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.”
This is the second session on the ‘Keys to Studying Well’.
Before getting into the actual keys to studying well, we dealt first with the purpose of studying and why you have to study in the initial session.
We study for our own happiness.
For those of us who believe in the Lord, our happiest moments are when we give glory to God.
If you study to give glory to God, you will be happy and joyous as you study.
God gives you joy, and He will return the glory to us when we give glory to Him.
He will raise you up and both praise and fame will follow you.
Furthermore, He will lead you into prosperity and answer the desires of your heart.
You can find joy in studying hard for you can feel a sense of achievement.
In case of the students, their title is ‘student,’ and their duty is to study.
If you give glory to God by studying hard, beautiful rewards will be stored up in Heaven.
Students, do you now realize why you have to study-
You can have the eagerness to study when you understand the purpose of studying first.
You would then want to get better grades.
Beginning today let’s start looking into the actual keys to studying well.
Proverbs 22:29 says, “Do you see a man skilled in his work- He will stand before kings; He will not stand before obscure men.”
I hope not just the students, but other members as well will apply these keys to studying well in your daily lives and earn recognition from others. I pray in the name of the Lord that in the future you will stand before the Lord, the King of kings, in New Jerusalem.
[Main]
Dear students of Manmin, and parents, you cannot excel in your studies with your zeal only.
There are conditions that need to be met in order to excel academically.
As parents, you have to be especially mindful and be aware of these conditions.
You often think your children can do well if they try, but you think they are not trying hard enough, thinking that they lack the willpower to study hard.
But if you just scold them and force them to study, your actions are likely to have adverse effects.
In order for your children to be able to study well, you first have to diagnose the situation.
Medical doctors diagnose the patient before giving them any treatment or medicines.
Likewise, if the students are not doing well, you should first find the reason and make appropriate changes.
Among the conditions that must be met to excel in studies, let us first consider some of the conditions that can apply to all students.
The first condition necessary to excel in academics is appropriate intellectual power.
It is often called IQ, intelligence quotient.
It tells us about the functioning of the brain.
They measure some of the functions of the brain and put various ratings on them, and the result is an IQ, or intelligence quotient.
Then, why do we need good IQ to be able to study well-
Comparing it with farming, IQ is like the seed.
The fruit will be different according to the kind of the seed.
If you sow the seeds of watermelon that is big and sweet, you are more likely to harvest sweet and large watermelons, and if you sow seeds of watermelon that is small and not as sweet, the harvest is likely to yield such watermelons.
So, the farmers try their best to choose only good seeds and store them well until they sow them.
In genetics, they say that heredity factors count for 50% in part to the IQ.
Namely, IQ is somewhat of an innate attribute.
Just as it is likely that a good seed will bear good fruit, it is also likely that you will excel in your studies when you have an IQ that is higher than a certain level.
IQ tests the following areas: memory power, numeracy, perceptive power, reasoning power, space perception, and the faculty of speech.
All these abilities are some part of the brain’s function, but they are absolutely necessary for studying.
For this reason, if you have a higher IQ, you can expect that you should have higher learning skills.
So, most people would want their IQ or their children’s IQ to be high.
But not everybody can have high IQs.
As the quality of the seeds from one watermelon to another is different, all people have different IQs.
This means people have different learning abilities.
Let us look into a document where education scholars have categorized studying ability of children into 8 levels.
They divide the IQ into 8 levels, and the highest bracket, which is above 140, accounts for only 0.7% of the population, which is less than one person of 100 people.
The next bracket, from 130-139 is also a high level, which accounts for 2 or 3 out of 100.
With this level of IQ, they should be able to receive a higher level of education than most other children.
The next bracket from 120-129 accounts for 7-8 out of 100, and they are relatively smarter than other children.
110-119 is mid-high level, which is a little better than the most common or average child.
90-109 accounts for the most children, about 46.8% of the whole population, which is the most common level of IQ.
It is said that they are capable of the development of an intellectual level that is average or common in their age group.
From 80-89 is a little slower in the development of their intellectual level, but they have enough intellectual possibility to be better.
7-8 children out of 100 belong to 70-79 range, and they need special attention in their education.
About 3 out of 100 belong to less than 70, and they have possibility of mental weakness, and they need the attention of experts.
This is the categorization made by the experts on children, but we cannot say they are absolutely correct.
Nowadays, they have new ways to measure intellectual levels.
Different testing methods and different countries have different ways of rating, so we cannot apply these kinds of figures to everybody.
What we can understand for sure is that people have different learning skills according to the IQ.
They attend the same class in the same classroom, but some students understand the class very well while others can understand it only after learning it repeatedly.
Those with good memory power will not forget the class they attended just once, while some others forget it easily.
Among those who are in the same learning environment, those with higher IQ are likely to do better in their studies.
Therefore, the parents should make demands of their children only in accordance with their personal levels.
If your child has a lower IQ or when they are a little slower in developing their intellectual power, you must not scold them saying they are not trying hard enough. You must not compare other children with your children either.
They can develop a sense of inferiority, and they might come to hate studying.
But this does not mean you should give up on your children because they don’t have high IQs.
You students must not put the blame on your IQ when you don’t excel in your studies.
Dear students of Manmin, now, for those students with comparatively low IQs to study well, what do you have to do-
First, you can increase your IQ.
According to the research conducted by scholars, you can increase your IQ to some extent.
It can be increased during the growth stages, and if children are provided with a good environment and education, some children’s IQs increase.
Those students who believe in the Lord can increase their IQ with spiritual methods.
IQ is the functioning of the brain.
If you make your brain function well, you can increase your IQ.
What is the thing that makes all our cells function normally-
It is the seed of life.
