Video Transcript: Study and Complete Quizzes

So today we're back to talk about the actual discipline, devotion, of study and ability to  complete quizzes at Christian Leaders Institute. You know, as I think about it, I wish I had  some of this before I went off to college and seminary. Yeah, me too, because I had, I don't  think I was ever taught any of it, how to take notes, how to take quizzes, how to study, how to do anything, you're just on your own, do what you can, and I probably learned, I mean, I  learned what worked for me. I don't know if it was the best in terms of learning, right? Trial  and error. You know, I learned how to study for the test, but not study for life. Right. So I'm  looking forward to this lecture right here. So let's talk about that. So what is study at CLI? Now the definition of study is the devotion of time and attention to acquire knowledge on  academic subjects we talked about every with as an academic environment, by means of CLI  correspondence courses. So first of all, what is study? Is the devotion to something you  actually it's an enterprise. It's an endeavor. What's the word Devotion means? It's one of  those church words? Yes. It? Would it how would you describe devotion? Well, do your  devotions is something that you do every day, in a sense, you open the Word of God. And you we, we, we had lunch today, and we opened up the Bible, my wife, I and you, and it was a  time of devotions where we're devoted to the Word of God. So I might be devoted to my wife,  which means I sort of honor her. To give my time and my attention to a little bit, yeah, well,  there's a little sacredness to it, right? That just giving time and attention, there's a sacred  giving time and attention. Now this definition, by the way, is the general definition in a  dictionary. Interesting, they use the word devotion. So it's first of all devotion of time.  Ecclesiastes 3:11, he has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also said eternity in  the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from the beginning to the end,  what does that mean to you? Again, I think we touched on the earlier that will have so much  time, right? In some ways, whatever you give your time to, is what you're devoted to. Right?  Ooh, is what you're honoring. It's what you're worshiping, in a way, right. So if you give all of  your time to television, playing cards, video games, whatever it might be, then that's what  you're worshiping. Right? And you're hoping that somehow those things are gonna do  something for you. Right? So I think you want like give yourself towards giving yourself  something that's going to outlast your life, which is that eternity part, you know, that idea of  give yourself, I'm glad you brought that up, I find that unless I give myself to something, I  won't do it. Right. So devotions has that understanding of devotion, are you going to do it or  you're not going to do it right. Here's the next thing is devotion of time and devotion of  attention. My son, Proverbs 5:1, pay attention to my wisdom, listen well, to my words of  insight. What's attention? Attention? Hey, listen, are you listening? No, you're looking over  there, and you're talking to your friend. Right? I think it's, it's giving some focus to something. Yeah, a lot of times I think if you look at really successful people, they gave attention to  whatever they were trying to do, right. They focus and I just finished the whole documentary  on Michael Jordan. He was like, totally, this is the thing in fact he could not stand hanging  around people that didn't have that same focus. You know, we attention this is what it is. And  I don't know if he was the greatest athlete the world has ever seen, but He certainly had a  focus of attention on what he really wanted to do. My wife was a homeschool teacher for 14  years. And I watched how she like, what, how she taught our children. And one of the things  she would say again, again, see what you see. Don't see what you think you see. And her  point was attention listen to what you read. Don't let your mind crowd in and in, interprete it  apart from the words that are on the paper, discipline your mind to see what you see.  acquiring knowledge. In Proverbs 13:16, every prudent man acts out of knowledge. But a fool  exposes his folly. Yeah, in some ways, it takes a certain amount of humility to learn. Right? I  mean, it's interesting. You're saying you don't know. Something? I mean, when you when you  start a thing, of course, of course of your study, you're saying, I don't know something? And  that's humbling, right? We do we, I mean, in a conversation. I don't want to act like I don't  know what you're talking about. Right? Then you're you have a leg up on me. Right? Right. So we usually people, when they start talking, they kind of outdo one another, right. But then  you never learn anything. I mean, you feel important. Like, you know, I'm a big shot, because  I know more than you. But at the end of the day, you don't know any more than you did the  day before. Right? So being a learner and taking pride in your ability to learn is a whole 

