W-1693
It’s September and many of us are involved in back-to-school activities. I know it would be very difficult for me to truly go back to school, but I think there are times we need to take ourselves “back to school,” so to speak. We need to teach ourselves some things we need to know—things we’ve probably already learned but maybe it’s time to re-learn.
It would be nice if we just had to learn everything once—once and done! But life doesn’t work that way, does it? I’m often amazed at how quickly I forget important principles and truths—things I’ve taught even—and yet I need some re-training.
Often as I start to prepare these devotionals, I think, “I don’t have anything new to write.” But God reminds me that repetition is the way we learn. I’m amazed at the patience of our Lord, as I see how slow I am to truly learn and obey all that I know. So, here are four of the many things I have to re-learn, and maybe you do, too.
- Re-Learn to enjoy the ordinary things of life.
Someone once said, “The thing about life is, it’s just so daily.” Do you find it that way sometimes: routine, mundane, repetitive, and seemingly meaningless? Learning to live with that “daily-ness” of life is a key to contentment and joy.
All of our lives are made up in large part of these daily duties, mundane tasks, and repetitive responsibilities. Nobody escapes them. Regardless of how green that grass looks in someone else’s garden, believe me when I assure you that their lives are very “daily,” too.
Someone once wrote: “The uncommon life is the product of the day lived in the uncommon way.” This means that a person whose life is exciting and full is one who finds meaning and satisfaction in the seemingly insignificant, daily things in his or her life.
Let me give you a very simple example. I have some china that I really love. It’s gives me great pleasure to set my table with that china, to hold it, and even to wash it. I enjoy my china. I remember once, when my daughter was very young, she found it rather strange to hear me getting excited about this china that I had owned for years.
I said to her, “If you can find pleasure and joy in the little things in your life, your life will be full of pleasure and joy. Otherwise, it’s going to be very drab most of the time, with a few high points only now and then.”
Regardless of how humble and unpretentious your daily life may seem, you can elevate it if you can learn to enjoy and appreciate the “daily-ness” of your life—if you can appreciate what you have. As the Apostle Paul says in Philippians 4, you must learn the secret of being content in any and every situation. Contentment brings meaning to your daily life, and frees you from the dreariness of looking over your fence at someone else’s grass.
- Re-Learn to humble ourselves.
In James 4 and again in 1 Peter 5, we read that we are to humble ourselves. For me this is an ongoing challenge. Pride can creep in so easily. In Numbers 12:3 Moses is identified as a “very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.” What was it that made Moses so humble? After all, he had great power and wealth, and the highest position in his country. He had spiritual privileges, talked with God face-to-face, and he performed incredible miracles. How could he be so humble?
Here are some things that contributed to Moses’ humility. First, he spent forty years in the desert because of a failure on his part. Humbling ourselves means we have to learn that in our own strength, we are failures. For ten years of my life, I thought I could make things happen. I had to learn that in myself I can do nothing.
Second, you remember that Moses had a speech impediment. He stuttered and couldn’t give a speech, so Aaron became his spokesperson. That had to be humbling for a great leader. It was a constant reminder to him that his talents and skills were not sufficient. The Apostle Paul had that same experience—a thorn in the flesh, he called it—which God did not remove because he knew Paul would need that thorn to remind him of where his strength came from, to keep him humble.
I encourage you to learn to be thankful for the impediments you have, the things missing in your life which contribute to helping you learn humility. It’s extremely important that we be truly humble, and, like Moses, we need reminders of our needs so that we can humble ourselves.
In Philippians 2 we read that Jesus humbled himself to become a servant. Servanthood is one revealing sign of true humility. Recently someone was complaining about the fact that when he came to church, no one gave him any attention and he couldn’t form any real strong relationships because people weren’t friendly. I thought to myself: A servant doesn’t react that way. A servant doesn’t come into a group to see what that group can do for him or her, but rather comes ready to do something for others. We learn to humble ourselves as we learn to serve others.
- Re-learn to persevere.
Lots of people make good starts; not too many complete the course. We read in Hebrews 12:1 that we should run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Note that each of us has a unique race marked out. Your race will be different from mine, but the important thing for both of us is to hang in there and cross the finish line.
