"Which Way Do I Go Now? Where's That Road Sign?"

       Okay, true confession time again…I have no sense of direction.  Nope, none at all.  My lack of that gift has been the source of family jokes for years.  “Jenn can’t get from one place to another unless she goes home first. Ha! Ha!”  “Sissy, why didn’t you notice before you made it to Jackson that you were going the wrong way?”  “Honey, seriously.... the Byron exit again?”  In other words, my lack of a sense of direction is legendary.

        Being fully aware of my limits, this past summer, my dad let me borrow his GPS to go on my first beach trip as a single mom and principle driver.  Even with Alice, the name my dad gave to his GPS, directing my path, I got lost on the way home.  A five hour trip turned into an eight hour nightmare.  The boys are still talking about it!

       Since that most recent mishap with direction I’ve done some thinking about how I got so lost, and I know exactly where I went wrong.  I listened to the advice of someone else instead of Alice the GPS expert.  Now before you start to mentally bash that someone or me for taking his advice, let’s consider him.   He has traveled that same route many times before and knew how to direct me home.  He was well-meaning and had no malicious intent.  He could even tell me landmarks along the way.  However, what he didn’t consider was the day I was traveling on and from exactly which part of Myrtle Beach I would be leaving.  In other words, he wasn’t exactly with me in the car, at that time, at that point in my life.  Of course hindsight being 20/20, I should have followed Alice.  In fact, she kept saying…”Make a left turn now.  Make a U-turn now.  Turn around now…”  She warned me in every way possible, until I hit her mute button, that I was headed the wrong way.  Actually, it wasn’t so much that it was the wrong way as it was not the best way.  I knew the whole time we would eventually get home.  I just wasn’t sure what would happen along the way or even when we would arrive. 

       How many times does this happen to you?  Granted, there’s probably no one in this room that has as poor a sense of direction as mine.  But have you ever been in a situation where you just really did not know where to turn?  I’m not talking about a question of right and wrong.  I’m talking about a question of good or best.  A friend of mine once told me that good is the opposite of best when it comes to your life.  In the light of “best”, “good” leads to resentment and discontent, and nothing compares to God’s best for you.

       Recently in my life, I’ve been faced with a series of difficult decisions to make.  I’ve gone to Christian counselors, pastors, godly friends and family in search of direction and come up with a mixed bag of answers.  I’ve come to realize that in my situation, I will not get a unified answer from my collective pool of very godly counsel.  Does that mean that any of these people are wrong?  I don’t know.  Does that mean that any of these people are right?  I don’t know that either.  But this one thing I do know…for the past several weeks in more than a handful of different situations I’ve run into the same verse…Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to Me and I will tell you great and unsearchable things that you do not know.”  So, many times since the revelation that my Heavenly Father wants me to ask only Him for my answers, I’ve done that.  I’ve had a lot of “carpet moments.”  You know…face down in the floor because you can’t get any lower before a Holy God, begging, crying, and pleading for answers.  And I’ve got to tell you, I’ve heard nothing in terms of direction.  What I have heard is “Be still”, “I am with you.” And “I’m working on your behalf right now.”  This has been going on for a while now.

       So what do you and I do when we can’t put our cars in park and we have to keep driving because the earth is still spinning?  Life remains in constant motion and so must we.   What do we do?

       Well for me, the Holy Spirit started tweaking my prayers.  I haven’t been praying for the big picture as much.  No longer do I focus on “my” intended destination but on the route God wants me to take.  The focus of my prayers has changed to a smaller scale in terms of direction.  I’ve begun to pray Psalms 25:4, “Show me Your ways O Lord, and teach me Your paths.”  For me, praying so much about my intended destination easily mutates into anxiety and worry and I don’t even want to go there.

       Being me, in other words exhaustingly analytical, I started to ask…”Well, how do I know when I’m on Your best path Lord?”  “What if I’m driving the wrong way again?”  Blessedly, He answered me through His word in Isaiah 55:12…”You will indeed go out with joy and be peacefully guided…”  To me that says that when I’m on the path that the Lord sets before me, I will be guided with His peace and no matter what the road conditions are, I will be joyful.

       Let me tell you how God braided those three truths together for me- In my life, with its present circumstances, only God can tell me the best path to take.  Friends and family may have traveled the same road before and I shouldn’t disregard them but no one but God is on the exact same road, at the exact same time, inside the exact same me.  His voice alone is the One to consider.

       Next, daily I have to pray that He will show me the steps to take on that day.  Lastly, I have to …”indeed, go out.”  In other words, I have to keep driving forward.  If I have called out to God for answers, and if I have prayed for Him to show me His path, then I know I can go out with joy and be guided by His peace.

       At the risk of sounding trite and a bit like a small church sign, I am equipped with my own GPS- God’s Positioning System.  And like Alice, Dad’s GPS, He will let me know if I make a wrong turn because He’s even more concerned with my destination than I am.  So today I encourage you, don’t hit the mute button on your GPS.