JANUARY 5 “WILL YOU FINISH THE JOURNEY?”

If you were on a flight and your destination was Hawaii (sounds real good right now) and your Airline stopped in Chicago and announced over the speakers, “this is it, your final destination” you would argue, “no, my final destination is Hawaii” and they responded, “true, but this is good enough, please disembark we have new passengers coming on, Thank-you for flying with us”.  If this happened to you, I think you would be irate. The final destination was Hawaii, what kind of nerve do they have, I will have a lawsuit against this company, I will get a hold of every newspaper…”  Religious people have all sort of little clichés they use and nuances, one of them is “Jesus is my co-pilot” which always starts an argument amongst religious folks, over the internet stratosphere, that sounds something like this, “what’s wrong with you, Jesus is not your co-pilot, He is the Pilot!!!” to which a bunch of people applaud and say “Amen, Amen!”  However, if you’ve lived for God for any amount of time, what looks good in a cliché doesn’t always match with reality. And the reality is that Jesus is the Co-Pilot, if He’s lucky and often gets bumped back to coach seating.  If Jesus was “the Pilot” we would always get to the intended destination. Everybody would do “the will of God” and nobody would deviate and/or miss God’s promises for their lives.  David would have gone to War and NOT stayed behind and committed adultery with Bathsheba; Samson would not have gone to the heathen, married a pagan and messed up his destiny, Moses would have entered the Promised Land (which was Cannan) and Terah would have never settled in Haran; he would have made it all the way to Canaan. “31One day Terah took his son Abram, his daughter-in-law Sarai (his son Abram’s wife), and his grandson Lot (his son Haran’s child) and moved away from Ur of the Chaldeans. He was headed for the land of Canaan, but they stopped at Haran and settled there”  A few chapters later we read about God challenging the son (Abram) to pick up, where the father left off. The intended destination was Cannan. What is Terah doing in Haran? Again, we would be outraged at any Airline company that would not get us to the “intended destination” yet how often, we as the Pilot of our lives, stop short and never expect God to have any objections, any complaints, any grief with our decision to settle somewhere, someplace, that was never the intended destination. We are never told why Terah settled in Haran, but we can only guess. Terah probably settled in Haran because it was “good enough.” Terah probably settled in Haran because he was tired. Terah probably settled in Haran because his wife, family and children were complaining about the arduous trip. Terah probably settled in Haran because it became more work to get to Canaan than he had first intended and/or imagined.  Sound familiar? We realize that Terah stopped short for the very same reasons you and I, often stop short. How can we accept this notion that God must accept our plans to stop short and just make things work for us from where “we have decided to settle?” You will notice God doesn’t, you will notice the moment Terah dies he moves upon his son Abram to pick up where the father stopped short. God moves upon Terah’s son to pick up and head to….CANAAN, the original, intended destination! Where was God leading you? That could be literally or figuratively. And have you stopped short? Do  you expect Him just to make things work the way they are? If this was to happen to you would scream, “Injustice, false advertisement, broken contract….” than cannot God also scream all the same accusations against us and be just in doing so? 

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