My wife, daughter and I were traveling from New York to Georgia to help our youngest son move to a different base a few hours away from his current base. As is normal these days we were being guided on our trip by the verbal commands of a GPS map service on my smartphone. At one point I asked my wife if she could get directions to the nearest location of a certain restaurant. She did a GPS map search for that restaurant on her phone and found that there was one nearby and started the verbal commands for directions to the restaurant. When the directions for the restaurant asked us to take the next exit I did so. What happened next was comical, the verbal commands on my phone which were guiding us to our final destination began telling us to come to the stop sign and turn left so that we could get back on the interstate, while the verbal commands for the restaurant on my wife's phone told us to turn right. Since I could not see which phone was giving which directions I was momentarily confused and unsure of which direction to turn. We figured it all out and turned of the final destination directions until we had eaten at the restaurant, then the single command made sense and there was no confusion.
I began thinking, how many times have I done the same thing in my life - started down a specific route that God was leading and then introduced other options and routes which just made everything confusing. Eventually I got enough sense to turn off the competing, confusing directions and get back on the route to my final destination.
In James 1 the apostle James is writing to believers in the first century about having faith in God's leading and not wavering when we know what God is asking us to do. In verse 6 he writes "Let him ask God in faith, doubting nothing, indeed, the one who doubts in like a sea wave which is being blown by the wind and tossed by the wind." In verses 7 and 8 he states "Let that man no suppose he will receive anything from the Lord. A two-souled man is unstable in all his ways." In other words if we are listening to two different spiritual GPS commands we will get confused and we will struggle to know which direction is correct. How do we know which command is God's and which is the evil one's distraction? God's Holy Spirit will remind us of God's heart, God's call and God's history.
The intentions of God's heart are found in the Bible and are echoed in the lives of faith-full Christians. The familiar passage Psalm 119:105 is so true "Your word is a light to my path and a lamp for my feet." God speaks to us through examples and instructions in the Bible. In the Bible we find examples of men and women who have come to places in their lives with competing commands and they found God's guidance by remembering God's Call and God's History. Repeatedly God would call a person to make a certain life choice and as they were acting upon God's leading there would be times of struggle and question. These men and women of faith returned to their original call from God and found firmness and faith by remembering what God had originally told them to do. They also gathered faith from the fact that many others in the Bible, and all the way to our day, have found the God's route may not be the easiest path we could take, but it is the most fulfilling and meaningful on earth and for eternity (Hebrews 11 and 12:1-3).
I began thinking, how many times have I done the same thing in my life - started down a specific route that God was leading and then introduced other options and routes which just made everything confusing. Eventually I got enough sense to turn off the competing, confusing directions and get back on the route to my final destination.
In James 1 the apostle James is writing to believers in the first century about having faith in God's leading and not wavering when we know what God is asking us to do. In verse 6 he writes "Let him ask God in faith, doubting nothing, indeed, the one who doubts in like a sea wave which is being blown by the wind and tossed by the wind." In verses 7 and 8 he states "Let that man no suppose he will receive anything from the Lord. A two-souled man is unstable in all his ways." In other words if we are listening to two different spiritual GPS commands we will get confused and we will struggle to know which direction is correct. How do we know which command is God's and which is the evil one's distraction? God's Holy Spirit will remind us of God's heart, God's call and God's history.
The intentions of God's heart are found in the Bible and are echoed in the lives of faith-full Christians. The familiar passage Psalm 119:105 is so true "Your word is a light to my path and a lamp for my feet." God speaks to us through examples and instructions in the Bible. In the Bible we find examples of men and women who have come to places in their lives with competing commands and they found God's guidance by remembering God's Call and God's History. Repeatedly God would call a person to make a certain life choice and as they were acting upon God's leading there would be times of struggle and question. These men and women of faith returned to their original call from God and found firmness and faith by remembering what God had originally told them to do. They also gathered faith from the fact that many others in the Bible, and all the way to our day, have found the God's route may not be the easiest path we could take, but it is the most fulfilling and meaningful on earth and for eternity (Hebrews 11 and 12:1-3).
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