This is the Way. Walk in it.

Are you at a crossroads in your life?  Do you have a big decision to make?  Do you have a choice of paths and need direction and guidance from God?  Well, He promises to give us just that! 

The LORD longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion.  For the LORD is a God of justice.  Blessed are all who wait for Him! 

O people…....you will weep no more.  How gracious He will be when you cry for help!  As soon as He hears, He will answer you.  Although the LORD gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, He, your Teacher will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see Him. 

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you say, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’                      ~ Isaiah 30:18-21

Beautiful.  It sounds so easy.  But sometimes the choices are so big, the consequences so far-reaching……  We just want to be absolutely sure!  We do desire to follow God, to know His will, but just to “hear a voice,” which will probably not be audible, but will manifest itself as that “still small voice” coming up from within our souls…. That makes discerning our answer feel a little tricky sometimes….  We are tempted to ask God, “Can you write it on a billboard?  Could you send me a letter in the mail that has my ‘mission’ neatly typed out for me?  Or even like Mapquest – Lord, can you be ‘God-Quest’ and map my path all out for me, highlighted in yellow?”

Not exactly.  And yet….God does promise to tell us, to guide us, and assures us that we will know His voice if we are one of His.   Jesus says to us ~

‘I am the Good Shepherd; I know my sheep and My sheep know me – just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.’        ~  John 10:14

But will we REALLY KNOW when it is Him speaking to us?  Well, does a mother know her child’s voice?  Can you recognize your spouse or your best friend within just a word or two on the phone?  And how do we get to that point of intimacy?  We spend time with them.  We study them, we get to know them.  We live life with them.  And that is what Jesus wants us to do with Him…..and then we WILL recognize His voice….from spending time in prayer with Him, from being immersed in His Word, and from personal experience of walking with Him each day.
 
 

The sheep listen to His voice.  He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out.  When He has brought out all his own, He goes on ahead of them, and His sheep follow Him because they know His voice.               ~  John 10:3-4

So lately I have been desperately needing direction from Him.  And yet sometimes He wants us to wait.  To learn patience.  For our faith to grow deeper.  Or maybe the timing just isn’t right for the answer yet.  We have to live in the “Not-Knowing” phase sometimes. 

And then…..a breakthrough finally comes….

This is what the LORD says, He who made the way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters.... –

‘Forget the former things.

Do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing new things!

Now it springs up, do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.’

                                                                                                            ~ Isaiah 43:16, 18-19

I came across this Scripture just the other day.  Wow, this sounds so hopeful!  Like maybe the waiting time is almost over.  You see, I feel like I have been wandering in a desert wasteland these last months – of being slammed with crisis upon catastrophe, which ended in slinging me into a dark valley of uncertainty of what step to take next – the “not-knowing” time. 

Out of curiosity I did some research and discovered that the “Holmes and Rahe Life Stress Scale” ranks major stressful events with numerical values, based on the amount of upheaval and pain each one causes.  In the Holmes and Rahe chart, a “serious personal injury or illness” ranks right near the top, second only to death of a family member, divorce or imprisonment, and then “losing your job” is right below that…..  I know that many of you can totally relate, having also been trudging through your own valley or desert, or thrashing through the woods lost and disoriented, desperately needing to hear the Shepherd’s comforting voice to show you the way.

So, I understand how you feel.  This has been a difficult personal journey for me, and yet I have known without a doubt that every step of the way I have not traveled alone.  God has walked with me, carried me at times, and taught me so many wonderful things that I can say I am not even the same person I was at the end of 2010.  I have been in a classroom of faith these seven months, of being stretched to the limit, of learning crucial lessons like how to be thankful even in the midst of the crisis, how to trust God even when there seemed to be no hope, and how to forgive when the pain and bitterness threatened to poison me. 

God instructs us in the Isaiah passage above, “Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past….”  And He promises, “I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” 

He also says this ~

I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them.  I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth.  These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.                 ~  Isaiah 42:16

So, what felt like a calamity to me for so long, has ended up as a discovery that this is an opportunity for God to “turn the darkness into light” and “make the rough places smooth.”  Or even to the extent of releasing me from a captivity of sorts – like this dove being freed from its cage.  God says He sent Jesus to ~

Bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness the prisoners.                                 ~  Isaiah 61:1

So what do we do when we are in the “not-knowing” stretch of time?  We pray.  We ask God for guidance and direction.  We cry.  We pray some more.  We listen.  And we wait.  And we trust that God knows our path and our destination, even when we can’t see it just yet. 

 And in the meantime, we learn about faith.   Because when it is time, when He says, “This is the way, walk in it,” we must be prepared to obey.   Then at that moment we could be released to the freedom to try something completely new in life, completely unthinkable in its scope and yet, if God leads us, then He will make it happen.   

Show me Your ways, O LORD, teach me Your paths; guide me in Your truth and teach me, for You are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.                                                                                                   ~  Psalm 25:4-5

Who, then, is the man that fears the LORD?  He will instruct him in the way chosen for him.  He will spend his days in prosperity, and his descendants will inherit the land.

                                                                                                               ~  Psalm 25:12-13