Making a Course Correction
The Path Series-
CCCAG October 10, 2021
Scripture-Proverbs 27:12
Last week we started a new series called, “The Path,”
It’s a study taken from the book of Proverbs.
In it, we established an unbreakable principle in the universe that if you try to break this principle, it will break you.
It’s the principle which says Your direction determines your destination.
Last week we even went a little further and said it really doesn’t matter what you hoped would happen for you, or what you wanted to have happen to you—Your direction, not your intention, determines your destination.
It doesn’t matter if you intend on going to La Crosse-
it doesn’t matter if you think about doing it,
want to do it,
and desire to do it-
if you get on Hwy 53 going north, you will eventually end up in Eau Claire and if you don’t turn around, you’ll eventually end up in Superior.
The principle isn’t rocket science;
We all know this when it comes to geography, but for some reason, when it comes to other areas of life,
like relationships,
finances,
eating habits,
exercise, and developing skills that make us more competent and valuable, we often walk one way and hope to wind up somewhere in the other direction.
But again, it’s Your direction, not your intention, not your hopes, not your dreams, determines your destination.
For almost 20 years, I had an interest in going to college to be an RN.
I had every intention of doing it someday, knowing that the day will come when I physically couldn’t do the job of paramedic anymore.
Before I moved up here, I’d walk out of the station some mornings after running 24 to 27 hours straight and say, “I can’t keep doing this- I need to go back to school for my RN”
Yet 2 days later, I’d be walking back into the station for another 24+ hrs of fun.
That interest and intention didn’t get me many closer to what I knew would become necessary the older I got.
However, 3 years ago, I made the decision and drove to Marshfield, signed up for classes, and even crammed to take my entrance exam and started the process.
My dreams, my goals, my intentions finally got pointed in the right direction so I moved toward the destination I wanted.
This is the hinge on which everything we’re going to learn today swings on.
Now turn to Proverbs 1:2
Solomon wrote most of the Proverbs. He tells us that the reason Proverbs was written,
2 for attaining wisdom and discipline;
for understanding words of insight;
3 for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life,
doing what is right and just and fair;
4 for giving prudence to the simple,
knowledge and discretion to the young-
Sounds like a great thing doesn’t it?
In the Christian church, we believe that God supernaturally moved in the hearts and minds of the about 40 different people who had a part in writing the book we call the bible.
In this section, which is known as the Prologue to the book of Proverbs, a word appears twice that we don’t use very often. But it’s a great word, because if you can master the skill it implies, your life will work much better.
See if you can find the word that appears twice, though in two slightly different forms.
3 for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life,
doing what is right and just and fair;
4 for giving prudence to the simple,
knowledge and discretion to the young-
The word is “Prudent” or it’s adjectival form, “prudence.”
The word Prudent means three things =
Knowing what to do.
Exercising good judgment.
Having common sense.
In the 21st century, we don’t use this word very much, but the book of Proverbs uses it a lot. In fact, Solomon compares and contrasts prudent people with a second kind of people, “simple people.”
Whatever you are, you don’t want to be a simple person.
Other translations can use the words wise and foolish to compare and contrast these same people.
Who here wants to be a fool?
Later in Proverbs, Solomon says,
Flog a mocker, and the simple will learn prudence;
rebuke a discerning man, and he will gain knowledge (Proverbs 19:25).
In other words, some people learn by verbal instruction: A friend points out something they’re doing wrong, and they learn from it. Other people, “simple people,” have to be whipped or beaten or have something bad happen to them to learn a lesson.
There is a Youtube video out there of a guy that packed an old riding lawnmower with Tannerite. If you don’t know what Tannerite is- you can buy it down at Holton’s and it has about the same explosive power as dynamite. This guy packed a lawnmower full of it, and decided to shoot it from about 25 yards away.
The last thing you see in the video is the lawn mower exploding, and him screaming, “I blew off my leg!”
A prudent person would have backed up a few hundred yards and shot that thing from behind some type of hard ballistic cover knowing that explosive placed inside metal produces shrapnel, one of which took off his leg.
A simple person decided that he could do it from 25 yards away with no cover.
Another way this word simple is used in the bible is to refer to a childlike refusal to see the truth or obey authority.
That’s why the simple need some type of painful lesson to associate right from wrong.
This is why you spank a child to get an important rule across.
If your child refuses to listen to you and keeps running and trying to jump in a running woodchipper, you don’t have a coaching session or a time out- you might need to beat the simple out of them with a few well places whacks on the backside.
