(BTW – I wrote this one a few years back…)
Yesterday, my wife and I went to visit a lady in our church that is homebound for a while because of an accident that occurred with a bird feeder.
Now I know that sparked your interest but we are not going to cover the accident in this post.
On Thursday, I gave her a call to tell her we were coming over and to set up a time for when we would be there. She gave me directions to her house and told me she would leave the front door unlocked so we could just “come right on in when we got there.”
So, we went. I drove right up to her house, got out of the car, walked right up to the front door turned the knob, walked right in… and realized real quick that it was the wrong house.
A “strange” lady’s face and her dog’s growl was my first clue.
Now my wife was still in the car…
Why?
Because she had told me we were at the wrong house. Furthermore she had told me in no uncertain terms that we had missed the house a few minutes before we pulled into the drive way of this house…
you know the one with the woman and the “Big Dog”
Yes my wife was right, I should have listened to her instead of going my own way.
This is why the proverb from today’s passage should have been written like this: “There is a way that seems right to a man but” at the end of His way is a big dog” and a wife that is safe in the car.
Ha… Ha.. Ha?
Just kidding…
The way the proverb 14:12 is written is more serious than that…
“There is a way that seems right to a man but its end is the way to death” (14:12)
A lot of things can seem right to us depending on the circumstances we are in but are really wrong.
What is tricky is…
the wrong way to go…
or the wrong thing to do…
or the wrong decision to make can really seem right on the front end. Its only after “doing what seemed like a good idea at the time” that we come to realize we were wrong and should have listened to the people around us.
More importantly… we should have listened to God.
We need to be careful saying “this is right for me” when what we are about to do goes against the Word of God but some how we have convinced ourselves its ok to do anyway.
We need to be careful saying “God will understand” when what we are about to do goes against what He has said in His Word. The crazy thing is He does understand… He understands you have chosen the wrong way.
We need to be careful when we say “I’m sorry but I just have to…” when it goes against the way God has instructed us to act.
We need to be careful when we go about convincing ourselves that what we are doing, participating in, or saying is “right” when it goes against God’s standards of holiness.
It can seem right to us all day long but if God says its wrong.. destruction is right around the corner.
It’s like whistling dixie while headed toward a death we can’t see coming.
So…
listen to others when they say “I think you are heading to the wrong house” and don’t go there.
Then, change direction and go to the right one.
Trust me…
it will save you from having a “heart attack”.
And that’s what jumped out at me from the passage today.
What did you see?
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