[351 words]
Our technological society has become very familiar with the “GPS” which facilitates navigating from point A to point B. When properly set, the GPS ideally prevents one from becoming “lost” when driving. I totally depend upon my GPS to navigate me through an unfamiliar city or location. I love it for the miles and the gasoline it saves me, not to mention all of the stress in wandering from street to street trying to find my way.
In His unlimited wisdom, our Creator recognized man’s desperate need for a “spiritual GPS.” His inspired prophet declared, “I know, O LORD, that a man’s way is not in himself, nor is it in a man who walks to direct his steps” (Jer. 10:23). No human being is born with a built-in spiritual GPS that can lead him/her to the Lord and His will. Many people make the serious mistake of trusting their own intuition as God’s inner voice! This is the spiritual danger Jeremiah warned against.
Many eternally jeopardize their souls by consulting the faulty GPS of “human wisdom” as they trust their own feelings or intuition to lead them to salvation. The good moral person may also reason that since he is as morally good as some Christians, surely a God of love (assuming that He does exist) would never send him to hell! Even some Christians trust their own “good works” as the basis of their salvation. Such thinking reflects the error of human wisdom and a very faulty spiritual GPS.
Paul’s epistle to the Romans clearly condemns trusting any human goodness, morality or even good Christian works as the basis of our hope for salvation. Such a spiritually faulty GPS is not programmed with God’s wisdom. The only GPS we can fully trust is God’s Perfect Son.
Jesus plainly declared, “My sheep hear My voice…and they follow Me (Jn. 10:27). Only those who follow the voice of Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life (Jn. 14:6) will be safely led to an eternal home with the Father and His Son in heaven.
Ralph Weinhold
Danville church of Christ
Danville, AR