A Teachable Heart
“Let my cry come before You, O LORD; give me understanding according to Your word.”
Psalm 119:169 (NKJV)
Welcome to a new month.
I believe September can be a month where we do more than simply hear the Word of God. Hearing is not difficult. Most of us have heard a great deal. The question is whether we will let what we hear teach us, correct us and change us.
That requires something we do not talk about often enough: a teachable heart.
The psalmist prays, “Let my cry come before You, O LORD; give me understanding according to Your word.” Look at the two halves of that prayer. First, he cries out. He is not casual about this; he is desperate. And second, he asks for understanding according to God’s Word, not according to his own preference. He is not asking God to agree with him. He is asking to be taught.
Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible, and it is entirely about the Word of God. What strikes me every time I read it is how often the writer asks to be taught. “Teach me Your statutes.” “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law.” “Give me understanding.” Here is a man who clearly knows Scripture well, and his constant prayer is that he might understand it better. That is what a teachable heart sounds like.
Now let me say something honestly. It is entirely possible to read the Bible and never be taught by it.
We come to a passage already knowing what we think, and we read looking for confirmation. We find the verses that support the position we already hold and skim past the ones that unsettle us. We read about other people’s sins with great clarity and our own with remarkable vagueness. James warns about exactly this: a man who looks at himself in a mirror, walks away, and immediately forgets what he looks like (James 1:23-24). The mirror worked. The man did not.
A teachable heart asks different questions. Not, “How does this support what I already believe?” but, “Lord, what are You showing me? What needs to change in me?”
And this is where the Holy Spirit does His work. Notice carefully: He does not replace the Word of God. Jesus called Him the Spirit of truth, and He always leads us deeper into the truth He inspired, never around it or away from it. What He does is open our understanding, so that Scripture moves from the page into the life. Paul prays that the eyes of our understanding would be enlightened (Ephesians 1:18). That is not a request for new revelation. It is a request for sight.
Sometimes He comforts us with a passage. Sometimes He challenges us. And sometimes He shows us something in a verse we have read fifty times and never actually seen.
Now let me guard something, because a teachable heart can be counterfeited in two directions.
The first counterfeit is the person who is unteachable and calls it conviction. They have decided, and no passage, no counsel and no correction will move them. That is not faithfulness; it is pride wearing sound doctrine as a coat.
The second counterfeit is the person who is endlessly teachable and never settled, blown about by every new teaching, unable to stand on anything. Paul warns about being “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine” (Ephesians 4:14). Teachability is not the absence of conviction. It is the willingness to bring your convictions back to Scripture and let Scripture have the final word.
And here is the deepest reason to be teachable. It is not because we are unsure of the truth. It is because we have been loved by a God who did not leave us as He found us. Christ did not die merely to forgive us and then leave us unchanged. Ephesians 5:26 says He gave Himself for the church, “that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word.” The Word is the instrument He uses to make us like Himself. To resist being taught is to resist the very thing His death purchased for us.
So how do we begin September teachable?
Come humbly. Before you read, pray the psalmist’s prayer: give me understanding according to Your word. That short sentence changes the posture of a reading.
Come expecting to be corrected, not only comforted. If nothing in your Bible reading ever makes you uncomfortable, it is worth asking whether you are reading or merely browsing.
Come ready to obey. Understanding is not the finish line. Jesus said the wise man is the one who hears His words “and does them” (Matthew 7:24). Truth received and not acted on hardens rather than helps.
And come consistently. A teachable heart is not a mood you summon on a good morning. It is a habit formed over a month, a year, a lifetime.
A teachable heart can go places that talent alone will never reach. Gifting may open a door, but only humility will keep you in the room.
Let me give you one more picture of what teachability looks like, because it is easily confused with agreeableness.
In Acts 17 Luke describes the believers at Berea as “more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.” Notice both halves of that commendation. They received readily, and they searched carefully. They were not cynical, and they were not gullible. They took Paul seriously enough to check him against Scripture, and Luke calls that noble.
That is the balance. A teachable heart is eager and it is careful. It does not swallow everything, and it does not resist everything. It brings what it hears back to the Word and lets the Word decide.
So start this month hungry to learn. Open the Word, listen carefully, stay humble, and let God shape you one truth at a time.
Prayer
Father, let my cry come before You. Give me understanding according to Your Word, not according to my preferences. Forgive me for the times I have read Scripture looking for agreement rather than instruction. Make me genuinely teachable this month: humble enough to be corrected, settled enough not to be blown about, and willing to obey what You show me. Holy Spirit, open my eyes to see what I have read many times and never truly seen. Shape me one truth at a time. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Declaration
I come to God’s Word to be taught, not merely to be confirmed. A teachable heart will take me where talent never could.
Pastor Ras
All Nations Community Church
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