Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me Your commandments.
Blessed be Thou, O Lord, teach me Thy statutes.
Psalm 119:12
There are three components to learning: The desire to learn, the actual learning and the application of what has been learned. This is true for academic subjects in school as well as with learning about the Lord.
For those of us who have had children, or those who remember their childhood, children don’t always want to learn. They have to be either taught the value of learning, which is application—i.e. learning how to ride a bike allows you to go places—or they have to be attracted to acquiring knowledge—i.e. there has to be a fun catch where the effort to learn is lost in the fun.
We have to ask ourselves, do we desire to learn about God, prayer, salvation, etc. Lots of people either don’t want to learn, or are satisfied with having just a small amount of knowledge of God. People who rarely worship but say they love God probably have very limited knowledge of Him. They know “about Him” but they don’t know Him. When we were first introduced to God as children, it was probably something like “God is good,” or “Let’s kiss Christouli.” And for some people, that’s where the learning stopped. They find themselves well into their adult lives going to church a couple of times a year because God is good, and let’s kiss Christouli for Christmas.
There is also a difference between knowing about God and actually knowing Him. Most of us know a few facts about famous Hollywood actors and actresses, musicians, athletes and politicians. But how many of us have actually had a private meeting with any of them? We know about them, but we don’t actually know them.
Once we’ve decided that we want to learn more about Christ, then there is the actual acquisition of knowledge. There are several ways to acquire knowledge of the Lord. We can do it on our own—we spend time praying, we can read the Scriptures. We can learn from others. We can go to church and hear a sermon. We can listen to a podcast. We can attend a retreat or take a class. We can go to a Bible study. Both ways of learning—on our own and directed by others—are important. Just like when we were in school, we went to class and were taught by a teacher, but then we went home and did work on our own. If all we did was independent study, we might have gotten off track—we needed teachers. However, if all we did was go to class and listen to the teacher but never did homework, never immersed ourselves, by ourselves in the work, we would never have learned the things we learned. Learning about the Lord works in the same way. It is imperative that we go to church, not just to worship, but to learn by a teacher—in this case, a priest, or someone who teaches Sunday school or Bible study. However, our study of the Lord, specifically the Scriptures, cannot be limited to what we hear on Sundays. We have to do homework, not in the way we did it in school, with due dates and grade, but work at home privately to dig into Scripture and bring more depth into what we learn when we worship.
Learning without application is almost pointless. Learning our times tables in math comes alive when we apply it. Knowing that 3 x 5 is 15 doesn’t really mean much until we take it to a real-life situation, like buying three hamburgers for five dollars each will cost fifteen dollars. Now the knowledge of 3 x 5 equals 15 is valuable. Knowing Bible verses and being able to recount stories from the Bible has little value if we do not apply these things in everyday life. Take the two great commandments—love God and love your neighbor as yourself. How many times a day do we actually follow these commandments? Do we make intentional expressions of love for God each day? Do we actually take time to pray, to pause, to spend time with Him, just us and Him? Many of us struggle to spend quality time with Him. Do we follow the commandments faithfully, or selectively? If we love God, then we should be living a disciplined life when it comes to following the commandments. This is not a criticism or judgment on anyone, I’m guilty of not spending quality time with Him as much as anyone else.
And how about loving our neighbor? Do we do that faithfully or selectively? Our neighbor is whoever is next to us at a given moment in time. It might be someone we like, someone we dislike or someone we don’t even know. We all know on a fundamental level, whether we are Christian or not, that we are supposed to love our neighbor, help our neighbor and be nice to our neighbor. Love of neighbor is the backbone of law in the Western Hemisphere. However, loving our neighbors, all of them, consistently, is a challenge for all of us.
Lord, help me to be a good student of Your commandments. Inspire my soul with the desire to learn about You. Inspire my mind to comprehend the message of Your Gospel. And inspire my heart with a desire to apply what I’ve learned in all times and in all places. Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me Your commandments. Grant me understanding of Your commandments. Enlighten me that I may live out Your commandments. Amen.
In praying to God for Him to teach us His commandments, we should add together with that request, a prayer for Him to help us live the commandments we’ve learned. We must ask God to guide us in all three phases or learning—a desire to learn, the actual learning and the application of what has been learned. This is true with academic subjects in school, with skills needed in a job, and most especially with the commandments of God.
