Guarding Your Future

When I go to work, I pass by a small farm where there is a pen with a spotted mother goat and her knee high kid. Each time I passed by I noticed the kid was always going around the fence sticking his nose into every opening trying to find his way out. Evidently, he felt very confined by the pen. One day I passed by the pen and saw that the kid had found a way to get out. The most interesting thing about that was he was now trying to find a way back in. What a change: he had obtained his goal of freedom, but he noticed one thing that was very important; his mom was not there. She was inside. He was free on the outside, but his Mom, who was the source of his food, was not there, and he was hungry. I’m sure when this kid grows up and has kids of his own he will tell them about this experience. He will tell that the world out there sure looks great and is very tempting, but when you have your so-called freedom, you may have to pay a heavy price. The source of his power to run and play was the nutrients provided by his mother. Now that source of power was gone.

Isaiah 30:21 Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way;” walk in it Psalms 37:23 The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.

The world outside will lead us in different directions to the right and to the left, but we have to continue to walk in that straight and narrow path which leads us to the good life in Jesus Christ. In the world bad things can happen to us no matter what choices we make. That is because the world is a complex place, and we get caught up in other people’s free will, which causes them problems, and we sometimes get caught in the middle. But most of the time it is our own bad choices, which lead us into trouble. Jesus continually taught about choices and consequences. Jesus asks us to be humble, not prideful, to be generous, not selfish, and to be a servant, not a master. All these choices are in our hands from the time we get up until the time we go to sleep. The kid outside the pen was young yet he was learning early the value of making wise choices. God is the source of all our blessings, and when we move away from them (get out of God’s fence), then we become weak and powerless, and long for the assurance of home.

I was watching a TV program the other night about gangs. They showed the members of the gang weeping over the shooting of one of their members. He was in the hospital in critical condition. My heart went out to them even though they were in a gang that was centered on violence. I had compassion for them because somewhere back in time no one had taken the time to show them how to make good choices. Such a tragedy and a loss: a man who could have done great things in the world yet chose the wrong path. He got caught up in the whirlwind of his life. As in Hosea 8:7 “they sow in the wind and reap the whirlwind”. Bad choices reap terrible consequences. The strange thing about the gang is that they were mystified and shocked at this terrible outcome.

My cats love to go outside, and I love to let them go outside. The problem is when it’s raining, they do not like it. They detest the rain. When it rains, we always go through the same drill: they stand at the door and worry me with those strange cat sounds. I try to tell them it’s raining, but it just doesn’t work. Therefore I open the door, they run outside, they see the rain, they come to a dead standstill then turn around and run back in. Ten minutes later they are standing at the door crying again, I open the door again they run out again and they come back in again. My dogs can just hear the rain on the windows and they do not even get up, but not the cats. They just do not catch on. Sometimes we are like the cats we do something not very smart, we get burned, but then we do it again anyway. When we are saved, the Holy Spirit comes to abide in us. The reason the Lord arranged it that way is so that we will have a readymade compass inside to point us in the right direction. When we start to make bad choices, the Holy Spirit is there to keep us from acting like cats and doing irresponsible things over and over. The Holy Spirit rings our alarm bell when bad choices are laid out before us, to make us wake up and say “Do not open that door, you will not like the consequences.”