The Word

We eat the Word, digest it, and God makes us grow.

Ask most people what the Bible is and you get a description of an object: old, long, hard. Paul describes it by what it is for.

Scripture — 2 Timothy 3:16–17 (OTB)

“All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the servant of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work.”

Four uses, and only the first one is comfortable. Teaching gives you what you did not know. Reproof tells you where you are wrong. Correction puts you back on the road. Training in righteousness makes right living a habit rather than an event. Expect at least one of those to happen to you during this class. That is the book working, not the book failing.

Hebrews puts it more sharply: the Word is living, and it cuts. Nobody enjoys being cut. But the surgeon who opens your chest and the stranger with a knife are doing physically similar things for entirely different reasons, and you consent to one of them. God is a cardiologist, not a cosmetic surgeon. He is after the inside.

How we take it in — one picture, three movements.

Eat it. Read the passage. Read it again. Then close the book and tell it back in your own words. Re-reading is the chewing; the retell is the swallow. If you cannot retell it, you have not swallowed it — so read it once more. This comes before any questions.

Digest it. Then four questions, in order: What does this show me about God? What does it show me about people, and about me? What will I obey? Who will I tell? Out of that comes one specific, dated “I will…” — never a vague “I’ll do better.”

Grow. And here is the part that is not your job. Paul planted, Apollos watered, God gave the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6–7). We eat and we digest. He makes it grow.

That is the whole method, and a new believer can run it on Tuesday having watched it once. That is deliberate.

Recite it: We eat the Word, digest it, and God makes us grow.

Reflect & do

Take any three verses. Read, re-read, retell out loud without looking — then write down what you left out. Almost everybody leaves something out. That discovery is the lesson.