“Talk to wisdom as a sister. Treat insight as your companion. They’ll be with you to fend off the Temptress - that smooth-talking, honey-tongued Seductress.”

Proverbs 7.4,5

The first nine chapters of Proverbs parallels the story of TWO WOMEN: Lady Wisdom and The Seductress. Read it for yourself and specifically watch the mentions of these two women and their relationship.

One is brainless. Her path is soul-destroying and self-destructive. And not just SELF-destructive, but the people-that-I-care-about-deeply-DESTRUCTIVE. Her purpose is simple - END MY LIFE. Solomon paints a picture of this woman:

Soon she has him eating out of her hand,
bewitched by her honeyed speech.
Before you know it, he’s trotting behind her,
like a calf led to the butcher shop,
like a stag lured into an ambush
and then shot with an arrow.
Like a bird flying into a net
not knowing that its flying life is over.

So friends, listen to me,
take these words of mine most seriously.
Don’t fool around with a woman like that;
Don’t even stroll through her neighborhood.
Countless victims come under her spell;
She’s the death of many a poor man.
She runs a halfway house to hell,
fits you out with a shroud and a coffin.

The other is life giving. “When you find me, you find life, real life.” But she’s harder to find. I have to search for her and locate her. And she changes location each day. I have to stop and really concentrate and listen in the chaos of life.

Do you hear Lady Wisdom calling?
Can you hear Madame Insight raising her voice?
She’s taken her stand at First and Main,
at the busiest intersection.
Right in the city square
where the traffic is the thickest, she shouts,

These TWO WOMEN compete for our hearts.

“God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before Him.”

Psalms 18.20

I’ve been thinking a lot about this journey of following Jesus. I think the journey is really about offering my heart completely to Him.

It happens to all of us in life. Somewhere along the way (it’s hard to pinpoint), our lives become shattered, our dreams are broken, our hearts end up in pieces. I think many of us have the moment where we stop and say, “This is not how it was supposed to be.”

We live the rest of our lives fractured and broken.

One of my favorite songs that speaks to this condition of our hearts is the Goo Goo Dolls hit “Iris.”

And I don’t want the world to see me
Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

I couldn’t have said it better myself, “Everything’s made to be broken.” Yet in those dark, still, alone moments I often wonder what it would be like to be whole again - to be put back together.

God tells me that He will make my life complete (whole) when I can lay all the pieces down before Him; which is really about surrender. I don’t realize it often, but sometimes I walk by the mirror and catch a glimpse of myself tightly clutching handfuls of puzzle pieces. I continue to pick up things that are not mine and then try to fit them into the puzzle. Sometimes I force them in. Sometimes I try to cut them to the right shape so that they fit. The whole time I’m secretly hoping that God doesn’t notice. Every time, God has to take me back to that piece and ask me to let go.

He wants my heart. All of it. He has not given me permission to hold onto any piece of it. And only in laying all those broken pieces before Him, will my heart become whole/complete once again. The way it was intended to be. My journey is moving closer to complete.

What pieces are in your hands right now? What are you holding onto that is not yours?

Where are you in this journey? Are you moving closer to complete?

“God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to His eyes.”
Psalms 18.24

Living life before God is about opening the book of my heart and showing Him what’s inside. Even more than that, it’s giving Him permission to rewrite my story.

That’s tough to do. Easy to talk about.

There are chapters of my story that I would rather just hide. There are characters and scenes that I wish never entered the story. It’s hard for me to give anyone an ALL-ACCESS pass. Even God.

And I feel this urge everyday to pick up the pen and write the next chapter. Or even to get ahead and write a few chapters down the road. I have a pretty good idea of where this story is going and what I would like to see happen. I’m smart enough. I’m ambitious enough. I’m creative enough.

The real surrender comes in laying my book down at His feet. All of it. Full access. Unconditional disclosure. True life comes when I can hand the pen over to Him and simply say, “I trust you. Go ahead and finish this story.”

Natasha Bedingfield has a great song titled “Unwritten.”

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inner visions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins

What chapter in your life do you have a hard time trusting God with? The present chapter? Maybe a future chapter, or one from your past?

Have you really laid your book down and handed Him the pen? When?

“collect my counsels and guard them with your life. searching for it like a prospector panning for gold, like an adventurer on a treasure hunt.”

In the mid 1800’s people moved west in search of gold. Why? Gold was free. Anybody could get it. But there were people who would pay a high price to have it. These people picked up their families and transplanted themselves to an unknown land for a shot at discovering gold.

Our culture is much like the gold-rush culture when it comes to knowledge. Knowledge and information is all around us. And it’s free to anyone who wants it. It’s easy to pick up a book, watch tv, listen to a message at church and just repeat the information. It’s easy to think we experience life change and we understand it and just move on. We’re rich in knowledge.

God communicates another idea. He is not concerned about how much knowledge we acquire or how much we know or what ideas from other people we can recite. God is all about the DISCOVERY PROCESS. The most important journey in life is the discovery of wisdom. Searching for it like a prospector searching for gold; like an explorer on some far off journey to discover a new land that he has only heard rumors of.

The discovery process is far more important. Archaeologists spend years learning, mapping, digging, sweating, studying - to make one discovery. That discovery is valuable to them because of the journey. It was worth their life’s work.

Communication doesn’t equal life change. Repeating someone else’s knowledge doesn’t lead to a changed heart. Our lives change when we travel to that far off place to search for treasure. When our lives are altered because of the trip. Because it was hard, because it was long, because we sweated a lot and studied for years and… finally… found it!

So… what kind of journey are you on?

What have you discovered so far?