Do you think that you’ve arrived? Do you tend to think that you’ve learned what you need to learn and now know what you need to know? Or do you want to understand more deeply and more fully? Do you have a humble, open, and seeking heart?
There was once a time in the early years of our faith when we couldn’t get enough. We had a voracious hunger for truth. We lived with the humbling realization that there was so much we didn’t know. We loved to study the Word of God. We loved listening to peers and mentors who were further along. We were students.
But something happened along the way. Perhaps we got distracted by the world and began to live more like tourists than students. Perhaps we got discouraged and felt our study wasn’t helping. Or perhaps our hunger was blunted by a feeling of arrival.
Whatever your story, I say to you—never stop being a student. There are two reasons. First—the depth of God’s wisdom. It has no boundary. It has no bottom. It has no ceiling. If for ten million years you sat for 24 hours a day at His feet to listen, you would scratch only the surface of His wisdom.
Here’s the second reason—the danger of the world. Falsehood echoes more loudly and repeatedly than the sounds of wisdom. Every day a thousand voices speak into your life, and the majority of those voices have not gotten the flowers of their insight from the wisdom garden of the Lord.
You see, we live in the middle of a raging wisdom war. It’s so easy to be taken captive. It’s so easy to have divine wisdom corrupted by human wisdom. It’s so easy to breathe in the polluted air of a culture that no longer actually thinks that God is, let alone that He is wise.
I’ll say it again, never stop being a student. Morning after morning, bow your head and humbly pray—“Lord, please teach me your way.”
To become more of a student, what changes would you need to make in your approach to daily life?In what ways have you stopped living as a student?
What, in your knowledge of God’s truth, do you need to investigate further and understand more fully?
How can you encourage others to live like students?
Paul David Tripp is a pastor, author, and international conference speaker. He is the president of Paul Tripp Ministries and works to connect the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life.
This resource is from Paul Tripp Ministries. For additional resources, visit www.paultripp.com. Used with permission.
