Living by the Book/Living by the Book Workbook Set (113 page)

Some people come across figurative language and give up before they even try to understand it. But we hope you have seen that the use of symbolism and figurative language doesn’t necessarily prevent comprehension of Scripture. Indeed, many times such symbols can add intrigue and interest to certain sections of the Bible.

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PPLICATION

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s you begin the final section of this book, remember that Application is of the utmost importance. You can have learned everything up to this point and done all the exercises. But unless you start to apply what you’re learning, your Bible study is essentially in vain. As we have said before, many people focus on Interpretation to the point of missing the benefits of Observation and Application. But the better you get at Observation, the less Interpretation you need. And until you find the proper Applications for your life, your Interpretation is of little practical use.

Nor can we do much in the way of telling you
how
to apply everything you’re learning. We all approach Scripture with our own backgrounds, points of view, problems, and interests. God speaks to each of us through His Word, but not necessarily in the same way. A group of people might examine the same passage on any given day, and each one would come away from it with a different response. So it’s going to be up to you to take the initiative to pull out from Scripture what’s there for you. While we can provide a few guidelines to help you, the bulk of the work is going to be up to you from here on.

We suggest you review the Application section of
Living By the Book
(chapters 39 through 48). We will provide a few new exercises in this workbook, and we’ll try to include a lot of application reminders in the Bible book studies that follow.

And as another reminder, here are five substitutes for Application that don’t work nearly as well. Be sure to avoid these traps as you approach this final section of learning to live by the Book. (Review them in more detail, if you wish, on pages 291–97 of
Living By the Book.)