• Our discipleship suffers because often we do not view study as a foundational ingredient of our becoming disciples. Instead of making disciples — who study the law of the Lord and observe it — we seek to make followers, which has different, and often error-based, implications.
• Some Christians segregate study from spirituality, fearing that study erodes one’s relationship with God and seeing a conflict between the head (study) and the heart (the seat of one’s true relationship with God).
• Just as an aside: while we identify the “heart” with emotions, passions, and deep feelings, in the Bible, the “heart” was actually associated with the mind and learning (biblical people assumed the emotions lay in the kidneys). So, when the Bible calls on us to love God with our heart, it means to love God with our mind, our learning, and our study. 
• Jesus indicated that the way one truly becomes like Him is by being “fully taught,” meaning that we study and practice His teaching. Jesus also said that the proof of our love for Him depends on our keeping of His commandments (John 14:15), not how we feel about Him.
• If we are going to be true disciples of the Lord like Ezra, we must set our hearts to study the law of the Lord, which leads us to do it, and as we become fully taught — studying and doing — we can educate and influence others. The Great Commission Jesus gave His disciples was to “make disciples.”
• How can we make disciples (students) if we aren’t studying and doing the commands of the Lord ourselves? In order to disciple, we must first be disciples, and the way to do that was shown to us by Ezra the scribe: study the law of the Lord, do it, and teach others.