guidance

Map It Out

/ The WheatandTares / 3 Comments

Coming home from a trip this week made me think of road maps, road trips and directions. How many of you know, if you don’t have a good road map (or a good GPS these days), you can get lost in a hurry, especially when going through a big city. This can be so frustrating, and depending on where you are, it can be downright dangerous! You might eventually get back on the right path, but oh, the time that can be wasted and the costs that may be paid!

There are, also, different paths that may lead you to the same destination. Some are through busy intersections and congested towns, and others are down country roads with beautiful sceneries of pasture lands and rolling hills. Finding the right one for you can make all the difference in how you feel by the end of the journey, whether you are refreshed and at peace or worn out and frazzled.

Just as you need a good road map for driving through a new city and for getting to a new destination, each of us need a good road map to make it safely through life. You can venture on your life’s journey without one, or you can even appear to be the more “flexible type” who frequently changes your source of guidance from one to another; however, a lot of valuable time can be disappear, the cost can be exorbitant and the loss, sometimes, can be irrevocable. It’s so much better to start out at the beginning with the right one.

God has given us the best “road map” we could ever find to help guide our lives. Some might try to argue that the Bible doesn’t answer every question we will have, and they might even make a list of things it doesn’t specifically talk about. I have to say, they would almost be right; however, I have found that the Word of God gives us principles for every situation, every question, and every dilemma we encounter in this life. The precise answer may not be spelled out, but the principles are crystal clear! He gave us this Word for a purpose, and that purpose is to help guide us through this life, into a deeper relationship with Him, and to our final destination with Him.

We don’t have to search hard, and we don’t have to spend a lot of money to find it. If we will simply open this book, read it and seek His guidance through it, we will find ourselves on a much better path than the one we can search out on our own!

Don’t Settle For The Mud

/ The WheatandTares

Proverbs 21:2, “A person may think their own ways are right, but the Lord weighs the heart.”

Have you ever fooled yourself? You know, you’re walking along in life, everything is good, and the sun is shining. Then all of a sudden, you stumble a bit, you trip up, and you end up in a mud hole! After you get up, dust yourself off, you look around to see if anyone saw you, and you pretend nothing ever happened…only to realize later, you’ve been walking around all day with mud on your face! 

source: flicker.com

 
Sometimes, this can happen in our Christian lives, and we wonder how in the world we got where we are. It may be a relationship of which we realize we never should have been a part of from the beginning. It may be a job situation where our faith is being compromised on a daily basis, and we realize we’ve let it go way too far, or it may even be an addiction that you thought you could control in moderation only to find out you’re in way over your head, and you’re about to drown, if you don’t get some help fast. 

So, how can these things happen, when we call ourselves a Christian, when we go to church, say the right things and truly believe we are doing what we should? Well, let’s look at the latter part of that verse, “but the Lord weighs the heart.” The heart is where it all counts. The heart is the scale God uses to determine where we are in relation to Him. If your heart isn’t totally surrendered to Him, you will constantly find yourself in one mess after another, not because you “weren’t thinking,” but rather, because your heart misguided you. 

You see, our hearts will lie to us. Our hearts will deceive us into thinking what we are doing is a good thing, maybe even a noble thing. It will convince us that our motives and intentions are pure and right; so, how in the world could we ever go wrong? 

The answer to that can be summed up in this verse from Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?” If you’ll take time to read the verses right before and right after this verse (17:5-13), I believe it can really shed light on this subject for you. 

The only way our hearts can no longer deceive us is if we allow someone greater than us to consume our hearts. If we allow Him, the One who created our hearts, to direct our heart, then we are no longer trying to decipher good from bad within our hearts, He is.

 I, for one, am very thankful to surrender my heart to Him and allow Him to guide and direct my heart and my life. I’ve tried it the other way, and I constantly kept walking into those mud holes, getting up and proceeding to walk around (unknowingly) all day with mud on my face! No thank you! I’ll take His divine guidance any day over my common sense and blind direction! 😉

Just A Light For This Step

/ The WheatandTares / 2 Comments

http://www.f3ashley.com/christian-encouragement/one-step-at-a-time/ : source

“Your word is a lamp to my feet
And a light to my path.” Psalm 119:105

We may not always be able see far down the path. In fact, many times, we won’t be able to see more than one or two steps in front of us. Think about it. 

How often do you know what is going to happen in a certain situation or a certain conversation? We can imagine. We can assume. We can even theorize, but we can never truly know, because we are not God. We are not fortune tellers. We are not even wizards who might conjure up an image of what’s to come. 

We simply are who we are, and He is who He is.

We just have to follow Him one step at a time. If we will follow in obedience, we will make it to our destiny, even when we can’t see three steps in front of us. He is a good and loving Father, and when we will put our trust in Him, He is faithful and just to lead us, protect us, change us and love us, despite our fears, failures, doubts or hesitations along the way. 

Can you trust Him today? I promise you, even when things don’t turn out the way you expected, in the end, He will not disappoint. He can see farther. He knows more, and best of all, He knows the innermost depths of our heart, even those things that we might hide from ourselves. He does know best, and He loves us so much, He is willing to give us just what we need when we need it!