THE SLOW LEARNERS
A lot of people do not know why they are not growing spiritually. Many people too, do not understand why they do not seem to be getting anywhere after so many years of Christianity. One thing you must know and which remains the truth is that men seem to understand physical things more than the spiritual. Even in the Bible, people misinterpreted the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ because they understood the physical things more than the spiritual. The same thing is still true today. For example, when Jesus said, “Destroy this temple and I will build it again in three days,” they looked at Him and must have thought, “You are a mad man.” This temple took forty-six years to build and you say we should destroy it and you would build it in three days.” They did not understand that He was talking about the temple of His body. They were thinking of the earthly temple. When Jesus said to Nicodemus: “You must be born again,” he got confused and asked, “How is that possible? Can a man enter his mother’s womb again?” He did not understand. Likewise, when Jesus said to the woman at the well, “If you know the person talking to you now, you would have asked him for the water of life, and when you drink that, you would never thirst again.” The woman said, “Ah, give me, so that I will not come here to fetch water anymore.” She did not understand. When Jesus said, “If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed,” the Jews said, “We are not in bondage.” They did not understand. And when He said, “Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no part in me,” they said “Ah, is He going to cut his flesh and give us to eat?” They did not understand what He was talking about. So many people who come to church are like that too. They are slow to understand spiritual things.
In II Corinthians 4: 3-4, we read about another group of persons. It says, “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the ‘glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them”. Some people are completely deaf, dumb and blind to spiritual things. At the same time, you will discover that a large number of people who are willing to learn more about Jesus are not growing as fast as they should. The main reason for this is that many believers are slow learners when it comes to spiritual things. Many will not grasp spiritual truth until it is repeated many times, and the understanding of many would not be opened until they have passed through some bad experiences.
Jesus was with His disciples for three and half years and He taught them many things. They were members of His secret school because in some cases, He would call them aside and teach them certain important things that He wanted to make known only to them. He kept telling them before He died that as Jonah was in the belly of the whale, so would the Son of man be below the ground for three days. They did not understand. He told them that the Son of man would go just as it is written of Him, but they were slow to believe all these and that led to confusion. Luke 24: 13-27 says, “And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about three score furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him. And he said unto them. What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another as ye walk, and are sad? And one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people and how the chief priest and the rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, today is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain woman also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre. And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him, they saw not. Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory. And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself”.
Jesus referred to them as those who were slow in their hearts to believe all what the prophets had spoken. In spite of all the things that Jesus told them, they did not believe. So, instead of them to go to Galilee, they went, looking for His dead body. Even when some people told them that His dead body was no more there, they did not believe.
Today, many are like that. They are slow to understand spiritual things. When somebody learns slowly, then the rate of his spiritual growth would be slow too. This is why you should know that spiritual” things have nothing to do with age. They have nothing to do with time of conversion, for God is no respecter of persons. Spiritual things are not judged by academic qualifications or by seniority. If somebody gets
converted today and exercises more faith than those he met in the church, he would receive more miracles than they. If a new convert prays more than an old member he will get closer to God than the old member who does not pray enough. If a new member studies the scriptures more than an old member, he will grow faster than the old member.
It is high time we stopped playing slow motion with God. God is not an author of confusion but a God of orderliness. He takes one step at a time. If God gives you lesson number one and you have not passed it, do not expect that you will move to lesson number two. Some people have not received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, yet they want to see visions and interpret tongues. Some have not received complete salvation from sin and they want to be praying for the sick. God does not move that way. It is one step at a time. This is why many people are spiritually stagnant. They repeat the same class everyday. Two years after they have been born again, they still have to be told all the time that believers do not fornicate, smuggle, smoke, or get angry.
Sometime ago, in an evangelistic outreach in the university that I was in England, some white boys got converted and one of them was put in a Bible study group that I was teaching. That day, our topic was the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. This new convert noticed that we were looking at many scriptures and because he was not conversant with the Bible, he was surprised and felt a bit handicapped. He then took a decision that he would read the Bible before the following lectures. And truly, by the time he got to the class the following week, he had read through the whole Bible and did better than some people in the class who had been born again for many years. It showed that God does not welcome lazy people.
There are so many great spiritual truths that we are slow to learn. This is what disturbs our Christian race and sometimes brings untold hardship to us. Are you a slow learner of spiritual things? You need to talk to God today because the level of what you learn determines how you grow. When you do not learn what God wants you to learn, you will be in trouble because God is a perfect teacher. Any teacher who promotes a person when the person does not pass, is either unserious or does not know his job. God taught Jonah some lessons. He told Jonah to go to Nineveh but Jonah said, “No, I am going to Tarshish.” He had not learnt that it is wrong to disobey God. On his way to Tarshish, there was a great storm in the sea and everybody in the ship was in trouble because of him. This means that a single sinner can bring suffer in to a whole family or a nation. They threw Jonah into the sea and a fish swallowed him. Then Jonah began to cry unto the Lord right in the belly of the fish. He was there for three days without food. He did three days dry fast compulsorily. God kept him there for three days until the fish vomited him in the place where he did not want to go. It became clear to him that nobody can run away from the presence of God. Jonah did not need to pass through all
that if he learnt quickly. He learnt the hard way. My prayer is that you will not learn the hard way, in Jesus’ name. When we are slow to learn, we put ourselves to trouble just like Jonah did.
