Are you Navigating by GPS?
Open my eyes to see wonderful things in Your word.
I am but a pilgrim here on earth; how I need a map
and Your commands are my chart and my guide.
I long for Your instructions more than I can tell.
Psalm 119:18-20 (TLB)
Susan had an Acura, a really nice car. And—it had a Global Positioning System that would draw a map for you giving you the most direct route to your desired location. It also featured a very intelligent lady who would inform you if you were going the wrong direction. I loved it!
The trip was supposed to take around twenty minutes, so after about thirty-five minutes I said, "That sign says we are heading for Abilene, Susan, and I don't have my toothbrush or my pajamas!" About that time the GPS lady repeated the suggestion she had given several times already: "At the first opportunity please make a U-turn." Susan: "We're about there. I know where I am." The lady: "Please make a U-turn at the nearest exit." After getting several miles closer to Abilene, Susan made a U-turn, confessed that she was utterly and hopelessly lost, and started following the map.
That reminds me of Anabel doing things MY way instead of taking the directions that my GPS (God's Perfect System) tells me to go. I insist that I know best and wind up in a mess! In my book, The Confident Woman, I say: "These truths [discussed in The Confident Woman] are such simple, basic truths, and yet they are so powerful. Once we choose, by faith, to apply them, to practice them in our mind, a profound transformation begins to take place. The measure of success you experience will depend on two things:
- Your willingness to abandon the past and
- Your willingness to give up YOUR way for HIS way."
The Holy Spirit is talking to us all the time: "And your ears will hear a word behind you, ' This is the way, walk in it,' when you turn to the right or to the left." (Isaiah 30:21) How many times I "hear" that quiet reprimand and insist that I know where I'm going. "Anabel, at the nearest exit, please make a U-turn; you're going in the wrong direction."
It's pretty hard to admit that I'm utterly and hopelessly lost, but the quicker I do that and make the U-turn, the quicker I'll get where I want to go. Are you navigating by GPS, God's Perfect System, I am.