Pretest Proficient?

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward. 

(Vernon Law)

And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)

Have you ever noticed that we learn best from repeated lessons? We learned our multiplication tables by repeating them one by one, over and over again. We learned to drive our roadways, park a car, and navigate on/off highways by obtaining a permit to drive, instruction in how to maneuver the vehicle, and then practicing over and over again. Lessons repeated are seldom forgotten. They become a part of our 'memory' and are easily put into practice.

Our teachers used to give us something called a 'pretest' to see how much you knew BEFORE they taught the lesson. If you actually proved to be proficient during the pretest, you could 'test out'. In other words, you didn't need the lesson! If God were to give us a pretest today on the thing he might want to teach us right now, would we be 'proficient' and able to 'test out'? It isn't likely! We need the benefit of the pretest that reveals just how much we still have to learn!

If God thought it important to have Moses instruct the Israelites to 'review' his commands over and over again, how is it we think we can hear them once and be proficient at actually 'living' those commands each and every day? The reality is that we need the repeated lessons, each with a slightly different scenario to them, one building upon the other until the 'lesson' is well-learned. A well-learned lesson is one that we are able to put into practice without much effort at all! Just sayin!