WHAT ARE THESE LESSONS THAT MANY OF US ARE SLOW TO LEARN?
- Our lives are made up of choices
Daily we take decisions and we get results on the basis of these decisions. In every decision that you take, you are making a choice and it must yield result. Many of us are slow to learn that God is interested in the smallest things about our lives, starting from the cap on our heads to the shoes on our feet. A songwriter says, “O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear. All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.” Perhaps, the stomach trouble you developed after eating a particular bean pudding would not have occurred if you had prayed and asked the Lord whether or not to buy it. Maybe the Lord would have told you to buy something else.
We all make our choices daily, and in the Bible we can see how some men made their choices and the results they got. There is a contrast between Abraham’s choice and Lot’s choice. Abraham’s herdsmen and Lot’s herdsmen were quarrelling and Abraham said to Lot, “Let there be no strife between me and you You pick one area while I take the other side.” One expected that Lot would have said, “No sir, you are the senior please choose first,” since it was Abraham that brought him up and looked after him. But the Bible says that Lot surveyed the environment, looked at the area that was fertile, and picked that place. Abraham did not mind The Pace Lot picked turned out to be Sodom and Gomorrah and he eventually lost everything. He was able to take only his two daughters out whom he got pregnant by himself all because of bad choices. Abraham chose the dry land and the Lord made it fertile for him.
Moses had a choice to follow the Israelites or enjoy the benefits of Egypt. Joseph chose to go to prison rather than commit fornication with his master’s wife. It is an a matter of choice. Daniel chose to feed poorly than eat the king’s sumptuous meals which were dedicated to idols. Yet, he was better than all those who ate the king’s food. Paul chose to go with the early Christians. Christ chose to go to Jerusalem and the Garden of Gethsemane even though He knew that He was going to face death. Likewise, we make our choices daily.
In the word of God, you will discover that a single wrong decision put people into untold hardship all their lives. Maybe if you had prayed well, you would not have married the husband or wife that you married. Maybe if you had waited on the Lord, you would have made different choices. It was Adam’s choice that cost him the Garden of
Eden. It was Esau’s choice that cost him his birthright. Achan’s choice to steal cost him his life. Lot’s choice cost him his home and his cattle. Absalom’s choice cost him the kingdom. Saul’s choice cost him his kingdom. And that rich young ruler that came to Jesus and Jesus instructed him to go and sell all that he had and follow Him, preferred his riches to the salvation of his soul. He abandoned his salvation for riches. It was Judas’s choice that cost him his position as an apostle. And of him, it is written, “Let his habitation become desolate. His office, let another take.” That was the result of a wrong choice. Ananias and his wife chose to tell lies to the Holy Spirit and it cost them their lives. In the Bible too, you find two men, Caleb and Joshua, who made the right choice and were blessed. Caleb and Joshua made their choice and they never regretted it. Now, you must choose to change. You must examine every decision of yours by the leading of God. What makes our lives good or bad is the accumulation of the choices we make. The small decisions that we do not think are important pile up and make our lives what they are.
When Jonah saw that his first choice was going to cost him his life and the lives of those in the ship, he changed his choice. Then he chose to listen to God. So the quicker you learn to do this, the better it is for you. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that most people learn slowly. Sometimes it is more favourable to keep your mouth shut than to open it and get into trouble that would last for 20 years. Proverbs 3:5 6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. (Do not trust in your brain.) In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.”
- Move only when God is moving.
Exodus 13: 21 22 says, “And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night. He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.” Exodus 14:19 – 20: “And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them. And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night.”
God was leading them by the cloud and by the pillar of fire. When the pillar began to move, the children of Israel would rise up and move. When the pillar of fire stopped, they also stopped. You must follow God that way. You must move when God is moving. If the Israelites did not follow that cloud of fire, the host of the Amalekites would catch them. Some people sit at home on Sundays and when you ask them why they did not
come to church, they would tell you that they were not happy and that they would come when their mood changed. Such people have been caught by the Amalekites. Those who have one excuse or the other for not coming to church have been caught by the Amalekites. Some people miss services which God may have ordained to bless them because they are busy enfertaining friends that the devil sends to them to distract them.
- The reason we come to church is to seek God.
People are slow to learn that they come to church to seek God, and that their attention should focus on Jesus alone who is the author and finisher of our faith. If you come to church and focus your attention on human beings, you will fail. It is only when people remove their attention from God that they begin to find faults with people. If you take your attention away from God; you will not even see Him when He is moving. People are quick to follow distractions instead of facing what they have come for. Whenever the children of God are gathered together, the people of darkness always come around to see the serious and the unserious ones. A certain demon possessed person confessed at a revival that when agents of darkness came to a prayer meeting, they moved around to see those that were not praying seriously or those that were standing and saying nothing. He also said that they made sure that the sicknesses that came out of people who got delivered entered into these unserious ones and they took them back to their houses. So whenever you come to church, face Christ. Do not lose sight of God. Know when He is moving.