Amen!
Otherwise if children or the simple minded refuse to obey authority or God’s rules, they leave themselves wide open to Darwin’s rules of survival of the fittest and they have little chance of surviving that.
In another place in Proverbs, Solomon says,
A fool shows his annoyance at once,
but a prudent man overlooks an insult (Proverbs 12:16).
Simple people let their emotions get the best of them.
Remember we are equating simple with childlike?
No matter their age, a simple person flies into a rage at any perceived lack of respect.
They get mad and go into a rage; they spout off and complain when things don’t go their way, but prudent people know how to control themselves and take things in stride.
Here’s another one:
A simple man believes anything,
but a prudent man gives thought to his steps (Proverbs 14:15).
Simple people get fooled easily. Do you know who else gets fooled easy?
Children!!!
Prudent people use their brains.
Can you imagine if we mastered prudence, friends? Life would be a lot easier, wouldn’t it?
RANT ALERT!!!
This is just for people in the church. Call it a family discussion.
Gullibility is not a fruit of the Holy Spirit- discernment is. (Repeat)
I used to wonder how so many people were able to be fooled into selling everything they had and following a madman named Jim Jones to South America and believing his lies to the point of committing mass suicide.
I don’t wonder anymore, because I’m seeing it lived out in front of me.
It absolutely floors me when people claiming to be Spirit-filled Christians spout off the most ridiculous conspiracy theories out there, especially when they are in leadership or carry the title of pastor! They not only believe this garbage but spread it on their own social media feeds, and when you call them on it, they immediately defriend and block you.
What kind of a person does that?
A child…or simple person maybe?
(Step out from pulpit)
I’m going to step out of the pastor mode for a moment and talk to you as friends.
Listen, most of what you hear, most of what you read, most of what you see online or on the TV news no matter the network or political leaning has some degree of untruth to it because they want and need you to stay afraid.
If you are afraid, you tune in to learn more, and that generates money for that network.
Even CNN, and Fox News. I covered both sides so you can’t say I’m biased.
This is proven science- When you are afraid, you go into a fight or flight mode which means your higher brain functions shut down- making you much more susceptible to wanting to hear and to believe in the comforting lie.
This is why the military uses this tactic in basic training to put so much stress on the new recruit-
Shark attacks
Physical pain
Sleep deprivation
Limiting food
Intense physical training
Intense punishment.
It’s meant to inoculate you against he affects of stress and fear so you can function no matter the situation.
We Christians need some basic training in our lives. Our training comes from learning this book, and letting God’s spirit have more and more access to our lives, and to our moment by moment thoughts and lives.
Rant over
Back to Proverbs and our main point for today.
(Proverbs 22:3).
The prudent see danger and take refuge,
but the simple keep going and pay the penalty
Now look at this: (Proverbs 27:12).
The prudent see danger and take refuge,
but the simple keep going and pay the penalty
It’s the exact same proverb, just recorded in two different places.
Why would God do that?
God put Proverbs in the Bible to make us smarter at living life.
God put this Proverb in the Bible twice because he thinks it’s doubly important that we learn its lesson.
Simple people need to be flogged to learn lessons, while prudent people just need a word. Let’s read the proverb again-
The prudent see danger and take refuge,
but the simple keep going and pay the penalty (Proverbs 27:12).
Here is where the serious learning begins.
If last week we learned that our path is of paramount importance, then the logical question is,
How do you choose the right path? How do you figure out what path you should be on?
Or, in some cases, how do you figure out what path to get off of?
This proverb is telling us …
The primary difference between the prudent and the simple is not what they see but how they respond to what they see.
The prudent see danger and take refuge.
The simple see danger and keep going.
Both of them see danger.
One responds by changing course, the other keeps going and hopes that the danger will never arrive. It’s like the ostrich who buries his head in the sand: “If I can’t see it, it can’t see me. If I ignore what I know is out there, it can’t hurt me.”
You can see why Solomon calls people like this “simple.”
So how do you choose the right path?
1. The prudent make course corrections.
As most of you know, Kenosha has Lake Michigan. Kenosha has a harbor which has lighthouse at the end of a long pier, and a breakwater about 200 yards from the end of that pier. On the northside is a small beach for people to swim in.
