A Good GPS

My friends know how much I love my annual motorcycle trip I take somewhere in the lower 48 states! The journey generally takes me down a lot of roads I have never traveled, sometimes out in the middle of nowhere, and I have made use of the GPS on my smartphone. It does not always get it right, once in Little Rock Arkansas, it led me to the right road on the wrong end! I faced “do not enter”. In life we need to have good directions, not just to get from one place to another, but guidance to make the right choices and the right perspective on all manner of difficult situations. Spiritually, we need a good GPS!

Having a little fun, I could say the good GPS is God’s Perspective from Scripture! If it is in the Bible you can always trust what it says. I love the way Solomon put it in my text for this week, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5,6). Let’s unpack our GPS.

My iPhone is pretty good, but I can always trust in the Lord. In fact, I need to go all out, Solomon says “with all my heart”. I am in it for keeps, I believe without a doubt that He knows what is best for me, and I trust Him. When He has revealed His truth in His word, I know I can trust that it is right, regardless of what my gut tells me. This is why Solomon contrasts it with “and do not lean on your own understanding”.

God has an understanding, a wisdom, a perspective on things that we do not. What He knows is so far beyond anything we know, and He is not limited by time or space. He knew all the days of our life when there hadn’t been any yet (Psalm 139:16). So, when our gut feeling, our understanding screams something and we say no, that we will trust what God says, it comes from our heart, all our heart.

Isaiah gives a great picture of how much more understanding God has than we do when he writes, “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8,9). His thinking is so far above ours that it is (at least) as much higher as the stars are above the earth.

If we will take God’s GPS, in all our ways then He will make our paths straight. This is a Hebrew expression that communicates that we will know where to go, and He will remove obstacles and hindrances along the way. He is not going to lead you to a dead-end road, His GPS is the right one. If you have your Bible, you have the good GPS!