My phone alerted me to a new text message.  My former neighbor wanted a partner to go to old town and take a look at a table and chairs for her new neighbors who had moved in with two small children and only a full size bed for furniture.  I texted back and told her to come on over and pick me up.

We stopped at a used furniture store on the way to see the table and chairs.  Keeping an eye on the kids we wandered the store and commented on the furniture, but everything was over the budget.  Hopping back in the van my friend followed the voice of the GPS to the address with the table and chairs.  This was the older section of town and the kids were afraid to get out of the van.  My friends oldest son bolstered everyones courage with a prayer for safety and everyone got out and walked up to the old Victorian style home that had been remodeled into several apartments.  We rang the door bell, but no one answered.  My former neighbor pulled out her phone and called the number, we could hear the phone ringing in the apartment, but no one answered the phone.  With obvious relief the kids were glad to get back to the van.

We decided our next stop should be The Salvation Army thrift store.  My friend navigated through the narrow one way streets back to the main street through town.  In the ten to fifteen minutes since we had stopped at a stoplight down town, the electricity had gone down, no doubt due to the above average temperatures, and now two police officers were directing traffic.  Each stop light we drove through a neon yellow vested police officer directed traffic to stop and go.  After much stopping and going through the heavier than usual traffic we arrived at the thrift store, only to discover it was closed due the electricity outage.

As my friend drove through traffic and the intersections directed by the police officers she followed their directions, she didn’t try to look ahead and follow the directions from the police officer at the next stop light.  No, she followed the directions for where she was at in that moment.  God has a plan for our life and He gives us directions for each moment.  We are not to look back, or try to see what we should do in the future, we need to follow His directions at that very moment.  Chaos would have erupted and no doubt people would have been hurt if my friend had decided to not follow the directions of the neon yellow vested police officer at each intersection.  Just like my friend waited for the officer to clear the intersection before she moved forward, God will also wait until just the right moment to clear the path before us.  I highly doubt, for example, that God bothered practicing to open the Red Sea before Moses and the Israelites needed it.  But, just at the right time they needed to cross the sea, God provided the power to do it.  We need to trust God to direct us in the paths He has planned for us to go.

We need to trust God’s love for us and use the faith He has given us to go in the direction He has planned for us.  We can’t see the end results of our choices like God can.  He wants us to open our hearts and minds to the beauty that could be.  The beauty that we can’t seem to see because we are seeing through our own realty rather than His.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.  Proverbs 3:7

In Your unfailing love, You will lead the people you have redeemed.  In Your strength You will guide them to Your holy dwelling.   Exodus 15:13

Brett was at the wheel of the car when a light showed up on the dashboard.  I pulled the car manual out of the glove box and proceeded to search for the definition of the light.  We breathed a sigh of relief when the book told us the symbol simply meant low tire pressure.   We would pull up to a gas station and put in some air.

The next morning Brett stepped out of the front door of our home and noticed the offending tire was now flatter than it’s companion tires.  It still seemed like a simple fix.  I would postpone grocery shopping til the afternoon and he would run the car into a tire repair shop and they would fix the leak.  After much searching the tire repair shop found a pinhole size leak, but they were unable to fix it because of where it was located on the tire.  It still seemed like a simple fix, until the tire man told Brett it would be $200 to replace the tire.

Brett decided to come home and do some research before he paid $200 for a single tire.  After several phone calls he found a shop with the tire we needed for $150.  He placed an order for the tire and the person at the other end of the phone assured him the tire would arrive by 10am the following morning.  The woman at the shop assured Brett they would call him to alert him of the arrival of the tires.  It all sounded so simple until…..

By 4pm the next day the tire repair shop still hadn’t called.  The shop was in a larger town about thirty minutes from where we live  so we had driven over early planning to do some grocery shopping while waiting on the shop to call us and tell us to bring our car in.  Finally Brett called the shop.  They did not have us scheduled, but they did have the tires.  We could come right on over since the shop was not busy at the moment.  We pulled up to the shop only to discover they were busy and understaffed.  One of the shops repairmen talked to Brett telling him that they could not replace just one tire because of the all-time, all-wheel drive system on the car.  Due to one small pin hole that could not be repaired in one tire we needed to replace all four of them.

Brett was not willing to part with the money for such a repair so he called the maker of our car and they confirmed that if we drove on one new tire and three slightly used tires it could ruin the all-wheel drive system.  Our simple problem had now become complicated.  We had begun our solution to a small hole in our tire with a trip to the gas station and now we were faced with replacing all four tires at $150 per tire.

When King Nebuchadnezzar discovered three young men who refused to follow his order to bow to an image of himself, I’m sure it seemed simple enough to solve his problem by carrying out his threat to throw them an intensely, blazing furnace.  But, can you imagine how what had once seemed so simple now became complicated?  The three young men who should have immediately been consumed by the fire were now walking in the flames and there weren’t just three, there were four!  And the fourth looked like a son of the gods! (Daniel 3:25)

Then the king called the men to come out of the furnace. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego emerged unharmed, with not even a hair on their heads singed or the smell of smoke on their clothing.

Needless to say, this made quite an impression on Nebuchadnezzar who declared,  “Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants! They trusted in him and defied the king’s command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God. (Daniel 3:28)

When  faced with the power of God, King Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged a power greater than his.  It seems simple enough to do when I read about someone else doing it, but when it boils right down to doing it myself, it becomes much more complicated to simply give up my will to follow the will of God.  My deeply ingrained need of self-preservation rises to the surface any time I am asked to cross my will to do the will of my Father in heaven.  What I need to practice so many times  day is to simply say, like Jesus did, “Not my will, but Thine be done.”  (Luke 22;42)