It would have been of great help to me. I kept hearing about the wonders of it and got more curious as time went along. People were sleeping with textbooks under their pillows, others slept with the textbook on tape, playing in their ears as they slept, plus other, zanier methods. As tempted as I was, I never tried it myself, but, man, I’m sure it would have done amazing things for my Chemistry grades if I’d tried at least one of the various methods of learning by osmosis. The dream was to wake up and have a full working knowledge of those endless and incomprehensible Laws and their equally inscrutable formulae, or awkward terms like glycol, reaction, ionic bond, or, how about stoichiometry. The 28% I received on a midterm was the final nail in my future science career’s coffin, and the wake-up call that ultimately afforded me three free study classes a week.
So much for ‘You can be whatever you want to be,’ ‘You can do anything if you put your mind to it,’ and other such Pollyanna phrases. There are some intermediate steps that are determining factors, I think. Our brains are fascinating in their capacity to perform multitudinous tasks, but they are not unlimited. Our job is to trust our Creator, allowing Him to guide us.
1 Corinthians 2:9, TPT, (taken from Isaiah 64:4) says: ‘Things never discovered or heard before, things beyond our ability to imagine – these are the many things God has in store for all his lovers. But God now unveils these profound realities to us by the Spirit.’
I think of poor Job being interrogated for several chapters by a probing, slightly tongue-in-cheek, Omniscient God. Finally, Job surrenders: ‘ . . . I was talking about things I knew nothing about, things far too wonderful for me . . . I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.’ Job 42:2,6, NLT.
So, can we know everything there is to know? It’s a remote possibility, I guess, but that’s way above my Chemical paygrade. I think I’ll content myself with attempting to follow the leading of the Spirit. It’s keeping me (and the Spirit) plenty busy. PD
Don graduated from Regent University in 1988 and moved to France for seven years, coming back to the US briefly to marry Sue in 1990. The work in France included working in a Christian School and helping plant a church before returning in 1995. He’s been pastor of Peninsula Vineyard since 1999. He enjoys counseling, especially married couples, traveling back to France (with Sue), reading, doing Sudoku puzzles and sleuthing out good, dark chocolate. Don serves as the senior pastor of the Vineyard Church Peninsula, in Newport News, Virginia.