Well, it’s summertime and everybody is out and about taking road trips, going on vacation, and it got me thinking back to a road trip I had taken with my daughter several years ago right before Thanksgiving.
We had traveled out of state to see our missionary friends who were sharing their testimony and speaking at a women’s conference one night. I just love having those girls’ trips and spending special time with my daughter! This was a unique trip because we also had plans to unfortunately attend a funeral that was several hours away the next day.
After our weekend of fun, we set out for the drive home. We left our hotel as the sun was coming up, having several hours of drivetime ahead of us. I was praying we would have no traffic issues so we could arrive in time for the funeral of a friend. This may sound archaic, but I had in my hand the directions printed off so that I would have everything I needed to find my way to the interstate and navigate each town and exit I needed to take. I had a plan. I even had it in writing. It was a good plan…or so I thought. I didn’t have GPS navigation in my car, and I didn’t have a smartphone with fancy apps to map things out. It wouldn’t have mattered if I did, because there really wasn’t good internet service in the area we were traveling through.
As we set out, attentively with our eyes glued to every passing sign, every mile marker, we waited expectantly for the next turn, the next exit. Except…we never found the interstate. We kept driving and searching and came up empty. I tried to pull up a search on my phone, but there was no cell signal. I had nothing with which to compare my printed map. I didn’t know if I was headed in the right direction or not. It was frustrating because I had my plan. I had done the research and prepared the driving directions days before we ever left the house. I had my map of the state and all the roadways, and I had predetermined the path I was going to take. I’d made up my mind. This is the way I’m going to go; and I was very confident in my journey and my travels. I was following what I thought was the true direction of “home.”
What’s crazy is that even when these unfamiliar landscapes would catch my eye, I chose to just dismiss them. I knew we should have been seeing things that looked familiar, but when things did not look familiar, I ignored it. I was confident in the path that I’d chosen to take, but as time went on and miles passed, the doubt set in. I began to wonder, “Are we headed south?” “Is this really getting me closer to the interstate?” “Is this the way I should go?” I was totally blinded by my imperception. What I had perceived as truth was, in fact, wrong. I became very disoriented and confused about the path I needed to be on. Simply put: I was lost. When you’re lost, you often feel like things are out of your control. When I began to think about the time being wasted on this unplanned detour, I became angry. I had somewhere to be later that day. I didn’t have time to get lost. I needed to get to a funeral that was very important to me, and I didn’t want to miss it. What made the situation worse was the snow which began to fall, making everything around us disappear into a fog.
Did I consider stopping and turning around? Yes, but I honestly did not want to do that because in my pride, I’d convinced myself that we were traveling in the right direction. I thought eventually we would get where we needed to be. However, I finally realized I couldn’t change my situation until I set aside my pride and humbled myself and acknowledged that my way was clearly wrong, and I needed help. You know, the map to where you’re going is only helpful if you know where you are. Once I acknowledged what was reality, I stopped and prayed and asked the Lord to help us. James reminds us of this in James 1:5 when he tells us to ask God for wisdom.
James 1:5, “If any of you is deficient in wisdom, let him ask of the giving God who gives to everyone liberally and ungrudgingly without reproach or fault-finding and it will be given him.”
Look at the word right in the beginning of this verse: “deficient.” It means you don’t have something that you should have. We should have wisdom, but we don’t because we don’t go to the Source of wisdom. The Bible tells us Who the Source is: God. God welcomes us to come to Him anytime we are in need of His help.
Hebrews 4:16, “Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need.”
I know that day on the road with my daughter, we were definitely in a time of need. No doubt about that. And as I prayed, I asked the Lord to help us find our way and to be our eyes and to guide us and show us how to get home. About that time, the Lord provided a little gravel road – like a path of grace. We turned around and we headed in the opposite direction. As we traveled, we eventually regained cell signal and had access to search a map on our phone and figure out exactly where we were. We discovered we had actually been driving straight west instead of south! Had I continued on my own path, in the direction I thought was right, we would have eventually ended up in another state further away from where we were going and missed the funeral altogether. But you know what? We made it to the funeral at the exact time that I had planned to arrive!
Praise God that His timing is always perfect. He works out the detours in our life. He works out those unexpected interruptions in our life. He’s Sovereign, and He made time that morning to speak to me and show me this lesson with my daughter when we were together. We talked and processed all the way home, encouraging each other and reminding each other that God is so good and how important it is that we trust Him with our life. He always provides.
Jeremiah 17: 7, “Most blessed is the man who believes in, trusts in, and relies on the Lord and whose hope and confidence the Lord is.”
