God's Gps

God’s GPS

Pastor Jim May

My wife Pat and I both have our birthdays in March, and in the first week of April we will also celebrate our 41st wedding anniversary. While I am thinking of that let me say thank you very much for your kindness, your cards and for the nice suit that the church bought for me. I appreciate it so much that I’m actually thinking about having another birthday next month too.

Our kids were good to us too. My son treated us to a nice dinner, and my three daughters got together and bought us one of those Tom Tom GPS devices so now I won’t get lost going home from church anymore. Actually, I’m kind of impressed because it’s pretty accurate. The only thing bad about it is that now I have someone else telling me how to drive all the time. It has a female voice and I’m used to taking orders from females so it fit right into the family.

I was thinking about that GPS this morning and the thought came to me that God has his own GPS at work in our lives too. Now man’s definition of a GPS is that it is a Global Positioning System, but I believe that God’s system would be call a God Positioning Spirit. The Holy Spirit, working in your heart and life, and revealing the Word of God to you on a daily basis is what keeps you on track and headed for your final destination.

For a GPS to do you any good you have to be on the move, going somewhere. After all, why would I want to know what my position is if all I’m doing is sitting on my backside in a rocking chair? Something has to be programmed into the Tom Tom or it just sits there and has little use. All of the information that it can give, and all of the directions that are stored there to help you along the journey, doesn’t do one bit of good until a journey is begun. What concern is it of mine that there is a left turn ahead if I’m not moving? Who care what road leads to Port Vincent if I’m going to St. Gabriel?

The point of what I’m trying to say here is that if you are on your way to Heaven, then you must allow the Holy Spirit and the Word of God to guide and direct you. Let the Word tell you what road to take, where you need to make a course adjustment and whether the path that you are on is the right one or not. Then you have to let the voice of the Holy Spirit speak to your heart and mind and then listen to the directions.

Now some of us think that we know better than the Tom Tom how to get where we want to go. After all, we have lived in the area long enough that we have found shortcuts and different paths that the Tom Tom is too dumb to know. But just drive into some unfamiliar territory and you’ll soon come to realize that you need the help of that dumb little machine. If you’ve ever had to ask for directions, and been given the wrong directions, you know what I mean.

There’s a story I read once of a man and his wife who left Newark, New Jersey on a short trip to Philadelphia. Now ordinarily that wouldn’t have been a long trip, no more than a day at most, but it turned out to be much longer before the trip was done. The problem was that this man’s wife was always telling him to ask someone for directions. Every time they went anywhere that they had never been before she was always saying, “Ask that man for directions. He looks like he’s from here.” Well her husband drew weary of the constant nagging to ask for directions so he purposely decided to cure it once and for all.

As they walked into the train station in Newark on the first leg of their journey it started. “Ask that porter which train to take”, she said. He walked over, pretended to ask for directions, then walked back. “He said to take the train on track 5”, he told his wife, and of they went. She had a big smile on her face because she knew they were going in the right direction.

They boarded the train and as it pulled out of the station she saw that it was going the wrong way, and before they could get off they were in Richmond, Virginia. “Go ask that man how to get back to Newark, she ordered.” Once again her husband dutifully obeyed and went to ask for directions. “The next train doesn’t leave for 8 hours”, he said. “The best thing for us to do is catch a bus, and the bus stop is only 6 blocks away so we need to start walking.” They walked for ¾ of a mile carrying all of their luggage, then he went up to the window as she had said and again asked for directions. Now they boarded a bus and she quickly fell asleep. When she woke up they were in Atlanta, Georgia.