Last night I had a speaking engagement way down in Crawfordville FL. I had no idea where this place was, but one of my employees lives down that way and drew me a detailed map. I tried to follow it, but must have been preoccupied, and soon none of the road signs matched the names and road numbers on my map and soon I was hopelessly lost.
I was in the middle of nowhere and no one was available for me to ask directions from. Fortunately I’d put the street address in my Garmin GPS as back-up and it continued to display a purple line on a map for me to follow. It must have told me to turn 20 different times and took me through long stretches of nothing but pine trees and scrub oaks and rural communities with little more than a gas station that was already closed, (I assume since the sun had already gone down).
I often doubted this little machine, because it would tell me to turn onto the strangest looking tiny little roads that I was surprised were even on the map and all seemed to lead “away” from my destination instead of towards it. At one such crossroads I almost overruled the little machine. I was all but dead certain I should turn left instead of right, but tempting or not I thought better of it and continued to follow it.
To make a long story short, this little machine not only got me there, but I arrived 15 minutes earlier than my friend told me that it takes him to make the drive.
I was thinking about this incident this morning and I thought about how much this is like my own life. I tried to muddle through it on my own and on occasion even took advice from friends as to the direction I should take, but I was hopelessly lost and floundering around not knowing how to find my way. One day I picked up a Bible and God led me to my destination of peace, joy, and love.
Admittedly there have been many times since that day when He directed me one way, but instead of listening I went my own way taking some “pig” trail that led away from my destination, usually ending up in a hog wallow. Fortunately He didn’t give up on me but instead recalculated a new route for me and when I got on it again, I began to make real progress towards reaching my destination.
Hmmm… Isn’t it strange that we sometimes fail to put the same amount of faith in God as we do our little GPS machines? Jesus said, “Come follow me”. Are you doing so?
Matt. 4:18
As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” And they left their nets at once and followed him.