Jeremiah 17:7 reminds us that our confidence should be in the Lord rather than ourselves. We need to have God-confidence instead of self-confidence because when we put our faith solely in our self and our abilities, we end up leading ourselves astray. Jeremiah tells us not to trust the heart, but the world believes differently. Even so-called “faith-based” shows on television will constantly give the message of following your heart. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us the heart is deceitful and wicked above all things. Don’t trust your heart! We need to have God-confidence and not self-confidence. Don’t put all of your confidence in yourself and what you think is right. The world tells us that it’s important to have self-confidence, and that it’s a sign of being a mature adult in society. If you have self-confidence, the world calls you strong and you are able to do anything you put your mind to. That’s the opposite of what you find in the Bible. When you look back through the Old Testament especially, I think about Gideon or Moses or the spiritual giants in the Old Testament, they did not have self-confidence. If anything, they were the ones going to the Lord saying, “I can’t do this. I’m not the person for the job. There’s no way I can get this done.” I think of Elijah and how he ran and hid from the enemy; and at one point, he just wanted the Lord to end his life.
1 Kings 19:4, “But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.”
I think of Jonah who is called by God for a very important mission. Instead of saying, “Yes, I will go. No problem at all, Lord.” Jonah runs away from God. Perhaps he was thinking, “I don’t want to do this. I can’t. I have no confidence. I don’t want to go to those people. They’re going to kill me. They’re horrible people.” Have you ever felt like Elijah or Jonah? If so, remember that God’s grace is sufficient for you, and His power is made perfect in your weakness.
2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you and my power is made perfect in weakness.”
We are not made strong in our own power. God’s strength is revealed in our weakness. That starts with acknowledging that we are weak. Once again, that way of thinking goes counter to the world, our culture, and everything in our flesh. We want to appear strong. Why would we ever want to appear weak? When we think of weakness, we think of being vulnerable, and we associate that with being a target that could potentially make us a victim. So, we reason: “I can’t be weak. I must not allow myself to become weak.” But as believers, we of all people should be the first ones to admit we are weak. We are just human. We are not Sovereign like God. We are not omniscient. We don’t know when God is going to call us home. We don’t know if it’s in the next breath, or in the next heartbeat. What we can know is that God has a plan for our lives. We are not in control, but we like to think we are; and that’s where the world gets their idea of self-confidence, thinking we are in control of things and that we can be all-powerful. That mindset makes “self” the primary focus, and it gives you a false sense of authority over your life; but you don’t have any authority over your life. You didn’t create yourself. You don’t determine what happens. That is pride to think otherwise. James tells us our life is a vapor (James 4:14) – we are here one minute and gone the next. That’s why James says not to make plans saying, “Today, or tomorrow, or next week, or next year, we’re going to do this and that.” Instead, we should say, “If it’s the Lord’s will, we will do this or that.”
Putting confidence in God means placing our trust in Him, relying on Him and abiding in Him. When we have God-confidence, we’re acknowledging that it’s His strength in us that allows us to do things. Really, anything that we accomplish in our life is all because God gave us the ability to accomplish it. Sadly, it seems more common today for people to take the credit instead of giving God the credit for any accomplishments or good that comes their way. We are often quick to take the credit and say, “Look what I did!” Yes, you may have performed a task or earned an award, but God was ultimately the One who allowed you the strength or intellect or ability to perform said task. He is the One who blessed you with your job. He is the One who strengthened your body or helped you form and fashion an idea into a profitable plan. When we take the credit for what God does in and through us, we are forgetting Who is in charge of this world and all of creation. It takes humility to acknowledge and to recognize that we’re not the one who makes things happen for our self. That is not to say that we are robots without brains or ability to make choices for ourselves. God gave us a brain and He gave us free will. He also holds us responsible for the decisions we make and the way we live our lives. We can never point the finger back to Him and blame Him for things that we willingly chose or willingly neglected. We are still responsible for our actions and words. Instead of having pride, we need a heart of humility like the psalmist in Psalm 5:8 who asked God to be the leader of his life and to give him guidance and direction.
Psalm 5:8, “Lead me in the right path. Oh Lord, or my enemies will conquer me. Make your way plain for me to follow.”
When we are headed in the wrong direction, we need to humble ourselves and turn around. We need to acknowledge that our way is not working and that we need God to guide us in the way we are to go. I don’t know about you, but I feel like my school education did not prepare me for the litany of decisions I would have to make as an adult! We make a lot of decisions in our life, and we often are convinced we’re doing what’s right. We think we’re doing what’s right for our kids, our family, our marriage, or even our self in the stage of life we are in. But we need to approach each decision like the psalmist and pray and ask God to lead us in the right path and make His way plain for us. Why does the psalmist ask the Lord to lead him and to make His way plain? Because the Lord has already been there. He’s already gone before us. He’s already gone down that road. He already knows the exit to take. He knows where the interstate is. He knows how long it’s going to take you to get there. He knows the potholes you’re going to hit along the way. He knows what the weather’s going to be. He knows where the roadblocks are located, and He knows how to get us to our destination. We need to do as the psalmist did and constantly rely on God. That is what having God-confidence looks like. We put our faith and trust and hope in Christ and we allow Him to lead us. We say, “I don’t know the way to go, but the Lord does! I’m following Him!”