mindset that, you know, for some of you, it might be a shift, that you have to start making  instead of taking pride in knowing it all. Take pride in learning it. All. Right, not being the  answer women or the answer, man, what's the situation? What can I learn today? What can I  learn from you? What can I learn from this situation? What can I learn from this course? That I  that can be helpful? For others? You really learning how to be a curious person. Yes. Yeah, that their world is so filled with so many things. And you know, whether you do anything with it or  not, isn't that just interesting? Yeah, electricity. How does that work? Right computers, my son does programming and I'll sit and watch him like, Go, work powerful. You know, we're taking  apart an old car 1968 Datsun roadster, we get the body off the other day. And, you know, he  knows, my son knows all about, you know, where the things are bolted in. And just fascinated  with it. I'm watching your son in law and the other room. He's putting the tile down. Right.  And he had, he has the system of these clips. And you know, so I lost him for five minutes  about well, how do these clips work? How do they you know, one broke off? And he said it was because of this and then he changed it up? Am I going to ever tile I don't know. But the whole  thing is just fascinating. I will not look at our tiled floor in the same way, right? The five  minutes that I invested today will change the way I look at all floors for the rest of my life. It  only cost me five minutes, the idea starts acquiring knowledge. So at Christian Leaders  Institute, these are correspondence courses given to you which include lectures, and you're  seeing one right now, digital readings which you've already read, self correcting quizzes with  grades which you've already observed. And it's adult education, transferable credentials, and  which Christian Leaders College will recognize. So probably I should explain what I mean by  that. So in the whole world of accreditation in college and all that there are standards 22-24  standards of US Department of Education, recognized accreditation and accredited learning.  And we are at Christian Leaders Institute, a correspondence school programs course, it means that the classes just go right to you. You take them on your own. Your own time, you have to  show up at 11 o'clock on Monday to get this like no and your own time. Now, here's some  things. You're not talking to other students. This was just you and the Steve and I today and  the quizzes and the information. And as you complete this as on your own initiative, you  receive Award Level credits for Christian Leaders Institute, but Christian Leaders Institute is  part of Christian Leaders College. And these are college classes. And these classes transfer  over to Christian Leaders College. So your, your, your certificate course that you take here  can be a college accredited college course that you don't have to take again, right, you've  already taken it in a way, it just gets counted as something different. Yeah. Because when you go into the college, there's all sorts of things like high school transcripts and all that which we  have ways for you to work with that correspondence learning that you mentioned, certificates, certificates, as we call them awards, or the state of Michigan wants us to call them awards.  And that's great. But they are more than awards. They're award in our minds award  credentials. And you're going to see that you have you can go through different credentials to  get different awards. And all of that means a lot, because you are completing college level  studies. So learning is about specific topics. So you actually are going to study topics. So let's  look at what is study topics study. And it's in what is the detailed investigation and analysis of  a subject or situation. Oh that sounds heavy. detailed investigation, I sort of think of that one  learning thing where you talk about the journey. You know, it's the last thing you're on a  journey is you're trying to find something. Right, right, a detailed investigation and analysis of a subject or situation. How do you How did that work for you, when you study a topic? You just mentioned about flooring? But if you're going to study something, do you think of it that way? That is that you're actually in a dive into this? Yeah, I think I think, you know, the world is filled with 1000s of topics of enterprises. What are they called? I don't know whether the mind the  memory, mind and the your mind. It's, in a lot of times we think about, you know, if we hadn't become ministers, what would Yeah, we've done that. And so we play the game. Well, it'd  been fun to be a lawyer, right, but have been fun to be. So those are, those are all topics. And each one of them has its own jargon, its own words, it's own definitions, its own, how it all  works. Its own game. It's like if you learn football, it's got its own rules. When you get a  basketball, it's similar, but it's got different rules. And all of life is exactly like that you go to a  playground, it's got its own rules. Doesn't matter where you go, you know, what we're talking 

