be active in your mind

be active in your mind when you read. you will not be able to feed yourself rich and challenging insight into God's word unless you become a disciplined thinker. but almost none of us does this by nature. we must train ourselves to do it. and one of the best ways to train ourselves to think about what we read is to read with pen in hand and to write down a train of thought that comes to mind. without this, we simply cannot sustain a sequence of questions and answers long enough to come to penetrating conclusions.


- john piper