Part 1: Understanding.

Recently, my friend Maggie brought to my attention a scripture that she had come across that left her unsettled. She's a smart girl and deeply loves the Lord so I was intrigued to hear what stumped her.

It's the parable of the sower. If you don't know it, it's a story Jesus tells about the condition of our hearts in relation to His message. But in Matthew 13:19, Jesus says, "Whoever hears about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart." 

Upon hearing the verse, I became unsettled as well.  Wait, so the enemy can do that? What?!

I began to do a little digging.  Time to dust off that Bible degree a bit, right? The New Testament was written in Greek so to get the full nuance, you have to look at the scripture in the original language.

The operative word in that text is "understand".  You see the Greek word there is syniemi. It's a pairing of two words, syn meaning together and heimi meaning to put.  So understanding is literally together putting. The word picture that the people smarter than me explain, is that of putting a puzzle together. The idea is that understanding means to put the words of God together and see how they fit with the rest of what God is doing in your life.

We've all done puzzles before right? You dump all the pieces out on the table before you start and individually, they are easily scattered but once they are placed and connected to the rest of the picture, they are locked in.  Ya know, and it seems that the more complicated the puzzle, the more pieces(or truth) you will need to complete it. But there the pieces sit out and exposed on the table until we put them together and anyone, the toddler, the dog, the well-meaning friend or the enemy can come and just pick them off piece by piece.

So can we agree that the truth that can be snatched is the truth we don't lock in?

This weekend while streaming the IF: Gathering,  it was evident to me that I needed to do some understanding. I needed to lock a few things into place. You know what else you do when you are putting a puzzle together?

Pay attention to every detail.

I texted my boss this afternoon and told him that I would like to be exempt from all conferences in the future. Not really but when you are leaning in at a conference and examining every part, you see things you don't notice when you aren't focused.  We're filled up at conferences because we have a posture of leaning in and examining. Better yet, can we say that we have a posture of understanding or together putting the truths of God?

But can I just get real, real with y'all? 

I did not need to be leaning in at the IF: Gathering. I did not need to be examining these last two days. I'd like to tell you it's because I am super holy and have no understanding or together putting  to do but that is not the case.

God shouted at me. Not really, but He sure was blunt.

Shoot. Now I am accountable for what I know. Dang, that's annoying sometimes. Can I say that?

I mean, I just did this. A few weeks ago, God spoke and I had to confess some things and it's just annoying, this human condition.

So here I am hearing God and needing to confess some things because if I don't lock this in, I run the risk of needing it sown in my heart again.

Quite frankly, it wouldn't be the first time I have had to learn the same lesson twice.

But it would really be great if I could get this one on the first try.