom beautifully, powerfully visible.