A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
Light For Life January 2005
In so many areas of our lives it is the shortest distances and words that can make the biggest difference! I am sorry, I love you, I forgive you, yes, no, are some just to name a few. In the race that we run, that is our lives, one step can make all the difference too. It can mean the difference between winning and losing, living and dying, passing or failing, and forgiveness and peace. One LITTLE step in the wrong direction can set out course in the wrong direction for life, which in the end can mean we are thousands of miles off course!
When I was about twenty or so, I remember one of the pastors at my church using this powerful illustration, and to this day I have not forgotten it. He was talking about how when we make one bad choice, or step, if we never correct that choice that in the end it takes us way off from where we are meant to be. You see, the angle grows wider the further you go along. If you keep going 1 degree off course for a length, you will end up many degrees off course in the end. It is VERY gradual, so you don’t even notice it.
Sadly, many don’t notice till it is too late, they look over only to notice they are not where they thought they were. A clear picture that comes to mind is that of being in the water at the beach. You set all your stuff up on the shore and you head straight out into the water. After a little while you look into shore to find your things on the beach and realise how far you have drifted, or that the current had moved you. Once the motion has begun it is doesn’t feel any different so it just takes you willingly.
Now, if you drifted far enough out, or the conditions were right you could get caught in a current, but even without a strong current you can find yourself far off. Then we try to back track, we may find that it is harder to go against that current to get back but yet we seemed to have just got there without any effort.
One of the easiest ways to get off course and not stay true to ourselves and to God is via compromise. A lady I heard preaching a few weeks ago said that ‘compromise is when we do something that we truly don’t believe in’. How often do we do that? You would be surprised at the other things that could take you off the course God has designed for you – a dashed dream, hurts and un-forgiveness, bad attitudes, the wrong friends, bad influences, bad experiences, negativity, fear and worry, doubt, unreal expectations, high standards, low standards, poor choices, peer pressure, pride, … If you recognize one of these as being a point where you headed off course I suggest you bring it before God, work through it and do what you can to come about.
As it is my first LFL for the year – I guess I would like to pose the question – Do you need to take a step in the right direction? I will tell you honestly right now – I do! My prayer for 2005 is that I will take every step in the right direction that needs to be made and that I will do it without delay. 2004 seemed to take me off course, but then was it really off course or just not the course I planned to take? I think we need to have focus and vision and yet be WILLING to surrender to God’s best for our lives.
This is a fresh day, a fresh year, a fresh path, these steps have never been taken before and these days have not been lived before. God please give us the grace we need each day to know the way and to choose to go! Now is the time to take an inventory and correct the course.
Word For Life
Direction: The act of setting and holding a course. The act of managing something. A line leading to a place or point. A general course along which something has a tendency to develop. Direction or advice as to a decision or course of action.
The Word
Deuteronomy 5:32-33: Therefore you shall be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn aside to the right hand or the left hand. You shall walk in all the ways which the Lord you God has commanded you, that you may live and that it may be well with you and that you may prolong your days in the land which you shall possess.
