Faith & Reflection
I have a binder in my office from a seminar I attended. There is a large inspirational sticker on it that says, “Learning...a Lifelong Experience”.
Learning could be defined as the acquiring of knowledge, information or skills through experience, study, or by being taught.
Learning can take place in formal or informal situations, structured or unstructured settings and inside or outside of the classroom. Moreover, learning should not be confused with wisdom, because wisdom is one step beyond acquisition; it is the correct application of what has been learned.
Learning, from the Christian perspective, is essentially based upon the following basics. To begin with, there is the teacher; that would be Jesus. And He said to, “Take my yoke on you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and my load is not hard to carry” (Matthew 11:28 - 30). The admonition is not just to learn from Him, but also of Him and consequently to infuse His truth and then ultimately emulate His character.
The textbook is the Bible, comprised of both the Old and New Testaments. The apostle Paul admonished his protégé Timothy to learn “the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15).
It is important to spend time learning. Well-known preacher from yesteryear, Donald Barnhouse said, “If I had only three years to serve the Lord, I would spend two of them studying and preparing.”
Accumulation of voluminous amounts of information may produce expertise in the trivial, but it does not necessarily result in practical, applicable learning. 2 Timothy 3:7 says that some people were, “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
“Live and learn” is a potentially presumptuous adage, suggesting that merely by living we will automatically learn. This is not a given. The evidence that learning has truly taken place will be exhibited by positive lifestyles and beneficial interaction with others. In other words, we will live out what we have learned. Paul states that along with learning, “people should learn to spend their time doing something useful and worthwhile” (Titus 3:14). Basically, real learning, when it comes to the Word of God, will always be demonstrated by willing obedience to and personal application of what has been learned.
When we are in humble obedience, we apply what we have learned from the teacher, the Lord Jesus and the textbook, the Word of God; then we are indeed living what we have learned.
“Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance” (Proverbs 1:5).