The story is told of an old Scottish woman who went from house to house across the countryside selling thread, buttons, and shoestrings. When she came to an unmarked crossroad, she would toss a stick into the air and go in the direction the stick pointed when it landed.
One day, however, she was seen tossing the stick up several times. “Why do you toss the stick more than once?” someone asked. “Because,” replied the woman, “it keeps pointing to the left, and I want to take the road on the right.” She then dutifully kept throwing the stick into the air until it pointed the way she wanted to go!
We laugh at that perhaps, but that is the way many of us treat God and His will in our lives. We claim to want to follow God and do His will, but truthfully, we only want to follow Him when His will matches our will. And many times, we search and search for a verse of Scripture, a person or book that agrees with our point of view, etc., even though we already know what God’s will is – we just don’t want His will to be what it happens to be on that certain thing.
Psalm 18:30 tells us, “As for God, His way is perfect; The word of the LORD is proven;”
An old sailor repeatedly got lost at sea, so his friends gave him a compass and urged him to use it. The next time he went out in his boat, he followed their advice and took the compass with him. But as usual he became hopelessly confused and was unable to find land. Finally, he was once again rescued by his friends.
Disgusted and impatient with him, they asked, “Why didn’t you use that compass we gave you? You could have saved us a lot of trouble!”
The sailor responded: “I didn’t dare to! I wanted to go north, but as hard as I tried to make the needle aim in that direction, it just kept on pointing southeast.”
That old sailor was so certain he knew which way was north, that he stubbornly tried to force his own personal persuasion on his compass. As a result he was unable to benefit from the guidance it offered.
Let us make sure we do not treat God like that man treated the compass; trying to manipulate him to work our way!
God works everything in HIS way. We can only be successful in the Christian life, when we follow HIM and do HIS WILL.
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2) God’s will is PERFECT. Let us renew our minds by studying His Word and spending time focusing on Him, so that we may KNOW and DO His will in our lives.