Learning for Life

In week two of his series on staying straight in a crooked world, Tom Shrader emphasizes the critical importance of lifelong learning for Christians. Drawing from Philippians 3 and 2 Timothy 2:15, he demonstrates how knowledge of God's Word combined with cultural awareness enables believers to live wisely and relevantly. Shrader argues that learning is a mark of wisdom, essential for fulfilling the great commandment to love God with all our mind, and crucial for spiritual growth through disciplined study of Scripture.

“The more I know Him, the more I love Him, and the more I love Him, the more I want to know Him.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World (2012)

Recorded: September 27, 2012

Duration: 39 min

Themes: learning, wisdom, knowledge, growth, study, truth, discipline, maturity, new believer, student, teacher, parent, seeking direction, confused about truth, wanting to grow, struggling with worldliness

Scripture: 2 Timothy 3:16, Proverbs 9:9, Matthew 22:37-39, Philippians 2:3-5, Philippians 3:4-10, 2 Timothy 2:15, Acts 17, Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 5:20, Job 42, Isaiah 6

Theological Themes: biblical authority, scripture study, sanctification, spiritual growth, biblical literacy, discipleship, biblical wisdom, christian education

Full Transcript

We are in week two of what will be 11 weeks in a series titled "How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World." The premise of the series is this: those of us who know Christ through God's grace, a true Christian, one who comes to that point—we either remember a specific day, place, and time or we don't really know the day, place, and time but we just know that we are—that we have understood our sin. We understood that what the Bible teaches about our sin is that our fundamental problem in life is not educational or economic or political. Our fundamental problem is spiritual, and the spiritual problem is that we're sinners separated from God.

Then Romans 5—we talked about it last week—while we were yet sinners, while we were enemies, God sent Jesus to die so that we would have eternal life. To be in communion with God requires a relationship with Christ. We live in a pluralistic society that says there's lots of ways to God, and while we want to honor and protect people's right to say that, we don't want to conclude from that that it's necessarily a true statement. Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me."

We live in a world that is very confusing, that's lost its moral compass, where values—things that we held dearly maybe 50 years ago—are now in question. When things are shifting like this, how do I find stability and then navigate my way through life?

The Bible as Our Final Authority

So we started last week. We took 45 minutes to make the same point over and over again, which was: the Bible's the final authority in our life. Here's what the Bible says about itself in 2 Timothy 3:16: "All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness."

I like bumper sticker phrases. I like something I can remember. So the Bible tells me what's right—that's the teaching, that's the doctrine. What's not right—that's the reproof. I was in a meeting the other day and we were dealing with a guy, and we were confronting sin. So inevitably what happens is: "You're not perfect," and "I got that figured out," and "Who made you king?" and "Who are you to say this to me?" All we can do is listen. What you're doing is sin based on what God says. So it's the reproof, it's the correction.

The Bible tells me what's right, what's not right, correction—how to get right. It's the only time that Greek word appears in the New Testament, meaning to take something and restore it to its right position. And then training in righteousness. So the Bible tells me what's right, what's not right, how to get right, how to stay right. That's what we built the whole case around last week—that God is an objective, not a subjective truth. In a sense, it doesn't matter what you think or believe; He is.

The Necessity of Lifelong Learning

This week, the point is really as simple, and that is: for us to stay straight in a crooked world, we have to develop a lifelong passion for learning, for education, for knowledge and wisdom.

I have these things I love. I don't know how they always figure this stuff out, but the weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person living in London during the 17th century would have encountered in their entire life. Information is doubling every five—now maybe every four—years. If you were to quantify this—I don't know how you do this—if you took everything we know from the beginning of time until 1845, you would have a stack one inch high of information. From 1845 to 1945: two inches. From 1945 to now: the size of the Washington Monument. That's how fast information is exploding at us.

The first computer that was created in 1944 was the size of an 18-wheeler. It weighed the equivalent of 17 Camaros. It ran on 144 watts of power and had 5,000 calculations per second. Now you have this phone. This phone has more computing power than NASA had when they sent Neil Armstrong to the moon.

