I WILL (Part I)

I WILL (Part I)

A middle-aged African woman journeyed from house to house selling gorgeous fabrics, threads and buttons.  Because she was a Christian, it was her custom to consult the Lord each morning concerning the direction of her travels for that day.  This woman would pray in a most unusual manner; she would toss a stick into the air and then proceed in the direction in which the stick pointed after it landed on the ground.

However, one morning she was observed tossing her stick up into the air, not once, but several times.  “Why do you toss your stick more than once today?” a close friend asked.  “Because,” replied the woman, “it keeps on pointing to the left…and I want to take the road to the right.”  After making this explanation to her friend, the woman returned to the same spot and persistently tossed her stick into the air, again and again, until it pointed precisely in the direction she had the WILL to go.  All the while, in her mind at least, she had been seeking for the will of GOD!

Perhaps, that African woman had a ‘cousin’ of Scottish ancestry because her story reminds me of an old Scottish sailor who repeatedly got lost at sea.  In fact, he got lost so many times that his friend pitched in and bought him an expensive nautical compass.  They urged him to make use of it every day, so the next time he got into his boat he dutifully carried the new and costly compass with him.  Nevertheless, as was the norm, he became hopelessly confused, lost, and unable navigate back home.

Eventually, he was rescued (once again) by his dear friends.  Disgusted and impatient with him this time around, they asked “Why didn’t you use that exceptional compass we gave you?  You could have saved yourself and us a lot of trouble!”  The old sailor responded, “Oh, I had to stop using that useless thing.  I threw it into the sea.  Every time I wanted to head north, that stupid compass kept pointing south!”  This sailor was thoroughly convinced in his mind that he knew which way north actually was; he was so supremely certain that he stubbornly insisted on imposing his ‘wrong opinion’ on a ‘right compass.’  So he foolishly tossed an accurate compass aside, and was lost once again.

Kingdom Principle Number One: being too willful can get you into trouble, and having no will at all can have the same result.  Both of these conditions, 1) being too willful, or 2) having no will at all, can land you in deep and difficult waters.  Think about it.  Both conditions will potentially abort your God-ordained destiny and deny you of the God-ordered benefits that were designed exclusively for your life.  Consider this.  Whatever you allow to be written on that blank-sheet-of-life initially bestowed upon by your Creator will have a huge impact, both in time and eternity.  So who is doing the writing…God…you…or others?

In our next devotional, we will illustrate this truth with the amusing story of “Toad and Frog.”  Stay tuned…more to come tomorrow!