In the last three days, we have begun to address the issue of why, for some people, the word of the kingdom is being heard but not understood. Let's dig deeper today. One does not understand not because one is not clever, but because one does not love God and therefore, His message. When there is no love, there is no relationship, no meaningful time will be spent together, and no real understanding can be achieved. In this condition, it is as if we opened the door of our hearts to the devil. The devil can come in and easily take away the seeds sown in our hearts because we are not treasuring them.
What prevents us from loving God? The root cause is our sins. For the most part, our sinful nature stems from our self-centeredness. Self-centeredness allows Satan to use his first weapon, diversions, to break into our hearts. He uses tactics like attachments to all sorts of temporal and lesser things to distract us from choosing the better part as in the story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42).