If I am in Paris and I buy a shirt, they scan that card, that information travels 46,000 miles in three seconds. We just had Yale's birthday party, and there's always somebody who brings the birthday cards you open. Do you know that when you throw that away at the end of the time at Peter Piper Pizza, you've thrown away more computing power than existed in the entire world prior to 1950?

When George Herbert Walker Bush left office, there were 55 websites on the internet. Today there are 156 million.

Adapting to Rapid Change

My point is simply: knowledge. When we talk about learning, obviously we're going to talk about the Word of God, but it's living in this world that's changing so fast that this change produces all sorts of tension, all sorts of problems.

This is 101: problems require solutions. Solutions to be effective require implementation. Implementation requires change. So for me, that means retooling the mind.

Last night I'm in bed—went to bed at 7:15, this is great, Sandy had a meeting—and I'm in bed and this phone dings, and it's my six-year-old grandson sending me a text. I say this to those of you who are trying to figure out how to stay connected to kids and grandkids: texting is a wonderful way to do it. I get the problems with technology, I get the dangers, but the advantages are huge. It's the learning, it's the accepting, it's the adapting.

It may be where I am in life, it may be the time I'm in life. As I think about some career things, as I think about being a bit older, being a bit sick, I can feel things kind of crowding around me. I find myself—I don't know how to say this, so I'm sure I'll screw this up—I find myself, if I'm not careful, beginning to resent some of the things around me. I'm watching an interview the other night with Coach K, and they were asking about the difference between coaching at Duke and coaching the USA team. He made this comment—he didn't explain it because the question was different.

Have to change to coach these guys and he said no you don't have to change you have to adapt. Now I'm not sure I know exactly what he was saying but I think what he was saying is there are these principles that are kind of the same that don't change but the application of them does. One of the distinctions he made is when I got kids at Duke I got kids with a lot of potential but they haven't done anything yet when I got LeBron I got a guy who's really good who's already done it but the principles and he said what I've discovered is every one of these guys want to be coached in our life.

Now there are those things that do not change we don't want to change them but the culture around us is changing and if you're not careful you'll be irrelevant quickly. Now that doesn't require that you abandon everything you believe.

Understanding Culture Through Biblical Example

I go back to Acts chapter 17 over and over again I love it. Paul comes into Athens it's that classic moment where he's got a little spare time so he's roaming around the city and he's observing. He's doing what you should be doing to understand the culture you're living in and he sees all these statues to the unknown gods and he's not really sure pretty soon you develop almost an intuition he's not really sure how he's going to use it he just knows that he's going to use it.

Then he gets this opportunity to speak to these elite guys and he said you know what I know you're religious because I saw all those statues and I saw one to an unknown God and what you worshipped in ignorance I now want to explain to you. That's understanding the culture and Luke tells us he writes the book of Acts that Paul quoted their poets he understood the day he was in tune with the culture around Him.

So I make my pitch for learning for obviously understanding the Word of God but for understanding the culture around you that you don't have to be irrelevant that God's called you He saved you He's redeemed you and He's made us what Paul tells us in 2nd Corinthians 5 1st Corinthians 5 He's made us an ambassador. That an ambassador needs to understand the language the culture the customs and need to be engaged in it to understand how people think.

Five Points About Learning

So I have five points today about learning. Number one learning is a mark of wisdom. Proverbs chapter 9 verse 9 give instruction to a wise man He'll be still wiser teach a righteous man and He will increase in His learning. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

That for me to begin to understand the world around me, I need to understand the One who created it. That's my fear, especially in a group like this, because a bunch of you are Scottsdale Bible Church people, you're in good churches, you're being taught. Here's the danger in that, is that knowledge becomes the goal rather than a byproduct to having to live a transformed life.

Knowledge That Transforms

So I want to see my heart transformed and my mind informed so I can live a radical life. So all of a sudden, I begin to see God use me in ways that I would have never ever ever dreamt that I know Him. My daughter sent me something the other day, she's working, she does nook med and she goes in different places, and so they're getting ready to do one of the scans, you know, one of the loud ping, ping, pings, the MRIs or whatever they are, and so you can have music.

So the text said to the gal, she was putting in, what kind of music would you like, we have all these, and she said, I'd like Christian music. And the text said, well let me go get Sarah, she's the one who would know that. That's really big. And I know Sarah well enough to know, that's just living that. That's the fruit, that's the byproduct.

