When you have lived in a town for many years in a business that requires you to do service calls all over the area, you can generally find your way around real easily. You have learned all the routes and all the short cuts and back ways to many places. This has come about with the aid of a map or just curiosity and trial and error, and, by asking others of directions and following their always “easy” directions. (It is easy for them because they already know the turns, distances, and landmarks that are imprinted in their minds.) When you move to a different area, where you are going and how to get there all has to be learned all over, starting with the basic routes. Thankfully, nowadays, we have our friend Google Maps on our phones. Without that, it would be much more difficult. But, just around town, who wants to take the time to find and enter an address every time you want to go somewhere. So, I tend to just try to learn the area by following my nose and trying to remember to way I came, or, shouldn’t have come. Recently, in going from point A to point B, it occurred to me that I was taking the long way around, so I launched out in a different direction on a different road and Presto! It worked! I got to point B a lot quicker saving time and miles. But had I never 1. Considered the path I was traveling on, and 2. Launched out to find a better path, then I would still be going the long way around to get from A to B.
Our spiritual life is the same way. We might be living in “the long way around” in our beliefs and practices. We are familiar with where we are, but if we will study the map and turn our spiritual Google on, we might learn some other routes and some back roads and short cuts that will get us from point A to point B a lot quicker and easier. It is mapped out plainly in God’s Word that it is God’s will for us to have spiritual forgiveness and cleansing through faith in the blood of Jesus, personal empowerment through the Holy Spirit, and healing, health, and prosperity in every way through the beating that Jesus took and all that he did for us. If we are willing to launch out from our known routes and discover what is already mapped out, we can find a new and better way of life and blessings beyond our abilities that we have never known before. Then, once we learn this, our life is more maneuverable in the face of road constructions and other disruptions along the way. Life is a journey which we can share with the Lord who is the truth, the life, and the way.