4. Christians have anointed mouths.
Believers who pray, speak in tongues and speak God’s words have anointed mouths. So, one of the hicks of the devil is to use our own mouths against us. Believers must choose their words very carefully. If you mistakenly make a wrong statement, withdraw it very quickly and say the correct thing. Colossians 4: 6 says, “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.” Titus 2: 8 says, “Sound speech, that cannot be condemned; that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you.” That is the type of word God wants you to be speaking. Sometimes, to speak good words require hard work and training because many people are used to speaking bad words. If somebody has ever complained that you do not know, how to talk; you must really pray and ask God to touch you. This is why somebody said, “Let your brain and your spirit get into gear, before your mouth begins to speak” When you apply this to the Bible, it means that you should listen to your spirit before you talk. Many people are saying that Nigeria is bad. If Christians do not join them with their anointed mouth to say that Nigeria is bad, it would not be bad. But if we do with our anointed mouths, it will
Christians often forget that the Lord tells them that if any of them shall say unto the mountain, “Be thou removed and be cast into the sea,“ it shall be so. You should be careful about what you say. When you are angry, it is better to close your mouth. Whenever you do not give anger expression, it has very little effect on those around you. What you say with your mouth during the period of anger will also happen to you unless you learn how to control it. Our mouths have power to create things for us. So if you are speaking the wrong things, you will be creating the wrong things for yourself. When you open your month and say, “This business is not moving,” it would not move. If you say, “These prayers, I do not know, they are not being answered. The prophecies are not coming to pass. Things are not going on well. Life is not good,” they will be so. If you point at your husband and say, “You are a bad husband,” you are using your mouth to make him bad. Or you point. to your child and say, “You this child, you are as wicked as your daddy,” you are using your anointed mouth to create something for that child. As a Christian, you should know that there are certain things you do not say. Wrong speech is a strategy of the devil to make people destroy themselves. This is a lesson many people have failed to learn. My prayer is that you will learn the lesson today, in Jesus’ name.
- You do not compare yourself with others.
It is wrong to compare yourself with other people. Psalm 73 tells us that the progress of unbelievers will lead them into hell fire. But many believers fail to understand this. Brother A is comparing himself with Brother B. Brother A’s name is Shola, Brother B’s name is Evans. They come from different families and different backgrounds. Brother Shola’s mother is a witch while Brother Evan’s mother is a prayer warrior. They have different terms of conversion. They have different stands with God and yet Brother B is comparing himself with Brother A. It is foolishness.
It is not how fast you do a thing that matters, but how well it is done. It is not how people see you that is important but how God sees you. It is not what people think or say about you that really matters, but what God says about you. If everybody says that you are nice and God says that you are wicked and dirty, your being nice is meaningless. God deals with us individually. Some people concentrate on other people’s affairs just like Peter who abandoned his own thing and was talking about another person’s own. The Lord then told him that the plan of his own life was different from that other person’s. No matter what your case is, it is not the worst in the world. There is no kind of problem that God has not solved before. There is no problem anybody has now-that somebody else has not had before, which God has not solved. Some people never feel free to praise God because they think that their situation is bad. So many people compare themselves with others, and this is the reason for the sadness of many
believers. If you look unto God and stop comparing yourself to this and that, you will notice that you will be happier and in that your happy state, God will be ready to work more miracles. The Bible says that with joy shall you draw water out of the well of salvation.
- The amount of spiritual gifts you receive depends on how receptive you are.
In John 16:12, Jesus told His disciples, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” God is looking for vessels to fill. He will fill you withwhat you are able to receive. A certain man read the Acts of the A pasties for the first time in his life and was amazed to discover that it was possible for him to be filled with power from on high. So, he decided to pray for at least an hour everyday for this power. He prayed for two months and nothing happened. The devil was trying to discourage him. But one day, in a dream, he saw himself kneeling down and an angel of the Lord came to him and said, “Do you want the baptism of the Holy Ghost?” He said, “Yes” and the angel laid his hands upon him and he began to speak in tongues right there; and he woke up speaking in tongues. He was very surprised. Why did God keep him that long? He was not receptive yet. When you are ready, you must then receive. So, prepare yourself to receive from the Lord.
- The devil picks up the word of God from people’s heart.
This is why people forget scriptures. Matthew 13:19 says, “When anyone heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.” This is why it is difficult for people to retain the word of God intheir hearts.
Beloved, to move up to the mountain-top, where God wants you to be, you must reject every spirit of slumber.
PRAYER POINTS
Any arrow fired into my life in the dream, I fire you back now seven-fold, in the name of Jesus.
Spirits contrary to my peace, I command you to go away and I forbid you to return, in the name of Jesus.
For me, there shall be rivers in the desert and honey from the rock, in Jesus’ name.
Every yoke of financial problem, I break you, in the name of Jesus.
O Lord, send out the host of heavens and let them fight for me, in Jesus’ name.
Father Lord, I will not assist my enemies to fight against me, in Jesus’ name.
O Lord, quicken my spirit with your fire, in the name of Jesus.
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