about, even where you're at, there's things that have its own rules of how it operates. And a  newbie comes in, and he has no clue about any of that. And he's lost. And he has to learn the  ropes and years to learn a zone or someone takes them under their wing and shows them the  way. So what's cool, I remember when I went to college, they gave us a big book. And it was  all the courses that the college offered, right. And then if you took these 10 courses, you  could become a lawyer. If you did these, you could become a teacher, right? You think these  you can become a music person, if you took this, you can become a biologist. And I remember just paging through the thing going, this is the most amazing thing in the world. I just have to  go through this book, and pick out what I want. And I can become something. I don't have to  do anything else. I don't have to go out and get it. I just become this thing by just taking  these courses. It was it was like I thought it was like magic. It is magic. Well, I see. So the  different topics when you read that big book. It was still why there's an old Sunday school  song deep and wide, deep and wide. There's a fountain flowing deep and wide. When you  actually take a course. What happens next is you dive deep, you delve deep into the subject  area for investigation, you will encounter the problems. You learn how people have come up  with possible solutions and at Christian Leaders Institute you will see the biblical perspective.  So as your each topic that you get in, you dive in the deep side a little bit. Yes. And and, and  that's in some ways the point we've all heard of all these different topics. We just don't know  how they work. And you know, when you have a topic you don't know that well. It's a big  mystery and there's something fun about that. But then once you go in it quickly, I remember  taking Hebrew, I remember looking at the characters of the Hebrew words and language. And  when I looked at it, it was just I can, it was just chicken scratches, it was just lines going every which way. I could not see anything. Okay, then one day, I took my first class, and we had to  learn the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. So you sit with these cards, within two hours, I could  not look at a Hebrew page and see chicken scratches anymore. It's all letters. I could not go  back in, in two hours I went from this is just modern art to I see letters. And I can I can never  go back. Right? And it happened in two hours. Wow. So that's what's exciting about going in  deep is very quickly, you get to a level that you you you couldn't imagine before you did it. So what often happens, as you study is that you learn how to do analysis, learn how to analyze  data, and other evaluations of the data. Interesting, right? So you, you learn how to think  critically about things and what is thinking critically, it's not just being negative about  something, right? In the academic world, we talk about thinking critically, you're thinking  deeply, you're not just taking something at face value, the person contracts, you know,  evaluation really, right. And the end in the academic world, you don't just just because  someone says something doesn't mean it's true, Right it just because you read something  doesn't mean that what is read is a true thing. Right? And that, you know, we see that in our  world today, false narratives and everyone, some of them lying and all of that. It's true about  all thinking that you have to evaluate things, you have to look for the evidence for something, someone just says something. Right? Well, what's the evidence for that? Well, it's just is, it's  just the way life is? No, if you can't tell me if you can't back it up with some evidence, you  know, reasons why you think it, then how do I you know, I'm not just going to accept it just  because you said it, exactly. So wrapping this up, study is really an inquisitive journey. It's a  curious journey. And as you go through the material and take notes, and in assignments, say  readings, there is a live discussion about no taking the quiz, taking it, we're not going to get  into all that today. In fact, in this class, you can take the quizzes more than once. So we want  you to get a good onboarding on taking quizzes and all of that, please take it more than once. Oh, yeah, just this is in a way your practice. Yeah, get it get your a one credit to get an A, this  is 100%. A and a lot of ways. That's what we're we want you to do, we want you to succeed.  And we want you to take the quizzes more than once to learn how to take notes. And all of  those things help you and develop an academic journal. Notice I'm using the word academic,  you know, chronicle what's happening with your life in your study, and dive deep into  different topics. And sometimes, again, notice what he said, Dive, what is that metaphor? It's  a metaphor, because dives. All of a sudden we're swimming when I was swimming, but it it's a metaphor that helps us get the point. Yes. And when you dive deep, I believe many people  find their calling. They often realize this is who I am. And I never knew it will never realize 

that. I guess that's what's behind everything. What we're saying right here is you don't know  your full potential yet. You don't know what God has in mind for you yet. You're on the you're  on the cusp of this whole discovery thing. And there's nothing more fun than that. I'm excited  for you. I mean, in some ways, let's say maybe you think you've wasted your life to this point. You know what? It just means you have the best still ahead. Yes, you haven't peaked too early. You haven't peaked too early and all that discovery. Potential is still right there in front of you.  

Yes. So we conclude by saying, enjoy studying, own studying, dive deep into studying. Make  studying part of your habits we talked about that make it part of your time management.  Makes study something you look forward to something that you're want or want that you give  yourself to devote yourself you devote yourself To study so we're excited for you and we ask  that God will bless you on this curious journey