Saturday, September 28, 2013

Smarter Than Your GPS?

"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