Destinations

The Path Principle Proverbs 27:12 Jesus said that he came to help anyone who knows they don’t have it all together, anyone who knows they need help. He did not come for those who think they got this life all figured out; those who don’t need anyone’s help. One of the most commonly memorized scriptures is Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Are your paths straight? That is, are you heading where God wants to take you? Or, is your life on paths that clearly are not where God wants you to be? Decisions you made years ago have taken you to destinations that you wish you were not visiting. Throughout the Bible, God teaches a key principle that we call the path principle.  Direction not intention determines your destination. Whatever road you are on leads you to its destination. The path determines your destination. Your direction determines your destination. If you head north on I-75, you will never reach Florida no matter your intention. Even if you get in the car and pray to God for traveling mercies, going north will not take you to your desired destination. This principle applies to your marriage path, dating path, the financial path, professional path, and your health path. There is a big disconnect between where people want/intend to go and where they end up. My hopes and dreams were here, but this is where I ended up. We get angry with God because we did not end up where we wanted. Every path has a destination, but not every direction leads to our desired destination. We think intention/hopes/dreams trump the direction to determine our destination. Is the path you are on going to take you to the ultimate destination you want? We focus on the immediate, the here and now, the event; but God is focused on the path taking you to a destination.  Whatever direction you go in will determine your destination. Somehow we think if we just intend to get somewhere, then we will. Direction determines destination; not intention. Interestingly, there is another element to the path principle, and that is what influences the direction we choose. Whatever has our attention determines our direction; and whatever direction our path is on there is a pre-determined destination awaiting us. The path principle is this: attention leads to direction which determines our destination. Attention…direction…destination. The path principle is taught throughout the Bible. Let’s take a look at a few verses to demonstrate the principle. In Deuteronomy, God gave the Israelites the law and promised to bless them if they obeyed. As the people were entering Canaan, God told them that they would have a difficult time obeying the law because they would be distracted by the people in Canaan. As they watched the Canaanites, they would be tempted to veer off God’s course. So, God said to them to pay attention, fix your eyes on God and the Law.  Deuteronomy 7:12 “If you pay attention (or fix your eyes) to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the LORD your God will keep his covenant of love with you…” If you pay attention to these laws – stay on the path of obeying the law – then God will keep his promises. But, if you decided to change your direction and follow the Canaanites’ ways, then God will remove you from the land.  God removed them for 70 years because they allowed Canaanites to grab their attention. Later, David wrote pleading with God to direct his paths by helping him fix his eyes on the godly and away from the ungodly. Psalm 119:35-37 “Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight. Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain. Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word.” Whatever grabs our attention influences our direction – it sets us on a certain course – and every direction has a destination. If we set our eyes and attention on worthless things, then our destination will reflect worthlessness and wasted time and probably suffering. Proverbs 4:25 “Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.”  No matter where we are the worthless inappropriate stuff is on both sides of us. This is a great verse to not let your head be turned and look at things we should not look at.  This is intentionality, so don’t let things grab your attention. You choose what you give attention to. We must choose to give our attention to the right things. Hebrews 2:1 “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.” If you don’t intend to pay attention to the important things, then you will drift away from what is true and right. You must choose to pay attention to the right things. Whatever you get fixed on, then you will head that direction. The final verse is a great verse to sum up everything; it is actually written in two different places in Proverbs. Proverbs 27:12 “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.” The godly, wise and prudent person who is already on a path, direction when they see danger they seek God and take refuge; but, the simple, ungodly and naïve just keep going on the path of worthlessness and they most certainly will suffer for it. The Promise: If you will choose to focus your attention on God, then you will be on a direction that will lead you to God’s destination. God offers to direct your paths to the destinations of His choice. If you will choose to give your attention to Him, then He will help you avoid many of the destinations you would have arrived at which involve much suffering. Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” The promise is that God will make your paths straight; that is, God would direct your paths to His destination. God offers to take you on a journey, and he promises to lead you to the best destinations. But, when we lean on our own understanding then we wander in the wilderness for 40 years, even though it is only an 11 day journey. God offers to get you where he wants to take you, assuming you trust God enough to lead the way and choose the destinations. God promises to make it known to you which path to take, he will reveal himself and his destinations to you so you don’t have to guess. In every arena of life trust and learn hard onto God. My tendency is to lean on my experience, my worldview, my knowledge for my own understanding. The promise always begins with leaning or submission, we must trust God and not ourselves for direction. In ALL your ways – marriage, singleness, business, homelife, education, parenting, friendship, dating and not just Sunday ways – in all your ways acknowledge him. We are to acknowledge God in every aspect of our life. Submission precedes direction.  Before we do the research, before we consider our options, we choose to submit to God. The Problem: If you don’t purposefully and intentionally choose to focus on God’s destinations, then you will allow your attention to be captured by other things and people who will direct your paths to a different destination. There are things that we pay or give attention to. This is a decision of intentionality; in fact, there are things that you wish you had given more attention to. For example, you wish you had given more attention to your marriage, your education, your children, maybe even your spiritual growth. So, what happened? You had good intentions – you intended to go down a certain path to arrive at a certain destination, but something grabbed your attention and re-directed their path. When something or someone grabs your attention, this will turn your direction. Proverbs 4:25 “Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.”  Why does Solomon plead with God to help fix his gaze directly ahead not allowing him to look to the left or the right? Because he knew that when you get comfortable, when you get lazy, you begin looking all around and you will find trouble. This trouble grabs your attention. And, when it has your attention, your path will re-direct toward the trouble leading to you a destination of suffering. The author of Hebrews likewise calls for intentionality of direction. Hebrews 2:1 “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.” Right now, you have chosen some things to give your attention to; and right now there are things that have grabbed your attention. Generally, the things that grab our attention are dangerous. If we don’t wake up and seek refuge in God; if we don’t stop looking to our own wisdom and other people’s wisdom rather than looking to God, then we will drift away from God, and we will suffer for it. The Choice: Will you choose to give your attention to God? Will you choose to trust his destinations more than you trust yourself?     There are two options (1) lean on your own understanding and follow the path you think would be best; or (2) lean on God for understanding and follow the path you believe God desires most for you. Proverbs 27:12 “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.” What will you choose? The bible is clear – anytime you lean on your own understanding rather than God’s, then you are in danger and unnecessary suffering is inevitable. The best case scenario is that you will realize this down the road and see that you have wasted a portion of your life. The worst case scenario is that you will make decisions in your younger days that you will have to live with the rest of your life. The prudent person asks In light of my past experience what should I do because life is connected. The simple or naïve person doesn’t think life is connected, so it doesn’t matter what happened in the past. Even though that path led to trouble in the past does not mean it will again. The prudent take action, but the simple keep going even though there’s problem. They hear other people warning, but don’t do anything. I’m going to keep going, and I think it will all work out. If you see a problem in the future but you choose not to adjust, the bible says that you are simple and naïve. You think that you can be on a path you don’t think you will reach its destination. A Christian confuses feelings with conviction – I ought to end that relationship, I ought to end this – this conviction makes you feel close to God but you go out of here and do nothing about that conviction. Doing nothing about conviction – you hurt yourself. Simple suffer for it – we get mad at God. How could God allow that to happen to me? God warns us about many of these paths and their related destinations. But, we ignore God or we are naïve enough to think that the path will not lead to what God or the Bible said it would. Ladies, girls – when you are pregnant that is not the time to evaluate whether you really love the guy. Sex is a path that has a destination – children. Don’t blame God that you got pregnant; he told us that is what happens. Guys – you work and work and work and you are gone so much that your wife is so lonely that she is looking elsewhere for companionship and your kids don’t care if you are home or not because you are gone so much they have had to teach themselves how to live without you around. Q1-what has grabbed your attention; who has captured your affection Q2-what do you need to give or pay more attention to – spiritual life; reading God’s word spending time with God; marriage needs more attention; your kids’ spiritual lives – what’s more important building into your kids’ spiritual lives through mainstreet, uptown and downtown or do you think having breakfast, or another meal or another night at home or sleeping in more is more important. Don’t wait till they are students and have little or no faith; don’t skip the program because they need it now rather than later. Ostrich – simple – stick your head in the sand