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Are you where you want to be in life? Do you have the relationships you want, the job you want, the house you want?

Life is a journey. Sometimes we make mistakes that bring us down the wrong road and we have to turn around and come back. That wastes time. It’s like driving from Dallas to Kansas City. The road takes some turns and sometimes it is easy to miss the marker that shows which highway need to be on. The roads are marked, but it can be easy to miss the mark.

The word “sin” in the Bible actually means to miss the mark. When we sin it is always self destructive, whether we know it or not. Often it hurts other people too.

Oswald Chambers said that all sin springs from the suspicion that God is not a good God. Many believe that God does not want what is best for them, so they go outside his will to try to find something better. Trust me, that doesn’t work.

Adam and Eve suspected that the forbidden tree was good for them. They suspected that God was harsh and unloving, and that he didn’t really want what was best for them. So they made the decision to disobey. That didn’t work out very well. They got kicked out of paradise. That was not what God wanted. He wanted a perfect relationship with them as they lived in paradise.

Does God cause suffering or does he allow it? I have found that most suffering occurs when we don’t follow the path God has planned for us. Moses led the people out of Egypt to the Promised Land, the land of abundance. However, due to their lack of faith, they didn’t go into the land. They were afraid to fight the giants. So they wandered in the desert for 40 years. The trip to the Promised Land should have taken a few weeks. God allowed them to suffer, but that was not his plan for them. His plan was that they quickly enter the land of abundance.

I’ve heard people say “I may not like where I am in life but I’m right where God wants me to be.” I don’t agree. The only way we could be right where God wants us to be is if we made perfect decisions our entire life. None of us does that. Some get a lot closer to that goal than others. The beautiful thing is that God can use us no matter how badly we messed up in the past. In fact, he can use our hurts, hangups and habits to glorify him if we choose to do that.

I’ve heard people say “We can’t all be Billy Grahams.” That is what the world says. Jesus said just the opposite.

Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. John 14:12

God has a beautiful plan for your life. You can get back on track for that plan any time.

Do you sometimes feel the joy of the Holy Spirit? It’s the best feeling ever. Below is a short quote from the book Jesus Calling by Sarah Young. Her devotions have sold over 14 million copies. She and her husband were missionaries to Japan and Australia for many years.

I am nearer than you think, richly present in all your moments. You are connected to Me by Love-bonds that nothing can sever. However, you may sometimes feel alone, because your union with Me is invisible. Ask Me to open your eyes, so that you can find Me everywhere. The more aware you are of My Presence, the safer you feel. This is not some sort of escape from reality; it is tuning in to ultimate reality. I am far more Real than the world you can see, hear, and touch. Faith is the confirmation of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality, perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses.

My thoughts: Just yesterday I was thinking of William Shakespeare’s quote on reality. He said: The world is a stage.

He should know. He worked with stage props. He knew that a wooden board painted as a tree was just a prop, it was not the real tree. In the same way, the world we can see and feel is not the real world. The real world is the eternal, spiritual world. It is inhabited by our spirits, the Holy Spirit of God, and angels and demons. You are a spirit. You have a body, but you are not a body. Your body is just your temporary clothes that you wear here on earth.

The wonderful thing about realizing that we are spirit is that it makes us know that no one can hurt us or kill us. They can hurt our body or kill our body, but to kill a Christian is just to liberate him from this earthy cesspool into the glory and bliss of heaven with God. To be absent from the body is to be present with God.(2 Corinthians 5:8)

We live by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7)

The more you meditate on the things of the spirit and God’s Holy Spirit, the more love, joy and peace you will find in life.

One of my favorite parts of the movie To Kill A Mockingbird is the scene where Atticus Finch (the lawyer) is standing on the steps of the jail to protect Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of a crime. A mob arrives of more than a dozen men, most of them with guns. They want to lynch Tom. Scout, Atticus’ daughter sees Mr. Cunningham in the mob and innocently strikes up a conversation with him, reminding him that her father did legal work for him in exchange for some food from his farm. Atticus did the work for free, letting Cunningham repay as he could.

When Cunningham thought back over the kindness that Atticus had shown him, he decided not to cause him trouble and told his fellow mob members to leave and go home. They did so. I’ve seen things like this happen in life many times.

Galatians 6:7 says we reap what we sow. Even if we don’t see goodness come back to us immediately, we can be sure that it will return. In the movie we don’t see Tom being repaid for the kindness he showed Mayella, but in reality we will be rewarded at some point, whether here or the next life.