Getting Guidance, Part 1

From the NY Times//Jack Atley, Bloomberg News

PR 19:21 Many are the plans in a man’s heart,

    but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.

Wisdom is navigating life skillfully. It’s living life well. It’s aligning ourselves with God’s design, not going against the grain, but with it.

In no area do we feel the need for wisdom more acutely than when it comes to making plans. Getting guidance. Making choices. Think about your day:

 

1. We are always making choices

• What to wear
• What to eat
• What to do: right now, tonight, tomorrow, this weekend, this summer, next year, the rest of your life
• who to hang out with

 

2. We are defined by our choices.  They make or break us.

• right major, right internship, right advisor, right job
• who should I date, who should I marry

 

3. Increasingly, like no other time in history we are paralyzed by our choices

So many choices confront us, more than ever. We’re told it will bring freedom, that more choice can’t be bad; but increasingly research is showing that actually people are paralyzed and depressed by choice. Overwhelmed and stressed.

One famous study depicted the problem of choice quite well:

In a California gourmet market, Professor Iyengar and her research assistants set up a booth of samples of Wilkin & Sons jams. Every few hours, they switched from offering a selection of 24 jams to a group of six jams. On average, customers tasted two jams, regardless of the size of the assortment, and each one received a coupon good for $1 off one Wilkin & Sons jam.

Here’s the interesting part. Sixty percent of customers were drawn to the large assortment, while only 40 percent stopped by the small one. But 30 percent of the people who had sampled from the small assortment decided to buy jam, while only 3 percent of those confronted with the two dozen jams purchased a jar.

That study “raised the hypothesis that the presence of choice might be appealing as a theory,” Professor Iyengar said last year, “but in reality, people might find more and more choice to actually be debilitating.”

Even if we have the capacity to endlessly research choices (a hotel, a camera, an internship, a potential bf or gf), that doesn’t mean we should.

Other researchers went on to say,

“It is not clear that more choice gives you more freedom. It could decrease our freedom if we spend so much time trying to make choices…Even in contexts where choice can foster freedom, empowerment, and independence, it is not an unalloyed good. Choice can also produce a numbing uncertainty, depression, and selfishness.”

“Society has become more self-absorbed through having too much choice, because individuals focus on their own preferences at the expense of what is good for greater society…”

 

Most of our decisions are moral. They’re legally permissible, but not necessarily beneficial. They are not wise. Fortunately Proverbs gives us WISDOM on how to make decisions, make plans. We need GUIDANCE.

 

Hebrew word for guidance connected with “ropes,” as in sailing. Ropes are ways of navigating: raise the sails, lower the sails.

How do we navigate life, getting God’s guidance? Proverbs tells us.  Here we’ll look briefly at what to KNOW about Guidance, and tomorrow we’ll look how to GET it.

 

What to KNOW about Guidance:

1. We need to get real about ourselves:

PR 12:15 The way of a fool seems right to him,

    but a wise man listens to advice.

 

PR 14:12, and 16:25 There is a way that seems right to a man,

but in the end it leads to death.

 

PR 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart

    and lean not on your own understanding;

    PR 3:6 in all your ways acknowledge him,

    and he will make your paths straight.

We need a sober self-assessment that realizes the limits of our own knowledge, experience, and wisdom.

 

2. Acknowledge God is in charge!

 

PR 16:9 In his heart a man plans his course,

    but the LORD determines his steps.

 

PR 20:24 A man’s steps are directed by the LORD.

    How then can anyone understand his own way?

 

PR 16:4 The LORD works out everything for his own ends–

even the wicked for a day of disaster.

 

PR 21:30 There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan

    that can succeed against the LORD.

      PR 21:31 The horse is made ready for the day of battle,

    but victory rests with the LORD.

 

PR 27:1 Do not boast about tomorrow,

    for you do not know what a day may bring forth.

But God does.

 

3. Trust in the one who has given us Jesus Christ! 

In the Garden, we see Jesus at what I believe is the peak of his incarnation.

Never was Jesus more human than that moment when he questions if it has to be that way.  In deep anguish and physical shock that causes him to sweat blood, he asks, “Father, if there is any other way, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but yours be done.”

Here, for the first time, Jesus questions what he should do. He had walked in perfect faith all his life, never questioning what he should do. But as the shroud of sin and death falls on him, and the Father begins to turn his face away, Jesus experiences the separation and uncertainty from God that characterizes most of our existence. He, just for a moment, has questions. But he continues in tremendous faith and strength, trusting his Father.

In that moment, Jesus enters into uncertainty so that we would know the certainty of the Father. He goes into unknown, uncharted waters, so that we could be known and have our future made secure. He is cut off that so that we could be connected to the Father. He willingly enters pain so that we could know the Father’s security and comfort.

Waiting on God’s Guidance is a matter of trust. So when he has given us Jesus Christ, how can we NOT trust him?