When I was younger, I was an avid swimmer and SCUBA diver, I used to love to throw on a wetsuit, mask/snorkel and fins and swim from that beach to the breakwater. It was about a mile and a quarter swim round trip, and pretty exhausting because you’d have to fight the currents and the waves coming in to get anywhere, but the wetsuit helped with buoyancy so you couldn’t sink. Every minute or so, I’d stick my head above the water and check my position to make sure I was on course because of the riptides in the area would suddenly grab you and pull you in different directions depending on where you were or if they wind shifted.
Prudence demanded I check my position often so I wouldn’t get pulled past the breakwater and out into the really deep areas where no one could see me, and if I saw I was getting dangerously off course, make a correction.
That’s what a prudent person does. However-
2. The simple keep right on going.
- The people who most often drown in Lake Michigan have never swam before, or have never swam in the ocean or in a great lake and don’t understand the dangers of wind and large bodies of water. They just dive in and hope for the best.
- In one spot there are warning signs that say, Literally- if you swim here, you WILL drown. Pike’s creek empties into the lake near by and under the water there is a sandbar that directs the water into the beach area causing a very powerful riptide.
The second half of the proverb says, “the simple keep going and pay the penalty.” The penalty for what?
– For refusing to act on what they see. They pay the penalty because they see no connection between the choices of today and the experiences of tomorrow. They overlook the fact that every path has a destination.
Do you know why I know that severe rip tide is there?
I lost 3 friends from high school to that rip tide. About 20 years ago, I was on the Kenosha County Dive Team and ended up being the operations officer of the recovery team that pulled their lifeless bodies out of the water after 6 hrs of looking for them.
All three of them walked past that sign knowing that danger. All three of them were inexperienced swimmers, meaning they knew how to dog paddle and that is it.
All three of them paid for it with their lives.
The simple can’t see past their immediate wants and desires to consider where that road they are choosing will lead them.
And even if they initially chose that wrong road and realize it’s the wrong road, they keep going while ignoring all the signs that the bridge is out, and if you keep going you will be plummeting hundreds of feet to your death.
Most of us are thinking, “Well, I’m not a fool. I’m grown up and not a child. But Biological age doesn’t matter here.
It doesn’t matter if you’re, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 or over 75 years old,
you see a problem in the future because of your path, you need to get off that path.
If you don’t, you are “simple.”
This is especially important as we raise children.
We have to be proactive as parents- we correct what we see is a problem in our children, because hopefully we are a little more prudent than they are.
If we don’t, if we prefer non-confrontation and hope for the best- that law of direction will bite us and our children hard in the future.
It matters in all areas of life- career
Money
Education
Health
Actions based on direction, not your nice intentions, determine your reality.
So how do you choose the right path?
Here’s the key.
3. Prudent people know that it’s not what they see that makes a difference, it’s what they do.
So they do things. They make course corrections.
How do you make a course correction?
1. You do something.
You take action. You step off a path and get on another one. This is almost always hard because
we are creatures of habit,
creatures of momentum,
and in large part- creatures of comfort.
We naturally continue to do what we’re used to doing. If we’re used to overeating, overeating feels natural to us. If we’re used to losing our temper, losing our temper is natural to us. If we’re used to online chat rooms or indiscrete pictures or relationships, that’s what we’re used to.
Momentum carries us in the same direction, so to change directions means…
2. You almost always give up something.
Here’s a corollary to what we’re saying: When you see danger, it almost always requires sacrifice, which is why we don’t do it.
It’s a terrible truth of the human condition- we love the very thing that is killing us inside. That’s the true danger, but the danger we have the hardest time letting go of.
But, when you behave prudently,
3. However if you act prudently and change course, you may be the one left standing.
Do you remember the story of The Three Little Pigs?
You remember the story: One builds his house out of straw; one builds his house out of sticks. When the big bad wolf comes along, he huffs, and he puffs, and he blows their houses down.
After all, using straw and sticks to build a house is very easy and doesn’t require a lot of effort.
Solomon would call those two “simple pigs.”
The third little pig was a prudent pig. He built a house out of bricks. Why? Because he knew there was a wolf lurking about and saw danger coming and built a refuge!
Friends, we all know that life is going to bring us challenges, don’t we?
This message is so vitally important for us today. We see danger all around us, and if you are prudent, you will prepare for it.
Friends, let’s not waste another minute on a path that leads somewhere you don’t want to go. Let’s take some time this week to reflect and redirect. To make some course corrections. It is our direction, not our intentions that will determine our destination.
All rise
The prudent see danger and take refuge. They get off the wrong path and get on the right path. They make course corrections. They don’t just think about it or worry about it—they do it.
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