Wednesday, January 30, 2002
It was a "dream car" for our teenage son - a blue, '66 Ford Mustang. He saved for it...he sold off valuable baseball cards for it - but eventually, he owned it. And it really was a pretty 'hot' car. I actually got to drive it once. Our son needed it driven from Chicago to New Jersey and somehow my wife and I were the lucky winners. And I have to admit, it was a lot of fun to drive. People would pull up next to us on the Interstate just to stare. Some would honk and wave. Folks would come over to check it out and talk to us about it at gas stops. I felt like a celebrity. Actually, the car was the celebrity. But as much as I enjoyed that Mustang, there was one thing I really didn't like about it. I had forgotten what manual steering felt like. And that hot little car was a "bear" to turn! I mean, I felt like a corkscrew by the time I finished wrapping myself around the steering column to make a turn.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about "Hard To Turn."
I was thinking one day about how hard that Mustang was to turn. And it hit me - I'm the same way. Hard to turn, that is. Maybe there's someone like me listening today, and I'm glad there's at least two of us. I didn't appreciate a vehicle being so hard to turn. God doesn't appreciate it in us either. He's supposed to be driving our life - that's what that word "Lord" is all about. But some of us just don't turn very easily.
Here's how God feels about that. It's in our word for today from the Word of God in Isaiah 30:1. Let me remind you and warn you, this is a sobering verse for those of us who tend to be "make it happen" people. "'Woe to the obstinate children,' declares the Lord, 'to those who carry out plans that are not Mine, forming an alliance, but not by My Spirit, heaping sin upon sin.'" That's one of those "ouch!" verses, don't you think?
If you're an aggressive, goal-oriented person, it's easy to unwittingly, even unknowingly, be one of God "obstinate children" - and to be working very hard on plans that are actually yours, not God's. We can be victims of our own cleverness, our own credentials, our own drive, and our own resourcefulness - ultimately of our own stubbornness. It could be that God is trying to turn you right now - but, like that old Mustang my son had, you really resist being turned. And God has to just keep increasing the pressure.
Sometimes we're "unturnable" because we just want something so badly. Or because we're victims of our own momentum - we're all accelerator, we're no brakes, often resisting the people God has placed in our lives to be brakes for us. The sad result of refusing to turn the way God wants us to turn is that we heap "sin upon sin". One mistake after another. One mess after another.
I wonder if God is trying to change your direction right now - in that relationship you're in, in your business, in your goals, in hanging onto some of those old methods, and in those attitudes or those ways of treating people that are hurting you and hurting others. God's plans are different from your plans right now - and you were made for His plans, not yours. Your Lord is supposed to be driving. And the driver decides where you go. Don't fight the Lord anymore - He's trying to turn you in the direction you were made to go.