Wednesday

That's not our house! - A Dose of Encouragement


Yes I know, wouldn't you think that your husband would drive you home to your own house after a long day out?

He would know your own house wouldn't he?

Well there was one day ......





Yes while we were still living in Belgium we would quite often need to use the GPS system in our car because we would be in unfamiliar locations throughout the country.

Even though we lived in a village not too far outside Brussels we were never driving in Brussels often enough to feel confident about finding our way all around it.  I could easily drive in to the Gare du Midi and pick someone up from the Eurostar and drive them back to our house okay but mostly we got the tram and metro in and out from Brussels.

So on the times that we did drive into Brussels we would mostly use the GPS to get us out of Brussels again especially because it could handle the one way street system better than we could.


So on this one day .......

We had driven (using the GPS) over to somewhere further east of Tervuren and were definitely on unfamiliar roads so coming home we decided we were tired and should just follow the directions of the GPS again instead of having to keep carefully looking at signposts when it was starting to get dark.

Fred set the GPS for home and off we went.

Somehow the journey seemed longer to get home than it had on the way out but we reckoned it was just because we were tired and looking forward to getting home and a relaxing cuppa.

Then suddenly I thought I recognised the road we were on but it was not a road near our home, it was near Kraainem which is closer to Brussels than Tervuren is.

So I thought I must have been mistaken.

Then again a little later I thought another part looked like another area but to get there would have meant we had gone north past Tervuren and I couldn't figure out how that would have happened.
No way would anyone or any GPS be silly enough to take us home to Tervuren a roundabout way to end up coming in to Tervuren from the west instead of the east.

It just didn't make sense.

And then the GPS told us we had arrived!






But I did recognize the house.

It was my friend Anne's house,  not our house.

Yes we had landed at Anne's House which was between our house and Brussels.


Screen shot of google maps


Well Fred couldn't understand how we ended up at Anne's house and not at home.


So I ask "didn't you set home on the GPS?"

He says "yeah, of course"

But I say "well if you did set home it wouldn't have gone to Anne's"

He says "well I hit for the latest place that had been used from the saved list"

So a minute later I said "a couple of weeks ago I had to use it to take Anne home from somewhere else and so Anne's house would be the last thing used from the saved list"

He says "I just assumed that home would have been the last place we used"


Thank goodness that last place used had only been 15 mins from our home; it would have been worse if we had ended up somewhere much further away.


That GPS was very useful to us when it was delivering the right information 
and taking us in the right direction so we put our trust in it, 
but when we were not careful enough to check what we were doing with it each time 
then the wrong information caused us to go 
in the wrong direction 
and end up in the wrong place.


Maybe I am just a very cautious person but I do be concerned about all the people in the limelight, on the internet, on facebook etc. that proclaim to be teachers, preachers, coaches, and leaders in the Christian community and yet what proof do we have that they are worthy of our trust and our following.


Just because someone says or writes something that sounds or looks ok can we trust it or them?

We need to be vigilant.  
If we start to listen or read more of their "wisdom" it may end up 
to be simply that, 
the wisdom of themselves 
and not the wisdom of God.


We need to be like the Bereans




We can follow blindly and end up on a route that sometimes looks familiar but ends up in a place 
that God does not intend us to be, 
a place that does not centre round His True Word, 
a place that is not in the guidance of the Holy Spirit.


But we don't need to fear that we will end up in the wrong destination if we take heed to how the Bereans behaved because then we will

Be careful 
not to jump in to trusting anyone without asking God for wisdom to know just who is worthy of our trust because we need to be sure that person is really a true disciple of God.

Be sensitive 
to a nudge from the Holy Spirit, or from a word or phrase that is used or from the fact that the Bible is not mentioned or correctly quoted and just take the time to consider "whether those things were so".

Be quick to check 
regularly in the Bible as we see or hear from others because we should want to know by comparison to God's Word "whether those things were so".

Be slow to pass on
to others what someone is writing or speaking about, even as to recommending books because we are to be true disciples and not be guilty of leading others astray too.


The Bible is the true guideline for us.


The Bible leads us to Jesus and God, it does not lead us astray; 
so it is the true guideline for us.