Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:00 — )
PROGRAM D-8170
Are you living now with a poor choice you made, maybe years ago, as you faced a crossroad in life? In examining the topic of life at the crossroads, we have looked at Jeremiah 6:16 which says, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.’”
Some of us—maybe most of us—have made some poor choices at the crossroads of life. We’ve chosen the wrong path and we wonder if it’s simply too late now. What do we do when we’re living with a wrong choice—one we would not make again but now we’re having to live with it?
I want to encourage you today to know that God specializes in turning our deserts into gardens and our ashes into beauty. It’s never too late for God to make something good out of our lives. The question is, what do we do about those wrong choices from the past?
First, repent and ask for God’s forgiveness, if you have not already done so. Then determine by God’s grace that you will go back to the ancient paths. Wherever you are, in whatever mess you may find yourself, it’s never too late to ask for the ancient paths and go back to God’s way.
You may have to sever some relationships. You may have to change jobs. You may have to confess to some dishonest thing you’ve said or done. You may have to make restitution for harm that has been caused by your wrong choice. Whatever it takes, go back to the ancient paths. You will never know the fullness of joy that God has for you until you ask for the ancient paths.
If it’s a choice you cannot change or make right, then ask God to give you patience and endurance, and to show you how he can use even that wrong choice to bring glory to himself. Those are not empty words—I can personally testify that God can use your wrong choices for his glory, even though you will have to live with some of the consequences.
Jeremiah’s exhortation to us is to seek the ancient path and the good way, and then walk in it. Just do it. Obey. I’m often saddened when I talk with people who are at some crossroad in their lives and they seem to want to know where the good way is, but then I discover that they only want to know the good way if it is easy, if it suits them, or if it is the way they want to go.
Stand and look down the road; consider the eternal consequences, and choose the ancient way. You’ll never be sorry that you did.