A true and straight path

God, you give true peace to people who depend on you, to those who trust in you. So trust the Lord always, because in the Lord you have a place of safety forever. Honesty is the path good people follow. They follow the path that is straight and true. And God, you make that way smooth and easy to follow. At night my soul longs to be with you, and the spirit in me wants to be with you at the dawn of every new day. (Isaiah 26:3-4, 7, 9)

Some of us might equate dependence to some 'bad' way of living in which we cannot do or think anything on our own. Dependence requires more thought and determination than you might first imagine. What some consider to be dependence is nothing more than passive complacency and apathy. What God considers to be dependence is actually a place of active submission and obedience. Obedience requires forethought and continuous thought - passive complacency does not. Obedience requires trust and truth - passive complacency is satisfied with the status quo or the easiest route possible. This life of truly trusting God and living in total dependence upon him is something which requires active thought, leading to active participation, and ending in active renewal. The key to dependence is then action, not passivity.

To those who are actively choosing to trust in him instead of their own strength or self-performance, God provides true peace. Dependence really starts at the point of trust. Trusting God's truth revealed in his Word rather than our own thoughts about matters is something we learn over the course of our time walking with Jesus. Trusting God's provision for our salvation as the sole means by which we are saved and placed in "right standing" with him requires us to embrace truth. Trusting God to give us the direction we need when we are walking in unfamiliar territory in this journey begins in embracing the truth he reveals in the wise places we seek his truth. If you don't see the pattern here, let me point it out: It all begins and ends with TRUTH. Depending upon God begins and ends with TRUTH. God is TRUTH - therefore, all we receive from him is truth. All we stand upon is truth. All we rely upon is truth.

Without truth, all other foundations are simply unreliable and capable of crumbling at some point. Trust is "placed" - we choose to rely upon another. Trust is not forced upon us - it is something we make a conscious decision to give. When we walk across a shaky structure, we choose to believe it will support our weight despite its shakiness. We are making a conscious decision to move from one side to the other, depending upon (relying upon) this structure to get us there. It matters not that it appears less than reliable, because we are choosing to place our trust in it. This is where many of us get into a place of difficulty in our daily walk - we are choosing to place our trust in things, people, and circumstances which are at best a little "shaky" and probably not entirely trustworthy.

If we recognized the truth before we took the first step of depending upon all that is 'shaky' in our lives, we probably wouldn't venture out! There is unnecessary danger when we come to believe what we see rather than relying upon what we know to be consistently true. God's Word is consistently true - to rely upon anything which gets added to it or taken away from it is like whitewashing a lie. It appears to be reliable, but it will fall apart under careful scrutiny! This is why I so consistently remind us of the importance of getting to know God's Word for ourselves - not just relying upon what another man or woman tells us the Word says. 

A true and straight path is the result of knowing and embracing truth. If we want our path to be well-guided, secure, and filled with God's peace which passes all understanding, we need to allow that path to be guided by his truth. This means we submit our decisions to his truth - what does the Word of God have to say about what we are about to do? If we don't know, we may be going out on some pretty shaky ground! When the Word doesn't come right out and make it "plain" as to what we should do (as can be the case with some of the things we might encounter in this life like whether we buy and iPad or a Windows tablet), we just need to trust the consistency of God's principles taught throughout. Our decisions should not violate God's principles of truth. 

Anytime we confuse truth with a lie, our path gets a little rocky. Obedience is burdensome to those who are expecting truth to be easy stuff! Truth is learned - believed in our minds, confirmed in our hearts, trusted in our emotions. Truth is not a "thing" - it is a person - Christ Jesus! As long as we understand this, we will be more open to examining all "truth" in light of what he says, does, and is. We rely upon a whole lot of things in this life - some out of our control, others quite easily under our control. God expects that we will take both and place them under his control. In turn, we are "trusting" him to guide us down straight and smooth paths which are outlined by him. Nothing makes dependence easy - but learning to trust God begins in the moments of submitting our thoughts, actions, and emotions to his careful oversight. Dependence is active obedience. All our actions should be leaning heavily upon truth. Just sayin!

No bail out needed

Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. (Luke 11:13)

Do you bargain with God? You know what I mean - those little prayers where you promise to do something if God does something you need him to do. It is never wrong to ask God to intervene when we need help, but have you ever stopped to consider if the 'mess' you need help in might have been avoided if you'd have spent a little more time 'up front' asking God if this was the direction you were to take in the first place? I know I am guilty of plunging ahead and then stepping back at some point wondering how on earth I "missed God" along the way! The truth is that I didn't miss him - he wasn't there to be found! It was a path he had advised me to not take in the first place - so when I took it, it was like he was just standing there waiting for me to realize I needed to turn around! That is how I get into those 'bargaining moments' with God - "Get me out of this mess I got myself into and I will...." Have you been there?

To bargain with implies we are haggling with God - we are looking for a 'good deal' out of a lousy situation. We are attempting to negotiate our way into a better spot because the one we are in is just not measuring up to what we expected. I have found I need to be direct with God - admit I got myself into the mess and then listen closely to what he answers when I ask him how I could have avoided the mess in the first place. Chances are he will show me a multitude of subtle compromises along the way that I made and the times when I ignored his subtle, but consistent niggling to stop before I went down the path. Did you notice I said "I" made the mess and "I" ignored his urges? More often than not I have come to God at the end of all those "I" moments and admitted how much "I" created a big mess of things in my life. That isn't the moment to 'bargain with' God, though - there is nothing I have in that place that I can 'negotiate' with, is there?

God isn't going to play a cat-and-mouse game with us when we come to him for his wisdom concerning any course we are about to take. He is straight-forward with us - showing us where our motives are not aligned with his and how our heart will lead us astray if we continue to take the actions we are about to undertake. I believe some of us believe this life with Jesus is kind of like a 'contract' of sorts. If we meet this stipulation in the 'contract', then God will fulfill the contract in some manner. While our relationship with God is based upon a covenant, it is not a 'stipulated agreement'. In fact, it was entirely God's part that made the 'covenant' active and binding. Nothing we 'do' makes this a binding contract - it is entirely God's action on our part to give his Son for our sins and then to allow his blood to meet the required 'elements' of the 'covenant contract'. Jesus' shed blood met the conditions of the covenant - so even his covenant with us isn't based upon US.

Instead of bargaining (negotiating, haggling) with God maybe we need to just stop long enough to listen to his voice - his prompting, niggling, or urging. We might just find we don't feel like we need to 'bargain with' him because we realize there is much more reward in hearing his voice up front - negating the need to get with God to bail us out when we find we are facing stuff we didn't expect to encounter. There is much more reward in waiting upon God's timing than to turn back to him telling him we need a 'bail out'. Just sayin!