Frustration

Last evening my wife and I led the second week of our workshop, Parents Teach the Bible.  For the first two weeks of the workshop we are doing an overview of 2 Peter.  One of the people stopped me toward the end of the time and said that they were not getting it.  They felt like they were really struggling with the process.  They said they could get it in the group because of the input of the rest of the people but they were struggling with doing this on their own.

That is normal.  When ever we start something new.  When we have to learn a new skill, for a significant amount of time we, or at least I am, bad at it.  But we have to be bad before we are good at something.  You are expert at something.  People come to you and ask questions about how to do that thing that you at which you excel.  But you were not always really good at it.  At some point you struggled with the skill.  You worked through it and became good and possibly excellent.

It is the same for each of us as we approach the Bible.  Most of us have not had any instruction on how to study the scripture.  Yet most of us have been in the faith for a long time.  So not only are we not sure how to do what we are being asked to do, we feel like we should be able to do it already.  No.  It is unreasonable to thing you can do something that you have never been shown how to do.

So when you are learning to dive into the Word yourself, like anything else that is new, there will be a time of awkward progress.  The difference is the richness of the reward.  Pushing through the fog results ultimately in gaining greater insight into the nature and character of God.

That is worth pretty much any effort.