Choosing the Right Path

It is interesting the tangled web we often weave within our lives. We start out on what would appear to be the right trek but soon find we are wandering about aimlessly lost in the chaos of life. Solomon wrote that “a man’s heart plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). The way I see it is that we make our plans according to the drive or desire of our heart but too often we fail to allow the Lord to step in and direct us down the right path. Maybe our drive or desire was outside His will or maybe we simply took the driver’s seat and assumed we could best get ourselves to the goal.

The real problem lies in the premise we operate under that says “I can do this.” If we are truly children of God, it is not His will or desire that we “do this” on our own but that we allow Him to direct and lead us as we submit ourselves completely over to His will and way.  David Jeremiah addressed this when he said, “Our lives are not our own. We need God to guide our steps to walk us through this thing called life.”  That brings up a very good point for us and that is that we are not our own. When we assume the driver’s seat in our lives, we push Him away from being in control by taking control ourselves. When we do this, we are setting ourselves up for failure and eventual disaster.

The prophet Jeremiah arrived at this conclusion as we see when he writes these words: “O LORD, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps” (Jeremiah 10:23). When we arrive at this conclusion for ourselves and follow in it, we will find that our steps are always in accordance with God’s perfect plan for us. Although we may not understand His direction at times, we can trust in His knowledge of the Big Picture to get us right to the place He always desires for us to be. Choosing the right path simply means choosing to allow God to always be in the driver’s seat of your life, for the right path is always in His perfect plan.