Friday, September 25, 2026
Good morning from Colorado! As I wrap up this week’s conversation, I find myself thinking about a simple statement I learned in college: “The teacher will appear when the student is ready to learn.” Five days later, I’m realizing that perhaps the most important part of that statement isn’t the teacher at all. It’s the student.
We can spend our lives looking for the right people to teach us, waiting for someone with the right credentials, experience, title, or personality to offer us something worth knowing. But what if the greater question is whether we’ve made ourselves available to learn? A teacher can offer knowledge, wisdom, experience, and guidance, but none of it can reach us if we’ve already decided that we know enough.
That’s something worth considering as we grow older. We accumulate experiences, responsibilities, accomplishments, disappointments, and opinions. All of those things become part of who we are. But they can also create a sense of certainty that makes us less willing to reconsider what we believe. We can become so familiar with our own way of thinking that anything different feels wrong before we’ve even taken the time to understand it.
I’ve come to believe that remaining teachable is one of the quiet signs of maturity. It takes humility to admit we don’t know everything. It takes courage to reconsider something we’ve believed for years. And it takes wisdom to listen carefully without accepting everything we hear.
Being teachable doesn’t mean becoming a doormat. It doesn’t mean believing everyone who offers advice or letting someone else direct your life. We still need discernment. We still need boundaries. We still need to think for ourselves. But there is a great difference between being discerning and being closed.
A discerning person listens and then evaluates. A closed person has already decided there is nothing worth hearing.
That’s where I want to keep growing.
I don’t want to become so certain of what I know that I become blind to what I still need to learn. I don’t want yesterday’s experience to prevent me from recognizing today’s opportunity. And I certainly don’t want my feelings about a person to keep me from hearing something God may be trying to teach me through them.
Maybe that’s why this week’s lesson has stayed with me. The teacher may not look like a teacher. The lesson may not arrive in the form we expected. Our experience may tell us one thing while God is quietly showing us another. And sometimes the person we would rather ignore may say something that deserves our attention.
We don’t have to agree with everyone. We don’t have to accept every piece of advice. But perhaps we can become people who are willing to pause long enough to ask, “Is there something here for me?”
That question leaves room for God.
It leaves room for growth.
And it leaves room for the possibility that we haven’t finished becoming the person God is calling us to be.
I think that’s one of the beautiful things about getting older. We can look back and see how much we have learned while realizing how much remains ahead of us. The goal isn’t to know everything. The goal is to keep growing in wisdom, understanding, grace, and faith.
Perhaps the student I am today isn’t supposed to be the same student I was yesterday.
Maybe God is still teaching me because there are still places in my life where I need to grow.
And if that’s true, then I don’t want to graduate.
I want to remain a student.
The Takeaway for Us
This week has challenged me to look beyond the people and circumstances around me and examine my own willingness to learn. Being teachable doesn’t diminish what we already know. It gives us the opportunity to build upon it.
We don’t have to know where every lesson will come from. We simply need to remain open enough to recognize one when it arrives. The next lesson may come through a person, a conversation, an experience, a mistake, or a moment we almost overlooked.
So perhaps the question isn’t, “Who is going to teach me?”
Perhaps it’s, “Am I ready to learn?”
The Call to Action
Before you move into the weekend, think about an area of your life where you may have become too certain, too comfortable, or too familiar to remain open.
Is there someone you’ve stopped listening to? Is there an experience you’ve decided can only have one meaning? Is there something you’ve dismissed because it didn’t come from the person or place you expected?
You don’t have to change your mind today. Just make room to listen.
Take fifteen minutes with God and ask Him to reveal anything you’ve been too proud, too hurt, too comfortable, or too certain to learn. Then be quiet long enough to hear what He may be showing you.
Scripture
Proverbs 9:9 (KJV)
“Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser.”
That verse reminds me that wisdom isn’t a destination we finally arrive at. There is always room to increase our understanding.
If we are willing.
A Weekend Prayer
Father, thank You for every lesson You have placed along my journey, including the ones I didn’t recognize when they first appeared.
Give me a heart that remains teachable. Help me recognize when You are using a person, a circumstance, an experience, or even an uncomfortable moment to show me something I need to see.
Keep me from becoming so certain of myself that I stop listening. Keep my experiences from becoming walls around my heart. Give me discernment without making me closed-minded, wisdom without making me proud, and confidence without making me believe I have nothing left to learn.
Lord, remind me that I am still becoming.
There are lessons I haven’t learned yet, places I haven’t grown yet, and things about You that I have yet to understand. Help me welcome the next lesson instead of resisting it simply because it arrived differently than I expected.
And when the teacher appears, help me recognize the lesson.
More importantly, help me be ready to learn.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
Have a blessed weekend, and I’ll see you Monday for another 15 Minutes with God.
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