Straight Paths!
Ever traveled over the mountains on winding roads – with steep precipices? You cannot help but wonder about the safety and security of the drive – so you slow down. Our default mode is self-protection.
Christians do not generally set out to doubt God – but when life becomes a winding road over the mountain with a big drop-off, we can wonder about our need for security and our sense of dis-equilibrium. Doubt can take us into difficult settings where fear takes over.
For most of us, life’s pain simply catches us off guard. Doubt is like a wrecking ball, pounding against the foundation of one’s life. However, doubts should drive us back to God’s promises, not cause us to cower in fear or to back away from God! When you say, “I don’t know what God is doing, but I know He’s in control,” that is evidence you are trusting Him – even when the climb is steep and winding! That’s when you need something to wrap your faith around and hold on!
This is life verse material – one of the most cherished promises in the Bible. At its core, it’s an exhortation to turn from doubt – to make a deliberate choice not to let unbelief trample over your soul. You are choosing to walk by faith – with both feet – whether or not you understand the outcome. Our human tendency is to be ‘self-dependent’ – even ‘self-protective’ – when we cannot figure out the situation. When things are getting tight, when our back is up against the wall, we go into auto-pilot – and clamp down to gut it out. We tend to ‘lean on our own understanding’ – but the writer of Proverbs instructs us to not go to the default position. Instead, we are called to double down on trusting God and believing that He will see us through. When life slams you, the default position is to see the short-term or immediate issues as looming so large we cannot get around them. When we are trusting God, we recognize that these short term ‘afflictions’ – like bumps in the road – may cause us to suffer grief, but that they are designed to test our faith and prove that it is genuine and worth more than gold. (I Peter 1:6-7) The long-term result of trusting God is to see that this life is not permanent and that God has a much better inheritance set aside in heaven.
Trusting God each day helps us keep the ‘long view’ always in view – even when the ‘short view’ is windy, steep and hazardous. The short view is temporary – but the long view looks beyond to see the eternal reward. God’s promise is to make our paths straight – maybe not today or this week – but it’s an eternal value.
Spiritual growth is more about trusting God in all situations than figuring it out on our own. As V. Raymond Edman once said, “Never doubt in the dark what God has shown you in the light.” (The Disciplines of Life).
Think about it!