I HAD a speaking engagement once that required about a forty-five-minute drive. So I got my directions. It was a men\u2019s breakfast at a church, so I left my house with plenty of time to spare, put the directions beside me in the seat, glanced at them, and then got on the freeway headed to the breakfast. After driving for about forty minutes, I glanced at the directions to double-check my exit. I made sure it was the right one, then I exited and made a left. I began driving past the mall, past the light, past another light, and I wasn\u2019t seeing anything I thought I was supposed to see. I figured I hadn\u2019t gone far enough, so I kept driving.<\/p>\n
Things were getting worse, not better. I figured that I ought to pull over and ask somebody. So I pulled over to a convenience store, thinking that I could trust the people who worked there to give me directions. A clerk told me that I hadn\u2019t gone far enough. Now, I thought that the church was supposed to be not too far off the freeway, but I figured I had missed something and assumed that the clerk knew what he was talking about. After all, he was from the area. He told me to just keep going and that I\u2019d run right into it. I get in the car and I keep going.<\/p>\n
I started seeing cows and realized that I was now in the country. Something about this didn\u2019t feel right. I wasn\u2019t arriving at where I thought I was supposed to be. So I figured I\u2019d asked the wrong person. I needed to talk to somebody else, get somebody else\u2019s opinion. So I asked another guy.<\/p>\n
Time was getting late. I was supposed to start speaking at 7:30 a.m. I\u2019d given myself plenty of time, but now it was 7:15 and I didn\u2019t know where I was. I was in a bad situation. So, I did ask somebody else. They said they\u2019d never heard of the church. It was now 7:20 and I was getting a little nervous because I hate being late to anything. I started winding down my window at stoplights, asking random people to help me find my way. It was 7:25 p.m., then 7:30.<\/p>\n
I had gone to five different people to tell me where I was supposed to be. Everybody meant well, but nobody could tell me where I needed to go. I decided to read the directions one more time. I picked it up and looked at it closely. Originally, I had only glanced at it. Then I let well-meaning people try to help me. Now, I decided to look closely at the directions. When I exited the freeway, I should have turned RIGHT!<\/p>\n
First of all, I listened to myself and turned left. Then I listened to everybody else and really went farther out of the way. But the instructions said turn right. Because I did not pay attention to the instructions but listened to my own understanding and listened to everybody else\u2019s understanding, I went left when I should have gone right. So I had to backtrack, and when I backtracked and went two blocks to the right of the freeway, I found the church.<\/p>\n
I had lost time; I had lost patience. I was sweating, frustrated, mad, and irritated because I had gone the wrong direction.<\/p>\n
Some of us have gone left. \u201cThere is a way that seems right to a man\u201d (Proverbs 14:12). Where I wound up was wrong. A lot of us have spent five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years going left and you\u2019re running out of time; the hour is late. It\u2019s time to backtrack because where God wants to take you is really not that far away.26<\/p>\n
[Repentance; God\u2019s Will]<\/p>\n
Prov. 3:5\u20136; Ezek. 18:29\u201331; Acts 17:30\u201331<\/p>\n
THERE was a show I used to watch a couple of years ago called Early Edition<\/i>. The host of the show would get the next day\u2019s newspaper, read it, and then do a show about the upcoming news. He\u2019d read a newspaper about the morrow and related it to his viewers today. Because he had tomorrow\u2019s newspaper today, he had information nobody else did.<\/p>\n
Most of our coworkers don\u2019t have the information. Most of our neighbors don\u2019t have the information. But as Christians, we\u2019ve got an Early Edition. God has given us the Early Edition. We can function today in light of what we know about God\u2019s plan for the future.27<\/p>\n
[Providence]<\/p>\n
1 Thess. 4:13\u201318; Titus 2:11\u201313<\/p>\n
WHEN you are on the highway, you are expected to choose one lane to drive in, though there may be lanes to your left and right. You are expected to stay in your lane and not to swerve into the other lanes, because if you start to swerve to the left or to the right, you\u2019re an accident waiting to happen. There\u2019s a time and an appropriate way to change lanes.<\/p>\n
God\u2019s Word gives you a lane to stay in. That lane is based on the written Word and then affirmed by the work of the Spirit in terms of specific application. Stay in that lane and do everything He tells you to do and He will make your way prosperous.28<\/p>\n
[Bible, Centrality of; Bible, Sufficiency of; Blessing; Focus]<\/p>\n
Josh. 1:7\u20139; Ps. 1; John 13:17; James 1:22\u201325<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I HAD a speaking engagement once that required about a forty-five-minute drive. So I got my directions. It was a men\u2019s breakfast at a church, so I left my house with plenty of time to spare, put the directions beside me in the seat, glanced at them, and then got on the freeway headed to … Continue reading “BIBLE,
\nGUIDANCE OF”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}