Bible Guidance
Instructions versus Helpful Guesses
I had a speaking engagement once that required about a forty-five-minute drive. So I got my directions. It was a men’s breakfast at a church, so I left my house with plenty of time to spare, put the directions beside me in the seat, glanced at them, and then got on the freeway headed to the breakfast. After driving for about forty minutes, I glanced at the directions to double-check my exit. I made sure it was the right one, then I exited and made a left. I began driving past the mall, past the light, past another light, and I wasn’t seeing anything I thought I was supposed to see. I figured I hadn’t gone far enough, so I kept driving.
Things were getting worse, not better. I figured that I ought to pull over and ask somebody. So I pulled over to a convenience store, thinking that I could trust the people who worked there to give me directions. A clerk told me that I hadn’t gone far enough. Now, I thought that the church was supposed to be not too far off the freeway, but I figured I had missed something and assumed that the clerk knew what he was talking about. After all, he was from the area. He told me to just keep going and that I’d run right into it. I get in the car and I keep going.
I started seeing cows and realized that I was now in the country. Something about this didn’t feel right. I wasn’t arriving at where I thought I was supposed to be. So I figured I’d asked the wrong person. I needed to talk to somebody else, get somebody else’s opinion. So I asked another guy.
Time was getting late. I was supposed to start speaking at 7:30 a.m. I’d given myself plenty of time, but now it was 7:15 and I didn’t know where I was. I was in a bad situation. So, I did ask somebody else. They said they’d never heard of the church. It was now 7:20 and I was getting a little nervous because I hate being late to anything. I started winding down my window at stoplights, asking random people to help me find my way. It was 7:25 p.m., then 7:30.
I had gone to five different people to tell me where I was supposed to be. Everybody meant well, but nobody could tell me where I needed to go. I decided to read the directions one more time. I picked it up and looked at it closely. Originally, I had only glanced at it. Then I let well-meaning people try to help me. Now, I decided to look closely at the directions. When I exited the freeway, I should have turned RIGHT!
First of all, I listened to myself and turned left. Then I listened to everybody else and really went farther out of the way. But the instructions said turn right. Because I did not pay attention to the instructions but listened to my own understanding and listened to everybody else’s understanding, I went left when I should have gone right. So I had to backtrack, and when I backtracked and went two blocks to the right of the freeway, I found the church.
I had lost time; I had lost patience. I was sweating, frustrated, mad, and irritated because I had gone the wrong direction.
Some of us have gone left. “There is a way that seems right to a man” (Proverbs 14:12). Where I wound up was wrong. A lot of us have spent five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years going left and you’re running out of time; the hour is late. It’s time to backtrack because where God wants to take you is really not that far away.
Tony Evans,
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