Of all of a sudden, my heart is captured by Him, He's turned my heart from stone into a heart of flesh, and now I begin to understand who He is, and now it's fruit, fruit happens, you just live this. So somewhere in the course of the conversation, Sarah had invited this girl to church or talked about church or understood that Christ is important, essential, critical in her life.

Wisdom Applied to Everyday Life

So it's not just knowledge, so you can go, boy I really know this stuff, it's knowledge that leads to wisdom, how we live, it transforms how we live. We begin to see the world around us. So in the midst of, I was thinking about this the other day, I was at the ophthalmologist, a doctor a day, so I'm at the ophthalmologist the other day to get some baseline for eyes, and it's on rural, and it's right across the street from where we used to picket a Planned Parenthood where they did abortions.

And I thought, isn't this interesting, because the only thing that's changed since then would be me. Because there's still about 1.23 million abortions a year, and when God saved me in 1980, that was like this hot issue. When I watched the Democratic Convention, and they were concerned about women and women's reproductive rights, I want you to control your body, but once you're pregnant, you don't have the right to do whatever you want with your body, you can't kill, now you can, legally, but does God have a view on it?

Applying God's Agenda

So we get into this now, we're getting voter guides, and we're getting all this stuff, who should I vote for? Well, I'm not going to tell you to vote for, but I'll tell you how to vote. It's in line with God's agenda. I think God has an agenda, I think abortion matters, marriage matters, family matters, and those are all things that we talk about, and we say, here's this knowledge, how do I turn it into wisdom for everyday life?

I was talking to Sandy, and we were in Coronado, and we were just walking, and we did as much walking as I could, but a lot of sitting and talking, and I was saying, it's so obvious to me that the country has so many issues, that one of them that needs to get fixed really quick is K through 12. If you don't fix K through 12, you can't sustain a nation. Now Condoleezza Rice, in her address, said that was the greatest moral issue we're facing, which I thought was really

Interesting. She's reading my blog or something, I don't know how this happens, all those Stanford people follow me. I don't know, but there's that idea of all of a sudden, as I'm learning the knowledge, it makes me a wise person. Here you go, wisdom, the ability to connect the dots, to see it.

I came across an old quote the other day. I like Bobby Stoops, I don't like Mike Stoops, and when Bobby won the national title, he said, and I quote, "All the joy is in the pursuit, not the winning." We can step back and say that over and over again. You're busting your pick, I get it. You're busting your pick because you think that's going to make you happy, but life's not found in a person, place, or thing other than Jesus. How do I know that? Well, I can read it in a book, I can experience it, I can go to this word where God tells me over and over and over again, this is just the truth.

Learning Allows Me to Fulfill the Great Commandment

Here's the second thing. Learning allows me to fulfill the great commandment. Jesus is talking with His boys in Matthew chapter 22. Now the Pharisees and the Sadducees are around Him, the Pharisees have watched the Sadducees try to trick Him, they haven't been successful, so they take a shot at Jesus and they say, "Which is the great commandment in the law?" And He says, "Love your Lord, your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind." If I'm to fulfill the great commandment and the great commission to love my neighbor, to begin to share this truth, there's an engagement of the mind.

There are emotions to be sure, and I want to be really careful with that. There are emotions to be sure. The Encyclopedia Britannica, which is not particularly a Christian publication, identifies Jonathan Edwards as the greatest mind America ever produced. Edwards was observing revival in the world around Him. One of the concerns he had was the emotional side of this. Now, if you Google Edwards and Google image, and it's kind of the standard Edwards picture, he doesn't look like a guy that would be a lot of fun.

But he then writes, as a result of this, a book, which you can go online, you can just download this stuff now, everything, those old boys are free, called "Religious Affections." What he's saying is, "I want to be very careful that we aren't just swept away with emotion, but I want you to understand that a healthy relationship with God, as you begin to know Him and understand Him, is bound to move you to love and bound to move you to affection." If you begin to really contemplate your sinfulness, God's grace, God's mercy, in spite of you, not because of you, He chose you and brought you into His kingdom. You deserve separation and hell, that's what you deserve, but He gave you heaven and mercy, not because of one thing you did, but entirely because of His love for you. That ought to move you to some sort of emotion, religious affection.

