Be teachable and correctable!

I’m guessing around 20 years ago my sister heard a message taught by TD Jakes at World Harvest in Columbus, Ohio and came home telling me that I needed to hear this message. I totally brushed off the comment and was like okay whatever and ignored it. So I went through my life forgetting about it. Probably 7 years ago she was getting rid of some old tapes and came across that tape of TD’s message and told me to take it. I smiled politely and said sure. Thinking I’m never going to listen to this and threw it in a box. Then about 5 years later I was surfing through the channels and the Christian channels was showing older messages and guess what? It was that same message my sister had been trying to get me to hear all those years earlier. You’d think I’d have paid attention, but I brushed it off. The next day the message was on again, and I was like “OK! I get the point, I’ll watch this teaching.” As the teaching unfolded it was revelation to me that I needed to hear. This word hit me in an area that I hadn’t even known I had issues. I finally got the old cassette tape out of the forgotten box and listened to the word again.

So many times we have this concept in order to hear from God we have to hear this audible voice, but we forget on a daily basis God orchestrates things around us to get us right where we need to be. Have you maybe noticed three people independently start talking about the same subject, or you keep going to the same scripture in the Bible? You have to discern these situations. Could it be that God is trying to show you something? We have to stop thinking that we know everything on our own, and remember we have to be teachable and correctable.

Proverbs 14:6 (Amp)
A scoffer seeks Wisdom in vain [for his very attitude blinds and deafens him to it], but knowledge is easy to him who [being teachable] understands.


We have to heed the wisdom around us, and stop thinking that we know everything. We have to realize that God often puts people in our lives to teach us things.

I’m reminded by a story I heard many years ago about a man who was on his roof praying for God to save him. There had been a flash flood and the water was rising. Soon, a man in a boat came by and asked if he needed a ride. “No” the man replied, “I’m waiting for God.” The man kept praying and praying, and in the heights of his frustration he heard a helicopter. Surely this is God the man thought. But when he saw it was just another man he declined the ride. Eventually that man died and in heaven he said to God, “I don’t get why you didn’t come and rescue me?” God sighed and responded I sent the man in the boat and I sent the man in the helicopter. You choose not to get rescued.”

Be a seeker of wisdom. Be teachable and correctable. Realize you don’t know everything. Just last week a decision came before Dan and I that is a big decision for us. As I spoke to a friend of mine he kept being reminded of a scene in a movie. Later I spoke to my pastor. The funny thing is he kept being reminded of a scene in the same movie. The next day I shared the situation with a friend who began to pray, and she began to pray that it would be like the scene in that same movie. Do I think all of this is coincidence? No. This time it’s not going to take me 15 years to hear what God is trying to get through to me. I already have that movie held at the library and as soon as it’s in I think Dan and I will set down and prayerfully watch it.

Be sensitive to what God is saying to you today. I’ll close this blog with a quote our associate pastor said today while preaching. It was a good word, and I thought you’d enjoy it. “Your destiny is determined by what you do with the difficult.” ~Pastor Chad