Instruments

 I don’t know any perfect people, myself included. I do know a handful that strives to follow after God and worship Him in spirit and truth, and they’re the ones I spend most of my free time with. Even though we might not see eye to eye on non-salvific issues once in a while, at least I know they won’t insist I should ignore God’s direction and blaze my own trail.

The world is full of broken people who live by mottos and slogans. From fortune favors the brave, to follow your heart, to a thousand other now cliché tropes that made them take their eyes off the instruments panel and guesstimate whether or not they’d make it over that hill.

God promises direction. He promises guidance. But you have to follow; you have to obey; you have to let Him lead, and be assured that it is to green pastures and a good place. You can’t blame God for leading you astray when you didn’t follow Him in the first place. That would be like telling a chef he didn’t know what he was talking about because the recipe in his book looked like stomped-on boogers and tasted even worse when I didn’t follow the recipe to begin with.

Yes, sometimes God allows trials in our lives to mature us, test us, purify us, and strengthen us, but for the most part, in most cases, the situations we find ourselves in were not His doing but ours. Many of the wounds we carry are self-inflicted. We could have avoided many of the scars we bear had we followed His guidance. It’s not just the Jews of old that were stiffnecked; we all are at some point in our walk, but as we grow and mature, we become less so because we can see the difference between choosing our path and following His.

Most people today want the quick fix. Instant gratification has become a bane on anything that takes longer than five minutes, and as has become the case in recent years, what begins in the world, seeps into the church as well. Those who complain about not having direction in their lives are the same ones who fail to prioritize the Word and spending time in it. Coincidence? I think not.

If you’re going to friends, neighbors, elders, pastors, or prophets for direction before going to the Word of God, you have it all backward. The Bible is brimming with direction and life principles, and it will lead you in the way you must go if only you dedicate yourself to the knowledge thereof.

Is it because we’re looking for an easier way than what the Bible prescribes that we are so quick to run to men for direction? We’re always looking for exemptions and carve-outs where none exist. We’re looking for an easy path rather than the true path, and when we end up in a different place than we were expecting, we act surprised.

I love the Lord, but. I trust the Lord, but. I obey the Lord, but. Then you don’t. You don’t love Him wholly, you don’t trust Him fully, and you don’t obey Him without equivocation because if you did, there would be no addendum, no conjunction to clarify that what you’d just said isn’t the whole truth.

If the Word teaches us anything, it’s that God detests half-measures.

Revelation 3:15-16, “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth.”

Fence riding is not an option. Those who think it is are just clowning themselves. By what God says, fence riding, being neither hot nor cold, is the worst possible choice you could make. He’d rather have you either hot or cold. Lukewarm is not what anyone should want to be, but it is what most of the contemporary church is.

Here we have God giving clear direction: pick a side! Be cold or hot because if you are lukewarm, I will vomit you out of My mouth. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture, does it? Yet, somehow, vast swaths of Christendom ignore these verses altogether and gravitate toward those who insist that God was just being moody or was having a bad day because He’d never vomit anyone out of His mouth. But He said it. He said He would, yet men insist He won’t because their god would never do such a thing.

When God is clear in the Bible on any given matter, you don’t go looking for confirmation; He hasn’t changed His mind. Of this, you can be sure. It’s not confirmation we’re after, though, is it? We’re looking for permission to do something the Word tells us not to do. We’re looking for someone to give us a word that would invalidate what the Bible has already said.

It is written should be enough for anyone who trusts in the Lord with all their heart and leans not on their own understanding. Imagine how simple everything would be if that were the principle we lived by. It is written should not be the beginning of the conversation but the end. There is nothing further to discuss, there are no indulgences to be purchased, and there is no haggling to be done.

Then again, if we lived by the principle it is written, we wouldn’t have mega-churches, televangelists, and fossils trying desperately to cling to their youth by getting tattoos and trying to justify them biblically. To be honest, I could do without those things because even though the numbers would shrink, those few who remained after the sifting would do great exploits because they were faithful to the Word.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.