There’s a funny commercial that I recently saw on Hulu. It was a video of Oprah essentially repeating the same thing over and over again. Here’s her script,
This is the joy for me. I LOVE bread. I LOVE bread. I now just manage it. So I don’t deny myself bread. I have bread everyday. I have bread everyday. That’s the genius of this program. I have lost 26 pounds and I have eaten bread every single day!
No, Oprah didn’t pay half a million dollars for these commercial spots just so that she could rant about her love for bread. This was a commercial for…you guessed it, Weight Watchers.
As cheesy as that commercial might be, I get it. When you love something, you just want to tell others about it. You want to proclaim it on the rooftops. And yes, while I do love bread, this post isn’t about ciabatta, focaccia, baguettes, or pretzel buns. This post is about learning.
I LOVE learning.
In the midst of loving and serving my wife and three children, a full-time job leading and running NewChurches.com, preaching at least twice a month at my church, hosting a twice-a-week podcast, writing my new book with B&H (No Silver Bullets), speaking about the book I just co-wrote with Ed Stetzer (Planting Missional Churches) and writing curriculum for Bible Studies for Life and The Gospel Project, I still carve time away to learn.
This is because I know that…
I love and hate this quote from Contemplative Prayer by Thomas Merton,
We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!
I hate that! I don’t want to be a beginner, I want to be an expert. But when I chew on the truth of those words, I realize the genius of it.
The moment we see ourselves as experts is the moment we allow pride to subtly seep into our lives.
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