Learn to study

Reading was always difficult for me when I was younger (we are talking 2nd grade-17th :). I would complete the worksheets given and try (key word) to read the assigned reading. I would find myself looking at the words and not being able to string them together. I could pay attention in class and get good marks on the assignments, but come test time, if the teacher was testing on the reading material (like so many do in college) I was OUT OF LUCK! Somehow between my eyes and my brain I would end up reading the same passages over, and over, and over. Same was for our Sunday services. I could retain what I had heard in sermons but when it came to reading scripture, it may as well been in a foreign language, and if you wanted an interpretation on something that I just read... well lets just say I'd freeze and the teacher would call on someone else. Painful Painful Painful!

It wasn't until one of my good friends gave me religious book, a book I was determined to read because I heard so many good things about it, that I figured out "how to read."

I often feel like I'm SO SO guilty of "Genuinely seeking to worship and obey Jesus Christ as Lord and Master... singing with gusto.... but the tenor of their lives remains unchanged."

- Foster

Discipline and practice... its almost like reading comprehension is a "skill" that I have to "knock the rust off" when I haven't practiced. I'm often reminded of a quote of Darrell Johnson that I will poorly paraphrase "you never graduate from Jesus school." It is something that I DESIRE more of!

Like Luke 12:13-21 I often feel like I "do" all these things but am still not "rich toward God." I need to study more! Feed my soul!

Father, may I thirst for study time with you, may I always be a student in your classroom. Jesus teach me how to learn from you, and may I obey! May I resist temptation to become a student of the world, and study and be challenged by YOU!