The night is darkest just before the dawn, and all too often we quit the race when it gets dark and bleak, when the finish line is just around the corner. In the first chapter of James we read that “perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:4). Without perseverance, we won’t reach spiritual maturity. That’s why we need to learn perseverance.
How often do you feel like quitting? I can remember saying to the Lord, “What use is it, Lord? I don’t see light at the end of the tunnel and I’d just like to walk away from the whole thing.” You might as well talk to God about what’s on your mind—he knows what you’re thinking anyway. God reminded me that I’m called to be faithful—to persevere—and I had to learn it all over again.
Hebrews 12:13 says “Don’t wander away from the path but forge steadily onward. On the right path the limping foot recovers strength and does not collapse” (J.B. Phillips New Testament). Therefore, we need to make certain we’re on the right path, and then stay on it regardless. Even if you’re just limping along, don’t stop. As we hang in there, our limps are healed and we’re able to cross the finish line.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2). Proving faithful is perseverance; we can learn to be faithful and to persevere. I’ll take a faithful person any day over one with bigger talents or gifts who isn’t willing to hang in and get the job done—to stick with it through thick and thin times.
- Re-Learn how to let go.
There are times when we simply have to let go and turn situations over to God. Letting go does not mean that we don’t care, nor that we wouldn’t do whatever we could do to help the situation. It simply means that we recognize where our abilities end and where we relinquish situations to God’s control.
For instance, most parents face this “let go” decision with their children. We raise our children the best we can, teaching them biblical principles, and doing everything we know to help them. But at some point, we let them go. Perhaps we let them go make their own mistakes, but we know there’s no other way for them to learn. We let them go make their own decisions, even if we could make better ones for them. We parents have to learn to let our children go.
I answered a letter from a listener who is struggling with letting go of his dream to be married. He really wants a partner, is obsessed with that dream, and just can’t let go of it. Often we have to let our dreams go—those cherished things we’ve been hoping and dreaming of. They may be very good things—like getting married. But God often wants to know if we love him more than we love our dream. And so, we must let go. Sometimes those dreams are returned to us fulfilled later on; sometimes they are not. But until we let go, they will possess us and rob us of joy and contentment.
We need to learn to let our burdens go. Jesus has told us to turn our heavy burdens over to him and accept his light one in exchange. I think many of us feel guilty when there’s a problem in our life if we aren’t feeling the burden all the time. But that’s not the way God wants us to respond. He wants us to drop our burdens at his feet and just keep letting them go. I can tell you that many times I verbally tell God, “Lord, I’m dropping this right here. I’m letting it go, because it’s too heavy for me.”
What is it that God wants you to let go of today? Let me encourage you to do it. Un-clinch those fists right now, and just keep learning to let go.
What I’m learning is that I must be prepared to re-learn many times the things I’ve already learned. I must go back and repeat, because repetition is absolutely essential for me. I think of the verse to the old hymn which says, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it; prone to leave the Lord I love.” Truly, “prone to wander” is a good description of me. How about you?
Let me encourage you, if you find yourself in this same dilemma: Learn to re-learn. Go back and listen again to what God has already taught you. Do a lot of review. If there were books which spoke to your heart, read them again. If you’ve heard messages that made an impact on you, listen again and again. Repeat and repeat what you already know.
This is a good reason to keep a journal of the things God is saying to you and what you’ve been learning from the Bible—so that you can go back and re-read those things which you’ll otherwise forget. It’s a good way to re-learn.
If you read my devotionals regularly, you have undoubtedly read things I’ve written before, in one form or another. That’s as much for my sake as for yours, because the things I teach are the things I’m learning, and I need lots of repetition. Plan to be a re-learner so that you’re not as prone to wander from the good and basic lessons God has already taught you.
I find that my memory just fails me sometimes. I remember what I should forget and forget what I should remember. So, instead of letting Satan get a foothold in your life by causing you to forget what God has already taught you, make it a habit to often go into re-learn mode, to reinforce the truths which have previously made a difference in your life.