So Edwards simply says, for me to love God, I must know Him. What that begins is this cycle that the more I know Him, the more I love Him. R.C. Sproul says it this way: "God has made us with harmony of heart and head, of action and of thought. The more we know Him, the more able we are to love Him. To be central in our hearts, He must be first central in our minds. Religious thoughts are a prerequisite for religious affection and obedient action."

Christian Imperatives Flow from Therefore

Let me add, this is kind of my new deal right now, is that the Christian imperatives, so do this, do this, do this, flow from a "therefore." So you look at Romans 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, here's all this doctrine, and then Paul says, "Therefore, don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." It's that Isaiah 6 classic moment. All those things that you want to do, that the Scripture's calling you to do, those all flow from a transformed heart and an informed mind.

It's not about me trying to win God's favor. It's not about me trying to get God to love. He already loves you. He's not going to love you more, He's not going to love you less. That's how we deal humanly. I'll love you if, I'll love you when, I'll love you because, and God says, "Here you go, I love you." That's just it, "I love you."

What Sproul is saying is, the more that I know Him, these religious thoughts, the more that I understand the Gospel. Let me put this pitch in here, because for some of you that have been around, when you hear "Gospel," you think, unbeliever. Some unbeliever needs that. No, I need that Gospel every day to be reminded of it every day. That's the thing that sustains me every day. As I contemplate that Gospel every day, the deeper I know Him, the more I love Him, and the more I love Him, the more I want to know Him. So Paul writes that over and over and over again: "My desire is to know Christ and Christ crucified."

The Growing Nature of Love Through Knowledge

I'm in this, it's very interesting for me, because I'm in that with Sandy now. So we've been married 20 weeks. I'm trying to figure that out, we've decided who sleeps on which side, and we've done a bunch of stuff, but I'm getting to know her. We walked through the mall the other day, the first time I've been at Fashion Square in a long time, and just walking through, and I was able, probably 90% of the time, to say, "You like that, you don't like that."

So I would say to you, I love her, but that love is different now than it was 20 weeks ago. That sounds really stupid, doesn't it? But it'll be deeper 20 weeks from now than it is now.

Let me go back to what I do know that has credibility, is 32 years with Susan. When I first met Susan, my love for her was simply lust. She hadn't spoken, we hadn't had dialogue, she was a little zero-two, she was everything I liked. She could talk, it was an add-on, like air conditioning. It was like a plug. We were married, and you've heard this story a thousand times. We were married three months, I came home and I said, "I married you to make me happy, I'm not happy. I think I want out."

She said, "Well Slick, you're no bargain either." And so that started this. It was probably three years into it before I think I loved her, although I don't even know if I knew I loved me. Here's what I do know. At the end, the things that got me into that relationship were not strong enough to sustain me. She wasn't a two at the end. Some of the body parts she had that I loved the most were gone. Her ability to laugh and talk and communicate, it wasn't there.

And yet, I loved her in this inexplicable way. I loved her in a deeper way than I think I ever had, and it was all because I knew her. I got to know her. I was going through some notes as she was in the process of dying, and I was making a lot of notes. She would say these things that were incoherent. She wanted JP Morgan to come and visit us. I thought, what is that? She would say these things. The more I got to know her, the more I loved her.

Well, now I come to God and it's the same thing. The more I know Him, the more I love Him. The more I know Him and see Him, the more I trust Him. The more vibrant the relationship. So I'm using words like, we talk about a relationship with Christ.

The Difference Between Communication and Communion

When I'm going here quickly, I think I've communicated with God pretty well for 22 years, 23 years, 50 years, whatever, 30 years. I don't know I've had great communion with Him yet. There's a difference. Like right now, I get all my pills through Medco. I'm communicating with them. We communicate every day. We can't ship this, we can't do this. We communicate, but we don't have communion.

That's the challenge. Again, I come back to a really good church. A really good church can easily flip you into communicating with God, even reading His word and studying His word and praying to Him, but I don't know about listening with Him and having deep, deep union with Him. Just hanging with Him.

