He Shall Direct Your Paths
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.”
This is the Easter season, a time when we are especially mindful of the incarnation (birth and life), death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. We also remember His ascension in new bodily form to heaven where He is very much alive today and seated at the right hand of the Father (Ephesians 1:20). When the hour has come, He will return in like form. Halleluiah!
Jesus was born with a unique purpose: To bring salvation to humankind and enable the reconciliation of all things back to the Father, including all who would choose to believe upon the sacrificial love-gift of God’s only begotten Son. As the Promised Messiah began His earthly ministry, He carried out His divine mission with laser focus – keenly aware of that which lay ahead…the Cross! He also leaned on His Father’s understanding, ensuring a clear and straight path to the fulfillment of His purpose, while modelling an intimate relationship with God; something He longs for all of us to have.
If you’ll pardon the play on words, Jesus had focused the “cross-hairs” of His sights on Calvary, and nothing – neither Satan’s temptations, the disciples’ admonitions, His humanness, nor the pleas to His Heavenly Father during the night of His capture in Gethsemane – would distract or dissuade Him from reaching His target and fulfilling His Heavenly Father’s purpose. For humankind’s fate rested upon the completion of Jesus’ near-unbearable challenge, and His martyrdom was required in balance with the sin of the world. By fulfilling and appeasing God’s very own laws, binding laws that even the Author Himself could not break, He served as the only acceptable way of escape for us all.
Life is a series of choices, the greatest of which (by God’s sovereign permission through Christ) sets all of us on an eternal path to the foot of the Cross of Jesus; a destination where all things converge and are made new, and thereby admitted into our Heavenly Father’s Kingdom. Our choices set our feet on myriad pathways, yet not all are initiated or guided by God’s wisdom and grace.
Unfortunately, we don’t always lean on His understanding and, consequently, our paths can become quite “crooked” at times. Considering that not “all roads lead to Rome,” not all paths lead to our well-being. Only one path leads to salvation, and that is the path of forgiveness through Jesus. It may be perilous to choose the path that Christ chose…the path that led Him to the Cross.
In fact, Jesus’ teaching makes it quite clear that if He is persecuted, then surely those of us who call ourselves by His name and follow His commands and commission will also be persecuted. However, upon realizing that true “death” and separation from God awaits those who do not fully embrace the truth of Easter, may we allow His wisdom to overwhelm our own so He can determinedly “direct our paths.
Those whom we serve on your behalf, who are in peril today around the world for having chosen and professed their faith in Christ, understand the dangers embodied in their faith and along the pathways of God’s leading. At the same time, they also share the sheer joy of Easter and its redemptive narrative, a truth that they freely choose to share with others, even those who are perpetrating harm upon them and their families.
At the beginning of this message, I quoted King Solomon, the very wise and powerful son of King David. Written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the words he pens in Proverbs 3:5-7 serve to remind us that even a world-renowned ancient king had to seek God’s counsel on all matters concerning any required course of action. Solomon, noted for his unparalleled wisdom, clearly defers to God’s discernment, admonishing all of us to do likewise by acknowledging the sovereignty of our Heavenly King regarding any decisions we must make, trusting Him explicitly to provide discerning direction.
What great comfort we can take from this principle – this important life-altering truth – despite the impending threats that accompany the journey. Yet it seems that following Christ (leaning on God’s understanding), and thereby enabling Him to “direct our paths” according to His perfect and abundantly available wisdom, could also be a perilous thing. This is especially challenging when such “paths” lead each of us to follow Jesus individually with our own cross tied to our back (Mark 8:34-37). The mystery of this apparent dichotomy is crystallized and better understood when we set our hearts and minds on the people and theology of global persecution.
Thus far in our North American church history, we have never had to face the fundamental, life-and-death question that our persecuted brothers and sisters face every day: Is my faith worth dying for? Jesus was confronted with this very question that night in Gethsemane, and He resoundingly chose His faith over His physical life. Thank God He did and that we today have a celebration called “Easter.”
The story of Easter sheds great light on the whole subject of martyrdom and the “theology of suffering.” Christ’s passion, and His great sacrifice on our behalf, is not something that simply happened two thousand years ago. The path that Jesus chose led to Calvary, and beyond it, into eternity. As a result, the true story of Easter is alive in all of us who believe, even today.
As we surrender our wills to God, and seek His wisdom and understanding, let us take hold of the truth that there are paths being straightened before us – ways in which He is sovereignly directing us. For He promises in Isaiah 45:2,
“I will go before thee, and make the crooked places (paths) straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron….”
He also liberally shares His gift of faith with us, thereby embolding us to follow Him along some perilous roads, while bringing salvation to the lost and light into the darkness.
- Doug
