Monday, April 16, 2012

Trust God To Guide Your Path

“Whether we like it or not, we will obey the LORD our God to whom we send you with our plea. For if we obey him, everything will turn out well for us.” -- Jeremiah 42:6

We want to do God’s will. We want to hear His voice and follow Him wherever He might lead us. We do. Really. Until He tells us to do something we’d rather not do.

Fear has a way of bringing out the biggest doubts in us. We can’t believe that God would call us to do something that doesn’t make sense to us. We can’t understand how what God says could possibly be right.

Maybe we heard Him wrong. Maybe we were so busy talking that we didn’t hear Him at all. Or maybe we just didn’t like the answer.

The army officers who asked Jeremiah to inquire of God didn’t like the answer. God told them not to go to Egypt. God told them He would protect them and not to fear the Babylonians. They didn’t believe Jeremiah.

“You lie! The LORD our God hasn’t forbidden us to go to Egypt!” -- Jeremiah 43:2b

Yeah. They really didn’t like it when Jeremiah told them what God said. We’re that way with God sometimes. We pretend we misunderstood. We know He couldn’t possibly be calling us to do something so out of our comfort zone, so far from our level of expertise, so downright scary.

But He does. On a regular basis. Because it is in those moments when we are afraid and uncertain and don’t know which way to turn, that we turn to God. And He is there, helping and guiding us. God never calls us to do something without providing a way for us to do it.

The army officers couldn’t see beyond their fear and the size and might of the Babylonian army. They were certain they would die unless they went to Egypt. They trusted what they thought they knew rather than what God told them was the truth.

Their punishment for disobeying?

“So you can be sure that you will die from war, famine, and disease in Egypt, where you insist on going.” -- Jeremiah 42:22

How many times do we fail because we were too afraid to try? How many times do we turn away rather than trust God? How many times do we fail to reach our full potential, to reap all the blessings God prepared for us, because we never believed what He said?