Learning is Essential to Spiritual Growth

Here's the third thing. Learning is essential to spiritual growth. It's Philippians chapter three. I could actually begin in chapter two, where Paul is saying, verse three, "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than themselves. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this mind in you, which was in Christ Jesus."

Martin Lloyd-Jones writes, "Let us never forget the message of the Bible is addressed primarily to the mind, to the understanding." So look at that call in Philippians chapter two. Don't move from selfishness or empty conceit, but out of humility of mind.

The Radical Nature of Humility

This is one of those deals. This is a big point. This is one of those things that I get every once in a while, like we're managers, not owners. This is a big point. When Paul sat to write this, there was not a Greek word for humility. Neither in the Greek or Latin vocabulary, there wasn't a word for humility. So Paul had to create this word. That's how anti-human nature humility is.

Because my instinct is always to say, so one game day, I just got a text. It must have come in last night, but it came in while I was sleeping, from Haley saying, "Game kickoff Saturday, two o'clock, nine o'clock, ESPN two. Let's do it at our house." So here's what we'll have. We'll have everybody there. There'll be grandkids. Here's the ages. Six, five, four, three, two, one, zero. Now we were just there, and they are great kids, well-behaved, but inevitably, every time we're together, we have one or two moments that said, "No, that's mine, that's mine."

That's who we are. You grow up, you mask it better, but you go through life going, "That's mine, that's me, that's what I deserve." And now the Christian faith comes along and says, no, you don't think about you, you think about them, and we may not even realize it, but the Greek and the Latin language just demonstrate for us, that's not natural. I'm never going to love, I'm never going to serve in a genuine way with a right heart people I'm looking down on, and if I don't have this humility of heart, I'll never have it, so I'll never love.

The Example of Christ

That's the illustration that Paul has here. Be like Jesus, who emptied Himself, not of His deity, but of His glory, and came to earth, didn't come as a king the first time, came as a suffering servant, was spit upon, suffered, died. Now, you go live that way.

Well, in Philippians 3, Paul continues. He says in verse four, "I myself might have confidence in the flesh," and what he's saying here is, if it was possible to please God through human effort, I would have done it. We say, not at all in a pejorative way, but he's saying, I was a super Jew.

Philippians 3:5, "Circumcised on the eighth day," so his point is not there on the seventh day, he said to mom, "Hey, don't forget tomorrow." Here's the family, it's the nation of Israel, it's the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, you want to talk about the law, I'm a Pharisee, you want to talk about zeal, I persecuted the church. I didn't sit. I didn't sit back and tweet about what needed to happen, I did it. As to the righteousness that's found in the law, I'm blameless.

Counting All Things as Loss

But whatever things were gained to me, I count those things as loss, the King James says, dung, for the sake of Christ. I count that, more than that, I count all things to be lost in the surpassing value of, listen to this, knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, that I might know His power, know His resurrection, know Him. To know Him, not just in an intellectual way, but in an experiential way.

That's what Job says. So the book of Job, if you don't know anything about Bible, you know Job, you go, I don't want to be Job. Just didn't work out well, lots of suffering. At the end of Job, Job 42, here's what Job says, "Before I heard about you, now I've seen you, I've experienced you." So take like a science class. There's classrooms, study, study, study, but now I go to the laboratory.

We can sing, "Jesus, you're all I need." But I don't think you really ever know that Jesus

is all you need, until Jesus is all you have. Because as long as Jesus is all you need, but I still got this, I'm still hanging on to that. And you begin to trust Him, and there's a joy, there's a confidence in living. There's a relaxation, there's a peace in all of that.

Although there's turmoil all around you, and it's not that you're removed from human suffering, you're still in the middle of it, but you see Him work, you know Him. You can be all you want about pro-life, until the doctor comes in and says, you know, you've got this baby, and this baby's not gonna make it, and we need to do, we've been through a bunch of these, a therapeutic termination.

And I've watched moms who've said, no, I'm not gonna do that. We don't need to test, because it really doesn't matter, because whatever the test says isn't gonna make any difference. There's a baby, we're gonna carry this baby all the way through. And I've watched, and in every case, we had like three or four of these within a period of three or four months, and in every case, exactly what the doctor said happened. In every case, that baby died within an hour to a day of birth. And the mom went through life with some level of grief, but not guilt. It's one thing to say, I believe this, but now we're gonna put you in the testing. One thing to say, silver or gold, doesn't matter until we start to take that away.