Often, we don’t want the Lord to make His way plain to us because we feel like our way is going to be a lot better. Can I share some hard truths with you? Just because God makes His way plain to you doesn’t mean it’s going to be easier. When we take God’s way, it’s not always smooth. There may be some potholes along the way. There may be bad weather. Don’t let that make you nervous about putting your trust and confidence in God. You may not like the way He is taking you, but His ways are always higher than our ways. His thoughts are always higher than our thoughts. We don’t have to understand everything, but we need to trust Him. He is still in control, even when you feel the world has gone mad. We must remember that are just human. We don’t know everything, but God does. So, why would we ever want to put confidence in our self to get us through this life? Why would we want to waste more time than we have to on a road that’s not where we’re meant to be.
Sadly, many of us try to force things to happen in our life that are outside of God’s will or His plans for us. Maybe it’s chasing a job or a relationship, or something else because we so badly want it to happen. We pursue things out of desperation for something that we really want, but we fail to listen when God says, “That’s not for you right now.” Maybe you are like me and you have tried to pursue things that God was not giving you. Maybe with a career or a job or college, we thought we knew what we were going to do, and we set out on our own path without consulting the Lord. All the while, God had other plans for us, and we could have followed His leading had we just sought Him first and put our confidence in His plan for our life instead of our own plan. Possibly, we could have avoided all of the detours we took along the way. But you know, there’s still grace for those of us who are a little hard-headed or strong-willed. There’s still grace even when we act like toddler and try to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and say, “I have a plan and I’m getting there, and I don’t need anybody to help me.” If you have tried to do things your way and you realize it’s not working, it’s not too late to stop, turn around, and ask the Lord to guide you back on the right path.
How often in life, He will patiently watch us going the wrong way and He will form detours and interruptions into our path to get us back to where we need to be. The question is: Are we going to pay attention when that happens? Paying attention requires walking with our eyes open. If you have your eyes closed, you are prone to thinking that your way is the only way. With eyes closed, you won’t easily see all the warning signs that God may be putting up. You also will have more trouble seeing the path that He’s provided for you. You have to open your eyes and be willing to see that maybe you’re wrong. It takes humility. It takes having a humble heart, a willing heart, a teachable heart, an obedient heart. We have to be willing to listen to the Lord and be obedient to do what He tells us to do. And we have to be teachable when He says, “This is the way that I have for you and this way is better.” We have to be willing to say, “Okay, Lord. I may not understand, but I am trusting You.”
Sometimes we don’t learn the lesson the Lord is trying to teach us until afterward when we finally get there and we turn around and say, “Oh! That’s why You had to do it this way.” Why does it take us so long to learn the lesson? Well, because sometimes we let our fear of the unknown steal our confidence in God. So, we misplace that confidence and try to take control ourselves. We have confidence in our own ability because it’s the only thing we allow ourselves to trust. We let our thoughts run wild, without constraint, and without being guided by truth. Then we begin to worry, “How long is this going to go on? What if this happens? What if that happens? I have to do something about it.” How long does this cycle continue before we concede? It depends. How long will we let our flesh rule? The flesh is in direct opposition to the Spirit (Gal. 5:17). Our flesh does not want to give up and give in. Our flesh doesn’t want to concede defeat to the Spirit because it’s not natural to admit that we’re living in opposition to the Lord and what He’s planned for us.
Galatians 5:17, “The flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit wars against the flesh and these are contrary to one another.”
But oh, what a beautiful thing it is when we humble ourselves, when we repent and turn away from our own plans and instead choose to follow the Lord and His path for our life! There is a peace that comes over us that chases away the anxiety. It’s a confidence and a joy that fills our spirits because we have found the Waymaker!
John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
If God the Father truly is your destination, and He is what you are striving toward, then just know that the only way to get to Him is by Jesus. If you don’t know Jesus, you’re not going to be able to get to the Father. You’re not going to have that relationship with Him. You’re not going to spend eternity with Him in heaven. However, if you have received salvation in Christ, you are spiritually rich. You have assurance where you’re going. You’re on the right path and you have Jesus holding your hand the whole way there. But if you don’t have a relationship with Him, if you don’t know Him as your Lord and Savior, then you’re going to experience eternal separation and you’re not going to have peace in your life. Your soul will not have rest.
Maybe you don’t know the way to the Lord? He takes us by the hand, and He takes us by the heart and He shows us the Way. He shows us the way home to Him and that all comes by acknowledging that we are sinners. The bible tells us in Romans 3:10-12 that no one’s perfect. There is none righteous, no, not one. Romans 3:23 tells us we’ve all sinned. We’ve all fallen short of God’s glorious standard. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done. But in Romans 5:8 we learn that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He died for us because Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death. But John 3:16 reminds us that God sent His only Son for us to die the death we deserve and pay the price for our sin. Why? He did this so that we could be forgiven of our sins. His death on the cross made a way for us to return to God, be reconciled to Him, and spend eternity in heaven. And that’s the Good News! So, what will you do? Will you place your faith in Christ and believe His Word? Romans 10:9-10 tells us if we confess with our mouths Jesus as Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved. Do you believe Jesus is who He said He is? Do you believe that God raised Jesus to life and that He’s reigning in heaven today? But most importantly, do you want Jesus to be the Lord of your life? Do you want a personal relationship with Him? If so, then tell Him today. Confess with your mouth, believe in your heart, and He will save you.