10/22/2018
Do you sit at the feet of Jesus? Do you look towards God for the wisdom and knowledge you require to make it through each day? If you quickly answered yes, consider these three additional questions... Are you humble in learning, do you wait on the Lord to reveal himself to you in His good time, and do you suffer in this effort?
“Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.”
Psalms 25:4-5 ESV
Reading the Bible is a wonderful thing for us to do, and many of us try to read it “religiously” each year in its entirety. We do this for various reasons, but when we look at what these motivations are founded on we find three main reasons... to teach ourselves, to allow a God to teach and reveal Himself, and as a penitence. In all cases I ask again; are you reading it humbly, and are you waiting all the day long for God to teach you... is a year the right amount of time to set for this activity, or is there even a right time for us to set at all?
“He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.”
Psalms 25:9 ESV
We are all familiar with schools, after all we attended them for years as we grew up. We also know that there are good schools, and not so good schools. Why is this so... why is it that one school turns out students who are achieving at a high level while others do not? It boils down to the same three motivations.
1. Are we there to teach ourselves; is our desire to learn based on using our own ability and desire to wrestle every fact and skill from the opportunity, or is that intellectual ability lacking in us, and we find ourselves unmotivated, and disinterested?
2. Are we there to listen to the teacher and be taught; is our expectation that the teachers take their knowledge and force it into us like cake icing through the small slit in the end of a bag; such that when we need more they simply apply more pressure to the bag of wisdom?
3. And lastly, are we there to simply pay our dues... to punish ourselves, and to glean any knowledge we receive as a byproduct? Are we going through the motions with just enough effort to get by as we suffer the misery of being there? Or, is suffering somehow the lesson we learn?
So lest we judge suffering too quickly; is suffering a total loss? No, suffering can be fruitful in its own lessons...
“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,”
Romans 5:3-4 ESV
So, we have good schools and bad schools, but essentially it comes down to two factors... the first rests with the teachers and their ability to teach and lead students into more than a subject, but into what it takes to learn that subject, and secondly it rests on the students, in their motivation for being there, and their ability to understand the first lesson taught by the teachers... how to learn.
You noticed that I used the word “rests” in describing these two action because that word implies a process that involves waiting... time... and peacefulness. Teachers must wait on the understanding of the students, and students must wait on the knowledge of the teachers.
“Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.”
Isaiah 30:18 ESV
Our schools are not designed to do this today... the time is limited, money is limited, and society needs these young works now. So we squeeze the bag of wisdom harder, and hope that the icing on the cake looks pretty in the end.
Teachers are products of these schools themselves, so they have not been taught to teach in this “resting” or “waiting”... the ones who come upon this method do so by way of an epiphany, and are those teachers that end up instructing at the peak of an ability that was not taught to them by the system itself. They find some way to educate a diverse population of students who learn at different speeds, and to open them up individually to learning by utilizing their own personal humility and caring as the tool.
In the end, brilliant students succeed in today’s system simply because of their natural ability overcome the system itself, and successful teachers teach well because by some luck of the draw they end up with a “good class” this year, their personality happens to lead students to listen by its very nature, or they have learned to squeeze the bag in just the right way.
These dynamics apply to how we learn in faith as well. Ask yourself why certain apostles seem to stand out in the Bible? Is it because Jesus taught them differently? In the end were some able to preach the gospel well while others were not? No, they each learned at different speeds, and Jesus patiently taught them at the rate, and manner they were able to learn. None passed while others failed; in the end they all succeeded in understanding what Jesus had for them to receive, yet truthfully some needed to wait on the Holy Spirit before achieving this fully. Do we give up too soon today in our biblical studies? Do we stop waiting before the Holy Spirit arrives?
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
John 14:26 ESV
Humble yourself... you are not taking what God has... he is giving it to you, teaching you. Wait on Him... because God desires that you learn from Him, and He will feed you what you are prepared to eat at that precise moment when it will benefit you most. Then finally suffer... because some lessons are best learned by pain and the endurance of the human condition. But always remember that none of His children will fail if they will only remain fixed on Him in all that they do... as they humbly wait on Him.
Prayer:
Father, thank you for your instruction each day of my life. Thank you Lord for teaching me patience, for showing me that if I wait humbly on you that you will lead me to knowledge and wisdom in your Word. Thank you Holy Father for enlightening me to the fact that there is nothing I can take from you other than what you are prepared to give. This is the ultimate lesson of humility Father... that I cannot understand you on my own, or by my intelligence. Thank you Merciful Father for your Holy Spirit that allows me to remember, and teaches me those lessons you have for me. But most of all Father I thank you for the greatest lesson of them all... to lean on you for understanding, and that whether I read your Word once in my lifetime, or hundreds of times, you will not let me fail in my understanding, or in receiving your wisdom as it applies to my life. Great are you my God, and greater is your wisdom than that of all men. Holy, Holy, Holy are you the giver and teacher of life. Praised be your name always!
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.”
Proverbs 3:5-7 ESV
Rich Forbes