Learning Requires Discipline

Well, here's the fourth thing. Learning most often comes from discipline, not by accident. That there's a disciplined side to this. In 2 Timothy, all Scripture's inspired by God. The passage we looked at last week. In 2 Timothy 2:15, Paul tells Timothy, be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed. Handling accurately the word of truth. And the imagery and illustration he uses before that is of a farmer and an athlete and a soldier. Hardworking, disciplined.

I came across this the other day. I decided I'm gonna read all the stuff that Jerry Bridges has written, and then I got into it and I said, that's just too much. But I got online, and I was just doing a search on Jerry Bridges, and I came across C.J. Mahaney's website where he did an interview with Jerry Bridges. Well, he did an interview with Jerry Bridges, and I don't know if you know that name. I'm into ages now. I'm always looking at how old is he? He's 82. He's written phenomenal books about pursuing God, pursuing holiness, the disciplines of grace.

So he interviewed Jerry Bridges, all separately, John Piper. Piper 65, Christian Hedonism, Don't Waste Your Life, a lot of Piper, and Dr. Grudem. So he interviews these three guys. He asks them essentially all the same questions. Here's the first question, and I want to take you through all three answers.

Three Models of Disciplined Learning

Thank you, Mr. Bridges. Describe your morning devotion. What time do you wake up? How much time do you spend reading, meditating, praying? What are you presently reading? So I'm going to give you all three of these guys' answers, and then make this pitch for discipline.

On a normal day, I get up at 5. I spend from 5:30 to 7 reading, meditating on scripture. I spend time praying. I begin—I thought this was amazing—I begin with what I've tried to teach others, which is in fact to preach the gospel then to myself. My usual practice is read through the Bible simply, beginning in Genesis, going through Revelation. Then he talks about his prayer and how he always begins with the petition, Hallowed be thy name, and then each day praying for different things. The next question was, by the way, what are you reading for your soul? What are you reading for pastoral ministry? What are you reading for personal enjoyment? For personal enjoyment, he's reading John Calvin, A Heart of Devotion, Doctrine and Doxology.

John Piper. There's a bigger point here. John Piper. I get up two mornings at 5:15, four mornings at 6:15, one morning at 6. I set aside an hour for prayer, Bible reading, using a discipleship journal, a read-through-the-Bible plan. So if you just go Google reading plan, Bible reading plan, you're going to get a million of them.

Dr. Grudem. And many of you in the room know Grudem pretty well. This is vintage Grudem. I wake up usually around 6, sometimes as late as 7 or 7:30. If I've been up late, I need seven to eight hours, or I don't think clearly. I get a cup of tea and one of Margaret's excellent high-protein muffins, and I open my Bible. I simply read sequentially through the Bible, start at the beginning, go over and over again. I'll read for 10 or 15 minutes, underline some verses, make some notes, sometimes wonder what the word means and the nuance in the Greek or the Hebrew. I'll look it up, but I don't study that. I usually camp on a verse or a phrase, write it out, pondering, wondering about the application of my life.

Then I'll pause for five or 10 minutes, just waiting in the Lord's presence and thinking about the verse and talking to Him about it. After that, I pick up a notebook with different pages for people and things I'm praying for, and then he lists it. And then here's how he ends this time. Then I bring my to-do list. I pray about it, asking the Lord to help me to know what to make top priorities today, asking Him to bless the things. Often at the end of this time, maybe two, three, four, five minutes, I'm just resting in the presence of the Lord.

I find in those times of quietness, when I'm not praying about anything in particular, but simply resting in the Lord's presence, that He will bring to mind solutions for problems or people I need to contact or things I need to write or things I should not spend time doing today. Any number of things. I also find that over the course of the entire Bible reading and prayer time, a deeper sense of peace and rest in the Lord's presence comes to my heart. When I read this, I was amazingly convicted by it. There have been times in my life where I've

followed some plans like that. I'm not in one of those right now. So I step back and I looked at what I just read, and there was, number one, just the assumption on C.J. Mahaney's part that these guys are doing that. The question implies that. Can you imagine asking that question and Grudem going, "I don't know. I don't spend a lot of time in this." Here are these guys that are arguably iconic in our culture who are going back and reading through this Bible over and over and over again with a dependence upon the Spirit.

