Check What's Leading

I just moved to a new city - Charleston, SC to be exact. I like the downtown life!

I enjoy the energy, the people, walking from shop to shop, as well as the good food.

Recently Alyssa and I went downtown to celebrate her sisters 19th birthday. The objective was to go downtown to the market, then shop, eat lunch, get dessert, and come back home.

The night before I asked Alyssa and her sister if we wanted to come up with a plan of what shops we were going to hit and where we were going to eat. Both said that we would just see what was down there and go from there.

Being married to Alyssa for almost 4 & 1/2 years, I knew this was a bad idea. So I asked one more time and got the same response.

Well we successfully got downtown and went through the market. However, after that it was not so good.

Since it was a new city we didn’t know the best places to park or the best places to shop. So we walked down several streets and past several shops, and for me, if I’m being honest, it was a little frustrating.

Twice we put in locations on our iPhone’s GPS to get directions and we began walking and after a block or two the arrow turned the other way and we realized we were going the wrong way.

Talk about frustrating!

Trusting the GPS seemed to be the right thing to do. It’s worked before why wouldn’t it work again?

Well I should’ve been more attentive and more aware of what the GPS was saying before following it’s lead.

On the way home, everyone was exhausted from all the walking and eating, it was a pretty quiet ride. So I began to think about other things I’ve trusted to lead me and how it turned out.

The first thing that came to mind was myself.

I’ve trusted myself to lead me more times than I would like to admit, and it hasn’t ended well.

I’ve trusted people to much (like an unhealthy amount) and it didn’t end well.

I’ve been lead by the motivation of money, and again it didn’t end well.

I’ve trusted so many things to lead me in my life and I’ve realized it never ends well.

In my last post (New Year - More Joy) I mentioned I’ve been studying the word JOY in 2021. In this study, I recently found myself in Psalm 43. This Psalm is only 5 verses long but it shaped me in a deep way.

I just want to focus on verse 3.

“Send out Your light and Your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to Your holy hill and to Your dwelling!”

The word for light here is the same word used for comfort.

The word of truth is meant as faithfulness and it is manifested by fulfilled promises.

The Psalmist is asking God to send out his comfort and faithfulness before him to lead him. The words light and truth are personified as messengers who will lead him (the Psalmist) to a the privilege place of worship.

So my question to myself and you is, what is leading us? Am I being lead by light and truth?

The comfort of God and the faithfulness of God are things I can truly trust. I’m not sure about you, but I need to stop trusting other things in my life because they may seem to be taking me in the right direction but ultimately they aren’t.

When you and I trust God’s light and truth, then we will be in the privilege place of worship and experience joy. Joy in the only thing that never changes - God.