I don't always understand.

 I have heard the story of John the Baptist in 3 different places and the verses in Isaiah about him once.  Clearly thereou is something about preparing a path I need to understand.  What I don't understand is whether I'm the one going and/or where I'm going.  But I do need to know these verses for some reason.  Maybe tomorrow it will be clearer.  My new pastor is teaching on this tomorrow morning.

My other pastor at my church in Ogden taught on them last week, and from his message, I understood them to pertain to our own highway, our own walk with Jesus as we journey together and become more like Him as we get to know God better.  I think part of me wants them to mean something personal that they may not and that's part of why I might be having a hard time understanding them.

I think sometimes our walk is like that.  We hear, we want to understand, but when that understanding doesn't come, what then?  For me, I'm trying to juggle a bunch of things this week.  To say that I'm still hurt that things transpired the way they did is an understatement.  But seeing one of the things God used this for was to ensure I learned a hard lesson by literally "paying me back double" for a thing I did in my own life.  I know some would maybe think that God doesn't work that way; that our sins are forgiven and as far as the east is from the west, they are forgotten.  That's true.  But so is this:

God doesn't changer.  And both things I'm talking about can be true.  God forgave David for his sins in taking Bathsheba and arranging for Uriah's murder to cover up his affair with her that resulted in a pregnancy.  God, however, did not spare David the consequences of those actions.  The child died.  And the other stuff that God told David also came true.

While God didn't spare David those things, God did walk through them with David and at the end of them, restored David and blessed him and Bathsheba with Solomon.  That's something I understand.  This one, though, seems to be something I am struggling to get.  I know it's important because it's happened four times, in four different places, in the span of a week.  If I understood everything, though, i guess I wouldn't learn about God.  I like it that this is taking a bit of thought because it's caused me to dig deeper into some things and understand why.

One thing I know is that John the Baptist was sent to prepare Israel for Jesus' coming.  He came to make the paths straight for Jesus, to prepare the hearts and minds of the people for their Messiah.  I don't want to be like Israel, always hearing, never understanding.  I want to understand what He's trying to tell me, what I need to do in response to it, and what that means to the adventure I'm on.  

Like I said, sometimes the message is clear.  Today's was:  wait.  Yesterday's was love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength.  I do.  Those were clear things I needed.  Other times, I need to just kind of let the purpose develop.  One thing I do know, four times in a week, and that means one thing for absolute sure:

God is up to something.