Teachable or Unteachable
Show me Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; on You I wait all the day. – Psalm 25:4-5.
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye. – Psalm 32:8.
Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, SUBMITTING TO ONE ANOTHER in the fear of God. – Ephesians 5:17-21.
Are you teachable? If someone wants to do something in a new or different way, are you the one who is always in the opposition?
If God were to speak to you about reaching out to a neighbor or a stranger would you automatically think, “I don’t do that.”
If you are caught, gossiping by the one you are gossiping about are you willing to ask their forgiveness or are you just going to be angry that you were caught? Because of your anger, do you then oppose everything the person you were gossiping about may want to do whether it is a good idea or a bad idea?
The unteachable have closed minds. For example for hundreds of years it was thought that the world was flat and when it was suggested that the world was round there were hundreds of thousands of closed minds to that idea. Copernicus and Galileo persisted and eventually the current structure of the round world and solar system was accepted. Now we know through modern space flight, telescopes, and other scientific instruments how very true Copernicus and Galileo were and how wrong were the hundreds of thousands of people, including the established church, that believed in a flat earth.
It is almost unbelievable in this modern world that there is a “Flat Earth Society” made up of people who continue to believe that the earth is flat. But there is such a society and its existence is representative of the mindset of the unteachable. To them it does not matter what scientific proof you have, what evidence you may present, what rational arguments you may make, no, they are going to continue to believe what they believe, and nothing will change their minds. They are unteachable.
God has so much that He wants for you His children. He wants to teach you and train you to become more and more like Jesus. He wants to give you life more abundantly. He wants to give you peace, which is beyond human understanding. He wants to give you unspeakable joy. We can only have these wondrous gifts by being teachable, sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes that leading may be through other Christians who are filled with the Holy Spirit, which would require that we surrender our own desires and submit ourselves to “one another.”
Of course, there is another reason for being teachable. That reason is “submitting to one another in the FEAR of God.” Because God is God, we should be teachable, reachable, and moldable. If we know the Lord Jesus as our personal Savior, we ought to have enough love, respect, reverence, and fear of God to be obedient to Him.
Which group do you belong to? Are you teachable or do you belong to the spiritual Flat Earth Society?
(Are you teachable or unteachable? Find out which one you are.)