“He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.” (Psalm 25:9)
I remember my son teaching me how to play chess when he was 3 or 4. He didn’t really know anything about chess, of course, but he had learned something about people: Teachers get all the attention. Teachers are smart. The one who knows how to do something has more status – more props, more power – than the one who is learning how to do it.
So he taught me how to play chess, which mostly involved knocking down all of my pieces in a series of violent air raids. We had fun, but neither of us learned anything about chess that day. He wasn’t humble enough, yet, to start learning how to play that game. Sometimes I’m not humble enough to learn new things from God, either, especially hard things I think I should already know.
You don’t learn anything by having all of the answers. You only learn when you’re the student – and that takes humility. That means taking off my “expert” hat and putting on my “trainee” cap.
God is ready to teach us his way. We’ve got to demote ourselves to the lifelong status of newbie before we can learn it, but he exalts the humble when the time is right. Are you ready to be his student?
Think: How hard is it for you to stop giving answers and start asking questions? Why does it take humility to learn anything new? Do you think God teaches us truth through other people, even people we don’t want to learn from?
Pray: Ask God to help you to be humble so you can be guided in what is right and learn his way.
Do: If you get a chance to see some little kids in action this week, notice how much more important it is for them to demonstrate what they know than to learn what they don’t know. Then notice when you do it, too.