The Word.
Last night I went to my weekly Nav Bible study. This week we were studying verses related to the topic "The Word": 2 Timothy 3:16 and Joshua 1:8. For each verse, as I think I mentioned in a previous entry, we read the surrounding text to get a better idea of the context of each verse and then discuss the verses' implications. While we were discussing 2 Timothy 3:16 last night, I thought of a really cool metaphor.

The Word
2 Timothy 3:16

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.

So, we were talking about the significance of the order in which the 4 benefits of Scripture were listed. One of the girls in my study suggested that she thought it was odd for training to fall after rebuking and correcting.... when this popped into my head.

The order makes sense to me because you can view the usefulness of the Bible in the same way you view the usefulness of the classes we take here at college....
* Step 1: We go to class for the professor's lectures where he TEACHES us the material.
* Step 2: Then we're given homework or a quiz in which we get a chance to act on what we've been taught. The professor then REBUKES us for our mistakes when he grades this quiz or homework.
* Step 3: Next we have to go back on our own and see what we did wrong and CORRECT our mistakes and the way we approach the material in the future.
* Step 4: Finally, we have to TRAIN ourselves by studying and practicing, embedding the appropriate processes/material into our minds so that it becomes 'instinct'.

Its so easy to just stop after looking at the grade we get back from the homework and not worry about it until test time; but if we skip the intermediate steps of correcting our mistakes and training ourselves in the correct methods, then we won't be sufficiently prepared when it comes time for the test.