Passage
[James 3:17-18]
“But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”
[Proverbs 9:10]
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”
Introduction
If you have two televisions and two programs that you want to watch, can you watch them together?
You might understand the contents of each program to some extent switching your attention from one to the other.
But one thing is certain. While you are watching one program, you cannot watch the other one.
It’s the same with studying and idle thoughts.
You cannot have both the contents of your studying and idle thoughts in your head at the same time.
You can accept only one of them.
Then, what would you choose?
School life during which you can study as much as you can lasts only for a short period of time.
Especially, if you have some entrance exam, you don’t have much time.
In case of grown adults, if they want to study, they don’t have enough time either unless studying is their job.
You do not have any other choice.
So, you should quickly drive away idle thoughts from your head and replace it only with knowledge that is beneficial for you.
These days, your knowledge is your asset and property.
I pray in the name of the Lord that you will constantly accumulate knowledge that is beneficial for you.
Main
This is the sixth session on the Keys to Studying Well.
Today, continuing from the last session, let us talk about the third condition to study well, which is the ability to concentrate on your studies.
What are the major idle thoughts that disturb you students?
They are thoughts about the worldly things.
In the last session, we talked about two cases where the world things turn into your idle thoughts.
First, curiosity towards the worldly things gives rise to idle thoughts. Second, your desire to have the worldly pleasure and enjoy yourself causes idle thoughts.
But these idle thoughts are caused by not only lustful things of the world.
Some students lose the peace of mind and have idle thoughts because of untruthful emotions.
For example, suppose your best friend suddenly stops talking to you, and she hangs around with only other friends.
You think like, “What is going on with her? Is she mad at me? How can she do that to me? She was whispering something to another girl looking at me, and she must have said something bad about me.” You get a headache, and the contents of the book you are reading will not be remembered at all.
In fact, you are worried about something that is not even a certainty. You are also judging your friend.
These kinds of fleshly thoughts come up to your mind and you cannot concentrate.
Also, some students quarrel with their parents before they study every time.
They sit at the desk because their parents force them to.
But they keep on having thoughts of complaints towards their parents.
All the untruthful emotions such as hatred, complaints, and resentments are giving birth to idle thoughts like, “Why does mom always talk about studying? Why does she have to do it so often? She doesn’t try to understand me.”
Dear brothers and sisters, by the way, there are some parents who say their children used to get good grades, but their grades fell after they began to attend church.
Today’s reading passage Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.”
How is it possible that their grades fall after coming to have faith in God?
But the fact is there are some students whose grades actually fall.
There are two main cases for this.
One is they have worries in the Lord.
Even though the students are young, when they accept the Lord and listen to the word of God, they learn about the sin, righteousness, and judgment.
As their faith grows up, they realize their sins and cast them off.
In this process, they will have the afflictions in heart.
They might have fierce battle in their heart, too.
Because of this they lose their concentration on their studies and their grades fall.
Their grades also fall on top of having afflictions in heart, and they suffer in heart even more.
In this kind of a case, I hope the parents and Sunday school teachers will understand their hearts and pray for them with appropriate counseling.
Even though they are under trials for a moment, if they keep on praying and try to have spiritual thoughts, they can have peace of mind.
They might find it hard at the moment, but as they keep up the fight against affliction and cast off the sins, they can cast them off faster than the adults can.
As they cast off flesh, their concentration power will increase and they can do better in their studies.
But in most cases, the grades of the students fall because of the next reason.
They attend church, but their mind is not focused on faith.
For example, they come to church to meet their boyfriends or girlfriends, or after the church meeting is over, they should go to study but they just hang out with their friends.
They neglect their studies saying that they are going to the church.
Then, their grades will fall.
Those who come to church with their love for God and faithfulness will also study hard.
They understand that it is the will of God to be faithful in all God’s house.
With the strength of the Lord these students can catch two hares at once, one which is ‘life in faith’ and the other is ‘studying’.
Now, let me explain three ways to get rid of your idle thoughts.
In order to drive away idle thoughts, I said that you have to find the cause and remove it.
The source of idle thoughts is after all, the knowledge and feeling of untruth.
Therefore, if you cast off all untruths in your heart and go into spirit, you can get rid of all idle thoughts completely.
But even though you are still in the process of going into spirit, you can block the idle thoughts to the extent that you remove the knowledge and feelings of untruth from your memory device.
To be more specific, first of all, you have to keep yourself away from the things that give you untruths.
Even though you get rid of untruths from yourself, it is useless if you keep on inputting untruth in you.
Therefore, you must not see, hear, or speak anything that is of untruth.
Of course, you cannot close your eyes and ears in this world.
Also, even if you do that, you cannot cut off all the untruths coming from the world.
How brilliant are the streets that you pass by every day?
Nevertheless, you students try your best not to come in contact with the untruths of the world.
For example, you students are trying not to watch TV and not to use computers for fleshly purposes as a part of the New Jerusalem movement.
It’s because untruthful things come into you mostly through TV and computers.
So, if you just keep away from these two things, the amount of untruths in your memory device will be reduced.
Of course, there are some good and educational TV programs.
But there are far more programs of worldly entertainment.
They also show the things that can catch the eyes of people to increase their viewer ratings.
Then, if they go to the extreme, the contents become suggestive and provocative.
Also because the culture of the world is becoming more and more immoral, there is a lot of violence and sexual things on TV.
Some people even call TV a boob tube or idiot box because it is so unbeneficial.
They say if you watch TV too much, your thinking ability will not develop.
You will also waste a lot of time, which can be spent for studying.
Also, watching TV is not good for the health of little children and teenagers who are growing up.
Their eyesight will become bad, and if they are exposed to electromagnetic waves of the TV too much, they might have precocious puberty (at the age of 7-8).
Computers are in many ways harmful, too.
You can use it for Internet classes or for an encyclopedia, but there are a lot more untruthful things.
If you cannot keep your heart, it is better not to use it at all.
If you have to use it for homework, you should use it in the presence of your parents. You can also use other materials that are substitutes for computers, such as newspapers or books.
Of course, life can be quite inconvenient if you do not use computers nowadays.
So, I hope you students will quickly gain the ability to control your minds.
Then, you can use the computers only for good purposes.
