Chapter 42 - Teaching

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Prov. 22:6) I have learned a lot of things you parents don’t know. Your proximity hinders you. Does it say ‘tell’ a child what he should do, and when he is old, he will not depart from it? It does not say ‘tell’ a child, for you can tell a child ten thousand times, but the telling has to take another step. It is not in the telling. If you tell Tommy to do something, and he doesn’t do it, see to it that he does, even if you have to let the beans burn on the stove. You told him an hundred times, but you didn’t see to it that he did it once! See to it that he does it the once. It will save you the ninety-nine times. Take time.

Here are the three “T’s”:

TELL,

TEACH,

TRAIN.

He moves from the first “T” which is to tell; then he must be taught the thing which has been told him. The telling is not the teaching. Did you give him a lesson in the things you told him? Some day he will be really vexed with you because you didn’t teach him. He will say, “Why didn’t you ever correct me on that?” After he has been taught the thing which he has been told, he has to be trained in the thing, In other words, he has to be trained in the thing he has been taught, in the thing he has been told, by everlasting drilling, and training, which should follow the lesson, which has been once learned; or else he will have lost the application, if he has not been drilled, and trained in the lesson which he first learned.

God’s method is the same in the school of the Holy Spirit. He takes us up, as pliable material, to build personalities in God; men and women in God Who know spiritual life and values, The HOLY SPIRIT dwells in us as a great Tutor Who instructs us in the great university.

A pianist first has to be told a lot. He may have the potential possibilities first, but all the knowledge which he has about that music, doesn’t make him a great pianist. It gives him the equipment necessary, but all the lovely values have never come out yet. He must learn by a lesson, and be taught the scales first. Then he has to be drilled and trained in the lesson he has learned.

The word education comes from: e = “out, evacuate,” duco = “to leave”; acqua = “velvet water, smooth, aqueduct, watering duct, leading out into”. He is not educated until that knowledge has come down into livable portions. How does he know how to act in certain circumstances? Education is to “lead out.” It is unto a purpose. He has his head all filled with a lot of facts, but he is not yet educated. That which he has received has never acquired an adequate expression in life. Education involves a process. The telling; the lessons; growth; training involves doing and executing.

Telling is the storing up; teaching, its power; training makes the doing substance; “that he can’t depart from it.” It makes it a part of his life; there is no separation. It is a part of him. It is not something he heard, for he can slip away from that. If he doesn’t learn his lessons faithfully, he forgets them. So training is unto the doing—the application.

Jesus went up and down the country telling the good news. He told everybody; multitudes heard Him, but all the multitudes, having heard that glorious Truth, were not wonderful spiritual people just because they were told. “He spoke not to the multitude but by a parable.” They had the multitude power, capacity, and receptivity. But when He was alone, “He expounded all things to His disciples.” A disciple is a taught-one. All Christians who are saved are not disciples. A disciple requires qualification. “. . . And seeing the multitude, He said: If any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” Take up the cross which will kill the old creation, lest it would hinder the new creation. Disciples are called-out ones from the believing multitude; they are taught and disciplined. They can be disciplined in very many measures aside from using a stick! “For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, child-trains, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” (Heb. 12:6)—(See also Prov. 15:5, 31, 32; 13:18-24; 19:1-8; 22:15; 23:12, 14; 29:15)