"There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death" (Proverbs 14:12)
How many of you have ever felt at times that your computer is smarter than you are? Yep, me too. How about your GPS? Not so much for me. Today I learned that I am definitely smarter than our GPS. Here is what happened. We traveled up to Wake Forest to a local high school to see our oldest grandson play in a showcase baseball game against another travel-team. We loaded the address of the school into the GPS and it took us there perfectly. No problems. The trip home, however, was an entirely different story. Bev hit the "Home" button on the GPS which is supposed to simply reverse the directions and take us home the same way it brought us there. Not this time! Since I had just driven that GPS-directed route a short time before, I remembered the way home. We decided to allow the GPS to lead us home anyway. As we approached the very same highway that we had traveled en route to the game, however, the GPS tried to take us past that point and to another highway that was out of the way and a longer route home. Even as I drove past the road I had taken up there, I said to my wife, "This is not right." Her advice was as profound as it was simple: "Then turn around." I did so and was soon on the same road back home that we had taken to get there. And all the way home, would you believe it, that GPS did everything it could to re-route us on to the road I had refused to take to get home? It never did acknowledge that I had taken the right way and it had taken the wrong one. This was one time when ignoring the GPS and doing what I knew was right to do was the right thing to do!
So often in life today, beloved, people make decisions that seem to them to be the right thing to do. Just like our GPS that stuck doggedly to its errant way home and did its best to lead us to follow that way, men just decide that they know what is best for their lives and so forge ahead into disaster and ruin. Solomon in his godly wisdom declared that this is a failing in our nature that plagues all of mankind. We think we know the way and push ahead regardless of where it may lead us. And as Solomon went on to say, that end is "the way of death." In this regard we are our own worst enemy!
Only God's way is the right way, beloved. Only God's path is the one we should travel. Only God's way will lead us to life instead of to that inevitable death. If you are on the wrong way right now, what can you do? Listen to my wife's wonderful advice once again: just turn around. You do not have to take one more step down the road that you are on if that road is not the one that God has chosen for you. You don't have to listen to your own inner "GPS" if it is trying to lead you the wrong way. The glorious thing about God's way is that you are free to choose it any time and it is always accessible to you.
Which way are you on? Are you smarter than your GPS? If you are choosing God's way, then you most certainly are! And the road you are traveling will lead you to eternal life and to a wonderful peace that passes all understanding.
Ron
"To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some" (1 Corinthians 9:22)
Volumes have been written and dissertations delivered, beloved, on the importance of establishing one's true purpose in life. From the perspective of some that we should "to one's own self be true" to the conviction of others that it is "better to burn out than to rust out" so many philosophies for living daily seem to abound.
I want to propose to you that the Scriptures define for us clearly and distinctly what God's desire for our personal mission statement is. Here, for example, we find the Apostle Paul succinctly outlining his own heartfelt purpose in life. Very simply, in words familiar to any true student of God's Word, we hear him declaring: "I have become all things to all men so that I may by all means save some." Powerful and complete!
I wanted to suggest to you in this brief statement a much shorter version of what Paul wrote to the saints in the Greek city of Corinth, not different at all, but shorter - whatever, whenever, wherever, whomever.
Consider with me how Paul in this verse of Scripture clarified the whatever of his personal life purpose. His exemplary "all things" reveals this aspect of his mission statement. He was willing to do whatever it would take to reach one single person with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
But note also here his whenever as well as the wherever of his mission statement as found in the term "all men." Since none of us ministers to people all at one time or in one place but rather day by day and in varying places and circumstances, then we discover that Paul's commitment to servant-hood had a definite whenever/wherever aspect to it. He was simply never "off-duty" as a servant of Jesus Christ.
Further we discover about him the wonderful whomever quality of his life's focus. To Paul it simply did not matter who you were: where you came from, what you might have done, how famous or infamous you might have been. To the apostle all that mattered was what you needed to become and where you would spend eternity.
The beauty and simplicity of his life-statement as an apostle of Jesus Christ can best be seen, however, in the term "so that I may by all means save some." Paul cared about people perhaps like no one else. He was not necessarily the archetypical "people person." But what he was reached so much deeper within himself and as a result so much further out from himself. Because God had filled his heart with His own divine love for lost people, Paul's passion in life had become telling people about Jesus and seeing them turn in genuine repentance and faith to Jesus Christ.
WHATEVER, WHENEVER, WHEREVER, WHOMEVER. Certainly an intriguing statement of personal servant-hood, wouldn't you agree, beloved? And is that not what every child of God ought to aspire to become? You see, it is one of the most powerful yet simple definitions of what a true "servant" of Jesus Christ is to be!
Ron
"When they did not find them, they began dragging Jason and some brethren before the city authorities, shouting, 'These men who have upset the world have come here also; and Jason has welcomed them, and they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus'" (Acts 17:6-7)
Just when is "upside down" really "right side up"? To use a well-worn cliche, beloved, it all depends upon whom you ask! The world, for example, will tell you in a heartbeat that Christians, or even moral conservatives for that matter, are definitely "upside down." Listen to the rhetoric that spews from the printed page and the airwaves. All of that which they choose to say about us today means only one thing - in their minds we are "upside down" in our thinking and consequently in our politics. We have been brainwashed by religion.
Did you know that the Apostle Paul and his missionary partner Silas were accused in just the same way by the irate citizens of ancient Thessalonica in Greece? Dragged before the city bigwigs for causing too many people to accept the gospel of grace and to turn in faith to Jesus Christ, these servants of God were loudly accused of having "upset the world." In other words, they had challenged and affected the safe and sanctimonious status quo of the Hellenistic Jews and the unbelieving Greeks. Very simply, they accused Paul and Silas and their gospel message of being "upside down" and of having turned the whole Greek world topsy-turvy as a result.
The problem with such thinking, beloved, whether from the first century or the twenty-first, is that this world has missed the boat when it comes to just what is "upside down" and what is "right side up." Paul in his preaching in the synagogue in Thessalonica had reasoned with his audience for three Sabbath days in a row and had proven irrefutably that Jesus of Nazareth was then, is now, and forever will be the promised Messiah. Of the resolute Jews whom many thought none could convince Luke records that even among their number "some of them were persuaded." They were not persuaded by enticing speech, riveting stories, or catchy phrases. They were persuaded by the undeniable truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. For those so persuaded, they turned to Christ for the simple reason that they could do nothing else.
That being the case, beloved, again the twenty-first century as well as the first, what every true child of God knows is that the gospel is "the power of God unto salvation" (Romans 1:16). So we conclude without fear of meaningful argument or contradiction that it is the world that is "upside down" and it is the gospel of Jesus Christ that is "right side up"! Thus, in answer to the original question: "When is upside down right side up?" the answer clearly is whenever anyone turns from sin and in faith to Christ and receives the gospel of grace. By the way, are you turning your world upside down by showing it how to be right side up?
Ron
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