Daily Thought for Wednesday, August 31st

August 31, 2011

The Back To School Series

The Spiritual Implications of Education

Part Three – Reading

“Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser:

 teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.”

Proverbs 9:9

Today’s Thought:

“An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory.  It’s knowing where to go to find out what you need to know, and it’s knowing how to use the information you get.”  – William Feather

Today’s Quotes:

“Education takes place in the combination of the home, the community, the school, and the receptive mind.” – Harry Edwards

 

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the nurseries of life.” – Somerset Maugham

Today’s Question

Did you know that: “The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity?” –  Thomas Carlyle

Today’s Bible Verses:        Psalms 119:103-106, Psalms 119:10-12 & Revelation 1:3

How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!  Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep thy righteous

With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments.  Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.  Blessed art thou, O Lord: teach me thy statutes.

Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.

Today’s Spiritual Thought:

“A good book is opened with expectation and closed with profit.” –  Bronson Alcott

“Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.” – The Bible (1 Timothy 4:13)

Paramount to any education is a foundation that equips the student with the ability to read and to foster skills that allow for comprehension.

“The elementary school must assume as its sublime and most solemn responsibility the task of teaching every child in it to read.  Any school that does not accomplish that has failed.” – Jacques Barsum

On some level the same principal of truth can be applied to any church or Sunday School charged with the responsibility of teaching and training souls to be equipped to live Godly lives.  We must teach God’s disciples, those He has bought with His Son’s blood, to search scriptures for themselves.  While teaching and preaching are vital to spiritual growth: learning to search the scriptures for one’s self and acquiring the ability to discern right teaching from wrong teaching: good Godly preaching for heresy and false doctrine; rests in the ability of each individual Christian to posses the skills that will allow them to read, glean from and comprehend what God is saying to their hearts, by His spirit, through His Word.

Henry David Thoreau said, “Books are the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”  There is no greater book that God’s book, ‘The Bible’.

Henry Ward Beecher said, “Books are the windows through which the souls look out.”

Truly God’s Book is the window our souls have to look through to see God’s plan, His purposes, His design and His way for us to live.

And it is incumbent on each and every one of us to encourage, help and facilitate each other in reading and understanding God’s word, corporately and individually.

Mark Twain said, “Training is everything.”

We are charged to ‘train up our children’ and to ‘make disciples’: and part of the duties and obligations we have in doing this is to teach them to read God’s Word. 

“Study to shew thyself approved unto God,

a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,

rightly dividing the word of truth.” –

2 Timothy 2:15

Today’s Prayer:

Father, enlighten my heart, my soul and my mind as I read your word: reveal yourself to me as I study it’s pages and help me to encourage, assist and enable others to seek you for themselves in the pages of your book – The Bible.