This is how we're to live. That's what it means, I think, to pray without ceasing, is all day long I'm saying, "Father, teach me, Father. Show me, Father. Use this." For me to function in this world, as God would have me function, I have to have this knowledge. I have to be learning, have to be learning His Word. I have to be learning in the culture. And then I'm saying to God, "Now you open these doors. You do this."

Learning Takes Place in a Variety of Ways

My last point is this: learning takes place in a variety of ways. So books, observation, personal experience. Let me mention a couple of things. You need to get the right Bible.

It's like the last time I went out and got fitted for a driver at the ping factory. I hit a billion shots. They never changed the head or the loft, they changed the shaft. The kick point might be lower or a little higher. If I could replicate the swing, which is the problem, I can. But if I replicated the swing, it was amazing to me how some of these shots, and he would say, and I couldn't tell by looking, it's just a shaft, he'd say "the kick point's here, this is going to come off lower and hotter," and it would come off lower and hotter.

It sounds weird. The Bible's the Bible, I get it. But you need a Bible that fits you. So this is an ESV study Bible. The byproduct of this is you get aerobic activity if you use it as well. This is a big old honking thing. This is a great Bible to study with. For me personally, I wouldn't want to be hauling it around. But you might.

You need a good study Bible that you're using, and use it in a variety of ways, and it may be the Bible you have with you. I do think there's a value to having this. This was the first Bible I ever had. It was a Ryrie study Bible. You can see it's still all filled up with notes. I looked at this the other day, this little print. These were things when God was showing me stuff, and now I'm so smart He doesn't need to anymore, and I'm writing. So I have dozens of Bibles, but a right translation, I would say the ESV or the New American Standard, a good study Bible, and that's either going to be the ESV study Bible or the MacArthur study Bible.

Having the Right Tools for Learning

But then you're going to have Bibles that you're going to have around that you're just going to read through. To have a good paraphrase, the Phillips, which is a paraphrase, the Message, which is a paraphrase. But to have the right tools, to understand the advantage that you have on the internet, to be able to go online, you can go online to pbc.peninsulavillechurch.org, and you access everything Ray Stedman did. All written. Tapes and video, audio. To Google facts of the resurrection, and just have all this information. There is no reason.

Books. Sandy is a grinder. I'm a procrastinator, Sandy is "let's get it done." So the other day I'm on the couch, and she said, "I'm going to get, we're going to get these books out of here." So when Susan and I moved into the house eight years ago, I have no idea how many books. There's all these books in these boxes, in these closets. We gave away like 2,000 books, and my den is just, you can't even move in it. She said, "Listen, we're going to get bookshelves, we're going to put them on books, you're going to throw out the books you don't want." I said, "All right, I can do that." And she said, "I got to believe if they're in this box, you haven't looked at them for eight years, they can't be very important." I don't know that I'd make that assumption.

I asked a friend a few years ago, "Have you read any good books lately?" And he said, "I don't have time to read good books, only great books." That's what I need to do. That's what you need to do. You need to be a reader. That's what I was struck by with each of these guys.

My grandson got in the car the other day, and he was talking about, "Here's what I got at the library." I said, "Little buddy, if you can just keep reading." I didn't get into how unimportant the other stuff is. Just keep reading. God made you with a mind. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed, how? By the renewing of your mind, learning, learning this Word. That has to be key.

Making Time with God

By the way, that stuff that I read about Grudem and Piper and Bridges, I didn't read that to put a guilt trip on you. I'm not a morning guy. But sometime through the day, I need to be spending time with God through His Word. What I love about Grudem's part is, not just talking to Him, but listening to Him. Letting Him speak to me.

So anyway, next week, so now I understand that the Bible's a final authority. I'm learning, now I got to make decisions. How do I make godly decisions? We'll look at it next week.

Father, will You, in our heart, place a desire to know You more? Not just know about You, but to know You in a personal way? Fill us with Your Spirit, we ask it in Christ's name, amen.