How to really learn best

Column Post by Glenda Harbinson

What is your area of passion? About what topic can you just not stand to hear others spouting knowledge when you are absolutely certain they are wrong? Do you jump in and speak up? Count to ten and walk away? Perhaps close your computer and go wash dishes or bury your nose in a good book?

I have found myself walking away more and more lately but occasionally I see something I believe in firmly enough to speak up. One thing I have learned is that if you haven’t experienced it, read it, or raised a child with it – you shouldn’t be discussing it.

Having raised children with more medical conditions than we should go into here, I’m cool with that. I don’t want people who have no more knowledge than the next guy telling me how to raise my autistic son.

Yet there is a time and a place to listen to those who aren’t walking in my shoes, who haven’t “read the book”. Sometimes they can look in from outside our lives and point out something we may be too close to the situation to see.

I’ve been asked questions from those who know nothing of what my life is like that have made me think. Sometimes that thinking has led to changes, and sometimes it hasn’t.  Always it has led to prayer and meditation, which is never a bad thing.

How do you respond when people ask personal questions that raise your ire and make you wonder what makes it their business? I used to shrug them off and walk away. God has changed me.

Recently I was prayerfully seeking Gods face on a decision. I felt pressured to do something, to “prove God right”. I hadn’t prayed long before I realized that God didn’t need my defense. That those whom I felt I might reach could be reached by God Himself. He doesn’t need me jumping in to speak up for Him.

How often do we go to church and let the preacher tell us what the Bible says, when we should be reading it for ourselves and asking God to teach us? Haven’t we all talked about how much better our children learn one on one than in a classroom setting? The same goes for us!

What if we pray before we read and ask God to remove cultural glasses and teach us, show us what HE wants to teach us, pray passages of Scripture, learning one on one from the LORD Himself?

I have only recently started fully understanding the amazing ways He can speak to us when we ask Him to show us what He wants to teach us in Scripture, when we drop the cultural glasses we wear without even realizing it and open ourselves up to Him to read, listen, commune.

He wants to teach us!

He loves us. He wants to spend time with us, and He loves to watch us learn.

Will we let Him?

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Glenda is a homeschooling mom of four in New Brunswick, Canada. She also fosters one teen and provides respite care and tutoring for another. She and her paramedic husband Mark have been married for 24 years. Glenda’s writings often reflect her personal experience parenting and teaching children with developmental and learning differences, as well as a particular empathy for moms with chronic illness. She blogs at http://pwsmommy.homeschooljournal.net/ and can be reached by emailing glenda.harbinson@gmail.com

Read more encouraging stories from brave-hearted women here. Be sure to grab your free copy of inspirational quotes and writing prompts while you’re there. (Look over on the right hand side!)

 

4 thoughts on “How to really learn best

  1. I enjoyed this, Glenda. You are so right about how we have to learn from God Himself, one on one. God has been working in me just in this area recently. He has opened my eyes to how much I need to really dig into the Word and Learn!

    • I’m glad you are allowing God to work in your heart. It can be painful, difficult to journey through, on occasion but oh, it is so worth it! Finding myself hungry for God, longing to spend more and more time with Him is just amazing. He teaches me something new all the time – and from passages I have read many times before! God Bless you my friend!

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