Think

Reading as Thinking 47
will be given” tells our brain (in this language system) that the gift is
the result of the asking.
Again, you probably are so well taught that seeing this required
almost no effort at all. You didn’t pause when you were reading and
say, “I just observed that ‘ask’ is the first word, and so this likely is an
imperative, and it is followed by a promise that God will give what
I ask, and so the promise is the result of the asking.” Your mind did
all that unconsciously. That’s good. That level of thinking is usually
easy. You have been well trained.
The Benefits of Deferred Gratification
In fact, we should pause here and remind ourselves that all training
is painful and frustrating on the way to skills that later become second
nature and lead to greater joy. The person who will not embrace
the pain and frustration will remain at lower levels of achievement
and joy. For example, learning to drive a car is tense. You have to
remember so many things at the same time, especially if the car
has a manual transmission—look both ways, take foot off accelerator,
apply brake, push in clutch, change gears, let out clutch, put on
blinker, turn wheel, push accelerator, and so on. It all feels uncertain
and scary. But if you give up, you will forfeit the joys of driving where
you please and being able to carry on a conversation while doing so,
which happens only when driving has become second nature.
So it is with piano playing, and fly casting, and throwing a ball,
and knitting, and learning a foreign language, and reading great
books. At one point these tasks were all difficult and awkward.
Learning the skill and practicing it was not fun. The joy is on the
other side of the hard work. This is basic to all growing up. Part of
maturity is the principle of deferred gratification. If you cannot
embrace the pain of learning but must have instant gratification, you
forfeit the greatest rewards of life.
So it is with reading the Bible. The greater riches are for those
who will work hard to understand all that is really there. There are