The seed of life is the trace of the breath of life that God breathed into Adam.
Adam was very wise when he was filled with the breath of life.
Genesis 2:19 says, “Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.”
Adam was wise enough to name all the living creatures.
God created men with an exceptionally high intellectual ability.
After the fall of Adam, most of his breath of life was taken away, and we only have the trace of it. But once this seed of life is awakened and it functions actively through the Holy Spirit, the brain cells would also work at their best.
The seed of life will function very actively if you go into the whole spirit.
Even though you are not in spirit or whole spirit yet, the seed of life can function to the extent you are filled with the Holy Spirit, like when you use the handkerchief and Muan sweet water with power.
I hope you students and parents will rely on the power of the Lord and increase your IQs with faith.
The second method to study well even with relatively low IQ is to make use of your IQ to the fullest.
I said we can compare IQ with seeds.
Even the ordinary seeds, which are not the best of the quality, can produce good fruit if the farmer takes care of the crops after sowing them.
The farmer can bring the best quality out of the seeds that the seed can produce.
Here, the field refers to the heart of those who study.
Luke 8:15 says, “But the seed in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance.”
You can pull out the best of your ability if you study with good and faithful heart.
With the seed that can produce only 10 times, you can even produce 30 or 60 times more.
In fact, the required IQ to excel in academics is not that high.
What do you think is the IQ of the number 1 or 2 in each school-
People think they must have high IQs.
But according to some research many of them had ordinary IQs.
Some education scholars consider 115-125 to be the optimal IQ for studying.
Statistically, most students who are at the top level in schools have an IQ in this range.
There is some other interesting research.
A scholar named Lewis Terman observed children with high IQs throughout their lives.
He expected them to have great academic achievements and great success in the future.
But the results were very different.
Rather than those who had high achievements in studies and success in life, more of them had ordinary academic achievements and ordinary jobs.
Likewise, IQ is not the absolute condition in studying well.
if you just have an ordinary IQ, that is if the IQ is not extremely low, it is good enough to study well.
As in farming, everything beyond the influence of the seed is decided by how good a field is, and how diligent the farmer is. The same is true of the IQ.
No matter how smart you are, it is useless as long as your field is barren.
It might even become a disadvantage to that person.
For example, some of those children with high IQ have no interest in their studies because they are bored and it’s too easy, and they cannot adapt to the school life because they look down on education and other students.
Also, some of those who have high IQ concentrate on computer games and get addicted to them.
Some people have high IQ and try hard to become successful, but with that brain and position, they commit intellectual crimes.
This is a tragic end resulting from good IQ, which is good seed, combined with bad field, which is the heart.
For this reason, many in the fields of education talk about the importance of ‘character’ education.
Nowadays, new theories are rising saying that not only IQ but EQ (Emotional Quotient) and SQ(Spiritual Quotient) play important roles in academic achievements and success in life.
EQ is the emotional quotient, and it is similar to the intelligence quotient of our mind.
The first ability in measuring EQ is the ability to realize one’s own feelings, respect them and accept them. Second is the ability to control one’s impulse and other stressful feelings like nervousness and anger. Third is the ability to encourage oneself after a failure without getting discouraged. Fourth is the ability to sympathize with others’ feelings. Fifth is the social ability to maintain harmony in a group and to cooperate with others.
If you students make your field of heart into good soil, EQ will increase.
Even though your IQ is not very high, you can study well utilizing your IQ to the fullest degree.
The third method to study well even with a relatively low IQ is to find what the student is good at and develop their talents.
You don’t have to worry too much just because the student is not good at studies. You can find other talents of the students and allow for them to improve them.
Nowadays, they categorize men’s intelligence in more details in measuring it.
People have different strong points and weak points in their intelligence.
For example, there is a new concept called multiple intelligences.
The theory of multiple intelligence says that men’s intelligence does not consist of IQ alone but also many other kinds of intelligences.
Howard Gardner, who created this theory, added bodily kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic, and added them to the conventional IQ ability like the linguistic, logical mathematical and space perception abilities.
For example, according to this theory, those who are good at sports have higher levels of bodily kinesthetic talent.
Those who are interested in the living creatures like insects or birds have high level of naturalistic talent.
According to this categorization, poor performance in languages or mathematics does not directly mean low intelligence.
They can do other things comparatively better.
If you find the things that the students are good at and encourage them to develop such abilities, the children can develop interest in their studies.
But some parents demand that their children strive to become a judge or a medical doctor in order to fulfill their own dreams.
It would be so hard for the children if they do not want it, and if they don’t have enough talent or giftedness to become what the parents demand of them.
But this does not mean if you are good at sports or performing arts, you don’t have to study at all.
Basic knowledge is necessary in any area.
For example, you can communicate well with others with linguistic skills.
Also, those who are interested in science can study more deeply only with mathematical skills.
Those who are studying performing arts can utilize their creativity more greatly with knowledge in many areas.
Above all, they can gain faithfulness or sociality while they go to school.
Rather than studying only the subjects you like, it is wise to try one’s best in all the other areas as well.
Dear students and other brothers and sisters in Christ,
Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”
This is a confession that Solomon made in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
1 Kings 4:29-30 says, “Now God gave Solomon wisdom and very great discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the seashore. Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the sons of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt.”
And 1 Kings 4:32-33 says, “He also spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005. He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even to the hyssop that grows on the wall; he spoke also of animals and birds and creeping things and fish.”
Wisdom comes from God.
If you revere God, you can recover the excellent ability given by God originally and study very well.
I pray in the name of the Lord that you will increase your intelligence by pleasing God and cultivate your heart into good soil to excel in your studies.
