Well, today is 9-11 to sober day here in America, but today's question is not about 9-11.

Today we actually have a question about a haunting text in the pastoral epistles.

The question comes in from a podcast listener named Amy.

Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for APJ.

My struggle is deep and personal.

I'm not maturing much in the faith.

I forget just about everything I learn as soon as I learn it.

Sermons pass in and out of my ears and I take away from them just about nothing or so it seems.

I fear I'm the one mentioned in Scripture as always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 7.

Can you explain this verse to me and what does it hear mean to arrive at a knowledge of the truth?

What would that look like?

Pastor John, what would you say to Amy?

Well, I'm very glad that Amy is even open to considering the possibility she might be like one of the women described in 2 Timothy 3, 6, and 7.

That in itself is a mark of spiritual life, it seems, because very few women who in fact are the kind of women described in these verses would have any humility to admit that they were the kind of woman who's in these verses.

So here's what it says.

Let's get the verses in front of us.

Paul is writing to Timothy about a certain kind of man who does certain things with women.

And they are a certain kind of woman and let's read now what's the man doing and what kind of woman is vulnerable to what this man is doing.

Here's what he says.

This is 2 Timothy 3, 6.

For among them, that is those dangerous men are those who creep in to households and capture weak women.

...