Compelled By Reality

A Teachable Spirit

Filed under: Christianity, Knowledge of God

“If you… incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding…” (Prov 2:2)

A teachable spirit or in other words… an open heart to be corrected. Many times when we learn things its not just about learning things we previously had no knowledge of, but re-learning things that we previously thought differently about.

If we have no knowledge of something and then someone comes along tells us something we didn’t know, then its not really hard to accept that. What is difficult to accept is when we have previous knowledge of something and someone comes along and tries to offer us a different perspective, or to even correct us in the way we are thinking because of a wrong mindset we had in the past about something.

“On this one will I look: on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit” (Isa. 66:2)

This is often a challenge for musicians and singers (I would say more so for musicians though, at least from my experience). Most musicians have a hard time accepting correction musically because of the creative aspect of music and to accept correction is to accept that you may not be as wise a musician as someone else. Or you just blow off correction because the person correcting you has a different style than you and “they just don’t understand your music.”

Having a “know it all” attitude in one area of your life will affect your spirit when trying to learn from the Spirit of revelation. We must seek humility in EVERY area of our life because God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

We must be teachable before both God and man.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matt 5:3)

We must acknowledge that we are in great need of help to sustain wholeheartedness. And seek to be people of meekness, humility, having a servant heart and not boasting in our own knowledge or our own talents.

“To be humble to superiors is duty, to equals courtesy, to inferiors nobleness.” - Benjamin Franklin