What do you want to be when you grow up?
I know exactly what I want to be. I just saw it in action last weekend at a Deeper Still conference in my hometown. No, I don’t want to be the precise person I saw living out my dream, but please, oh please God, can I just be like her?
Kay Arthur. Think Women’s Bible Study and she has to come to your mind, the founder of Precepts International – the champion of Inductive Bible Study, colored pencils and soul-searching questions. She is tirelessly working around the world to teach people how to discover and apply God’s Word to their own lives.
A collective gasp resounded around the room when she said she was 76 years old. Looking sassy in her blonde hair, designer jeans, and fabulously fun jackets, she was asked how to age gracefully. Are you kidding, I wanted to scream! Sure she’s still “painting the barn” (her reference to taking care of herself) beautifully, but the IMPACT – the life-altering, destiny changing, international impact she’s making absolutely defies the imagination!
The photo montage of her ministry was a study in a wide variety of countries, cultures, and ages touched, while the decades of fashion pictured spoke of the 31 years she’s helped others personally apply the Bible. I loved that, but I was even more captivated by the fact that she’s still going strong! Still working every night, she couldn’t even answer a question without the Bible falling out of her mouth. With uncharacteristic candor and a tenacious addiction to studying God’s Word, she has altered and paved the way not only for modern day Bible teachers like myself, but also for students of the Bible everywhere.
Most people tire of the “job” that often defines them, but Kay is still hungry to go ever deeper with God. Still studying, eager to currently handle and accurately divide each and every book of the Bible! And so, to the Kay Arthurs, Elisabeth Elliotts, & Henry Blackabys – to all those who’ve gone before us, studying late into the night to wet our appetite for God’s Word…thank you again and again.
As I listened to Kay teach, I couldn’t help but mentally calculate: how many years before I’m 76? If I choose to go deeper still with God, what kind of impact could I make???
Really Relating
What teachers have most impacted you? How have they done so?
How would you most like to impact others, and how can you best do so?
Vickey Banks 
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