1 Corinthians 2:14
The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

As if I needed any reminders that understanding the Bible can be tough at times, I got one the other day from Will and Parker. I asked each one of them to go in their rooms and read one of the devotions from their kids' devotional and Parker went first. He came back out about 5 minutes later and I asked him what it was about. He told me everything, practically word for word, right down to the sidebar quote in the middle of the devotion! It was brilliant! It was amazing! It was, well, just what you'd expect from Parker. After all, this stuff comes pretty easily to him.

Then it was Will's turn. He went in his room and came out quite a while later after I had called and asked if he was done. He came out and nonchalantly sat on the couch. He seemed shocked when I asked him what it was about, and then, after that inital "deer in the headlights" gaze, he smiled and said that he'd read 2 devotions. I told him he only had to read one, and he seemed bothered by the fact that he'd read more than necessary. Of course, he had read them, but he couldn't tell me the first thing about it. The words had gone out as quickly as they had gone in. When I asked him what the verse was that went with the devotion, his face crinkled and he strained, trying to remember. He told me that he hadn't memorized it and I said that was okay, I just wanted him to say it in his own words. "Oh!," he exclaimed. "Blah, blah, blah, blah blah, blah...blah."

It dawned on me somewhere around the fourth or fifth "blah" that I couldn't be sure that either Parker or Will had really understood their devotion. Even after we were done and Will had remembered the main truth of what he'd read, it didn't prove anything. A good memory like Parker's doesn't mean you spiritually discerned truth, and a often distracted memory like Will's doesn't mean you didn't. The proof, as they like to say, is in the pudding. How they live will reveal whether or not they understood with their spirit the things of the Spirit of God.

What does your life say you learned?