For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little. – Isaiah 28:10
My family loves to take short vacations to the beach every once in a while. One of the things we like to do there is to buy a puzzle and put it together. We have a process we always follow—first we turn all the pieces right-side-up, then we separate them by colors. We also put all the border pieces in one pile, and that is where we begin assembling. Then we fill in the different areas on the inside.
Sometimes when we are putting the puzzle together, one of us will come across a piece that does not fit quite right, but we can make it fit by pushing it in. At first it feels good to think that you got another piece in place, but at the same time, you start wondering if it is right. It is easy to tell yourself that you can just leave it and deal with it later—who knows, maybe it will be right after all. But that one wrong piece can mess up the whole thing. On our last beach trip, this happened to us. The borders would not line up, so we had to go back and look through everything to find where the problem was. We discovered one border piece in the wrong spot, and it had been keeping us from putting the rest together.
The focus verse says that God teaches us “precept upon precept; line upon line.” He adds one lesson to another, and it will all fit together perfectly. However, we have an enemy who wants to disrupt this process. The devil will hand us “pieces” and tell us to put them where they do not belong. Anything he suggests will not fit with God’s Word, but he will tell us, “Oh, just put it in over there—if you try hard enough, it will fit.” He only wants to confuse us, to get just one piece out of place so that nothing else makes sense. The next thing you know, you have to start backtracking to find out where you went wrong.
We need to guard our hearts. We have the Bible to direct us, and if something does not fit with Scripture, it does not belong in our lives. Our walk with God will be much smoother if we will be careful to check our ideas and decisions with the Bible first.