How do you navigate life? Did you know that God's Word, the Bible, has perfect instructions on how we are to navigate life? In addition to that there are many people out there who have taken the Biblical principles God has for us and have applied them to modern day living to help us see what it looks like. There is nothing we encournter on this earth that the Bible does not address. We just have to look for the pearls of wisdom burried within.
How we navigate life reminds me of the first time I rode in Shimik State Park. I went with a couple of friends, who neither of them had rode Shimik either. We were supposed to meet up with anothef friend who had, except at the last minute they couldn't make it. The three of us decided to ride Shimik anyway, it couldn't be that hard, right? Wrong.
We were enjoying out time greatly until we decided it was time to start heading back towards camp for lunch. Every trail we took ended up winding us back in the wrong direction, away from camp. There was no cell service out there so we coudln't even get a map to pull up on our phones, couldn't get a compass app to work either. Finally we found the edge of the timber and a road. We decided to head back along the road as we knew it would lead back to camp, eventually. We rode down that rode for a good hour before we found camp again. We were all exhausted, the horses too, and hungry. We got back to camp way past lunch time and decided our "morning" ride was more than enough for the day.
Don't get me wrong, we had a great time and it is a ride that goes down in the books. We all learned a lot in that ride. This was the beginning of our adventures in trail riding and we had to learn the hard way of how to prepare, for everything. Yet this applies to our life as well. How many of us go through life thinking we can just figure it out on our own and deal with the problems when the arize? I used to live like that, as most teenagers do, but the fact of the matter is that we are not desiged to get through this life on our own. (Genesis 2:18, Ecclesiaties 4:9-12, Galatians 6:2, Titus 2:3-5)
Life is exhausting on it's own. I walk this life in step with the Lord and it is hard enough. He is gracious and willing enough to carry our burdens when we give them to Him. I couldn't do life without Him. I watch as people attempt to do life without Him and it is so hard to watch them, knowing there is a better way. That is all the Lord offers us, is a better way, and we would be wise to chose it.
I liken how the Lord leads us to how a good horseman trains a horse. The horseman never forces the horse, he only offers the horse a better way and when the horse refuses either makes the horse work harder going the wrong way, or increases the pressure until they begin to move in the right way and then lets them find the release. God will never force His ways on us, but throught His natural design the wrong way will be hard, have many trials, and is void of peace. As soon as we begin to move in the way of rigtheousness and within His design, we find that release, the peace we are longing for.
"Taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!" Psalm 34:8
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