#Education

School days, school days, dear old golden rule days; reading and writing and 'rithmatic... There are years and dollars spent on getting an education.  Learning to listen and reason and memorize and put it all together is a good part of all the time spent going to school.  There are quizzes and tests and exams.  These are to be expected in order for you and the teacher to find out how much you have learned.

All this is not just to make groves in your brain, but that knowledge is to be put to use.  A doctor needs to know math besides anatomy and physiology.   An engineer needs to know chemistry as well as physics.  Acquiring knowledge is a life-long exercise to be put to use, not stored in a briefcase.

There may be times when you think, "Boy, I have got it." Those algebra formulas were a mystery, then you finally saw the light and knew you were going to get an 'A' on the upcoming exam, but the problem was worded just a bit differently and you missed it.  Time to go back to the book!

There have been so, so many times that I have thought I had it when it came to understanding myself or God's way, but when it came to 'where the rubber meets the road', I failed.  In the spiritual realm there is more required that putting book learning in your head. You can memorize the whole Bible and it do you not one whit of good.  You can read the Bible every day and still come out a looser.  It is to be used not just known.  The basic requirement for using it is a willingness to obey it.  Jesus said, in John 17:7 "If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God..."  If Jesus' teaching is of God, it needs to be obeyed. Jesus was chiding Jewish leaders for not having obeyed Moses' law.  They had this law for more than a thousand years and supposedly revered it, but they had not taken it personally and obeyed it.  They had not gotten it.  They just thought they had.  They failed the test.  They did not recognize Jesus as the one God had promised  to send in those books they had read and studied for years.

It is time to take God seriously. He reveals Himself in the Bible and discloses His way to us.  It is up to us to take it in and take it personally and put it to work.