Straight Path

The following AT&T commercial really caught my attention the first time I saw it…

I think the most compelling thing about that commercial is that the woman to which this happened had NO KNOWLEDGE it was happening.

You see this theme in movies all the time. The one fatal error that turned someone’s life down the wrong path. The one missed opportunity that made a mess of things. The one regret.

There are times in our lives as followers of Christ that we take chances with our faith. By that I mean that we rebel. We get lazy. We fail to give our all. We avoid a struggle.

And we take a chance at missing a blessing.

I’ve been there. I fully submitted to my call to vocational ministry while serving as a pianist/keyboardist at Lexington Baptist Temple in Lexington, KY. But I know for a fact that God was calling me long before that.

Years ago, I was a first-year middle school chorus teacher. I thought that teaching was what God wanted me to do with the musical ability He gave me. I received my degree from the University of Louisville and sought a teaching position, and eventually was hired by a middle school in a small town outside of Lexington.

It didn’t take long for the Holy Spirit to get a hold of me and let me know that this was NOT what He intended for my life, and that something else was on the horizon. By December, I knew I wouldn’t be teaching the next year. I went forward in the local church I was attending and surrendered to ministry.

Then I got impatient.

After a few months passed, I thought, “Why am I not on staff at a church?”

Then I got rebellious.

I blamed God for my lot in life.

Then I got miserable.

When a Christian rebels, they KNOW IT. I knew I was wrong to be feeling this way. I knew God hadn’t forgotten about me. But I didn’t want to do things His way.

When I finally submitted to what God was wanting to do with my life, I was given the opportunity to begin serving in a solid, doctrinally-sound church. I let Him have His way. Shortly thereafter, I fully submitted to ministry, met my wife and step-son, and learned what living by faith really means.

The point? Had I known that the choices I was making would force me to veer off the straight path to God’s will and take the long way around, as it were, I would likely never had made those choices. But we may not fully know the consequences of our wrong decisions until we see Jesus.

Maybe this series of events in my life is why I often state the following in my posts: we MUST stay on guard. The choices we make today could very well have lasting consequences.

Craig Groeschel of LifeChurch.tv said in a recent message that every single one of us has something toxic within: SIN. And it can poison more than just our lives. It can poison the lives around us, and even our futures.

God’s perfect will for our lives is a straight path. Let’s avoid veering off course.