Quick is not always better

^20-23 Good friend, follow your father's good advice; don't wander off from your mother's teachings.  Wrap yourself in them from head to foot; wear them like a scarf around your neck.  Wherever you walk, they'll guide you; whenever you rest, they'll guard you; when you wake up, they'll tell you what's next.  For sound advice is a beacon, good teaching is a light, moral discipline is a life path. 

(Proverbs 6:20-23)

The correction of discipline is not usually viewed as pleasant by most of us - yet, it is the way to life.  God uses discipline to correct our path - not to punish us or get even with us for some wayward behavior.  It is also not intended to break our desire - it is used to purify our desire.

One of the greatest issues in life is the struggle we experience in embracing wisdom at its fullest.  We have so much wisdom available to us - knowing what to embrace, when it is the right time to embrace it, and how much is enough for the moment is often difficult.  We face challenges on every hand, attempting to walk through many of them simply guided by our own interpretation of them and what our past experiences have been in similar situations.  We often find that we don't quite measure up to the present challenge when we are not focusing on using the wisdom available to us.  

Many things in life can be "figured out" or "reasoned away", but God wants us to come to a place of reliance on him for the wisdom he wants to impart to us in that situation.  That wisdom usually exceeds natural understanding.  Whenever we stop short of what he is aiming us toward learning, we short ourselves of the ability to fully know, learn, and appropriate what we can in the situation.  Life offers many choices - our challenge comes in selecting well that which will benefit us the most.

We often want God to present the "easy" choices - the ones that are the clearest, easiest to grasp, and the quickest solution to the issue.  The "quick fix" is not always the best.  If we have a flat tire, there are cans of that stuff that you can spray inside the tire that will "fix the flat" for a period of time.  In time, those things don't work well.  They are good for the moment, but actually don't hold for the long term.  The solution was quick, easy, and obvious - finding the service station that still fixes flat tires was more difficult!

We will do well to remember that God is all about being "super-natural".  That means that when we limit ourselves to what we can figure out in the natural, we may be limiting what can be "super" in the solution to our problem.  I don't know about you, but I would rather have a "super" solution instead of one that "just gets me by".