Listen with RealAudio!

    I’ve been driving the same 200-mile strip of highway for twenty years going back and forth to see my mom and dad. During all that time, I can’t remember one trip where there weren’t some detours, construction, or sections of road filled with potholes. On a recent trip, I couldn’t believe how torn up and pock marked this country highway was. I’ve resigned myself to it never being finished. It will always be under construction. The travel on this road will always be full of surprises and hazards.

    My life is much the same way. I haven’t spent much time getting from one place to the other as the crow flies. In fact, I seldom even see any crows flying on my journey. My path is much too winding. There are few straight lines and many roadblocks, detours, potholes, sidestreets, and unforeseen difficulties. But as I look at the journey traveled so far, I can see the steady progress of God’s hand shaping me to be more than I was when I began my journey. Granted, it has been a series of starts and stops. Many of the best days I took two steps forward and one step backwards. I easily remember the mistakes and wrong turns I’ve made that needed correction. Yet God’s Spirit has graciously kept working to make more of me.

The travel on this road will always be full of surprises and hazards.

    Transformation hasn’t been immediate or clean. But it’s there, irrefutable. But it’s only when I look at the long haul that I realize God’s handiwork in his flawed servant. Over the short haul, I see the difficulties, the pains, the failures, the insensitive moments, and the times I’ve disappointed more than delighted those I love. It is much easier for me to see the ground I’ve got to cover rather than the progress God has made despite my blunders.

    I believe that if you will pause a moment and look at your life, you may find you’ve traversed a similar journey. In a world of instant everything, character and maturity are won by God’s Spirit and grace over time and over our stupidities, failures, mistakes, and sins. We don’t like the detours or the potholes, but those are precisely the difficulties that God uses to craft us into something more. Our evil opponent would like to make us think no progress has been made, that our failures are circular and inescapable. He wants us to give up in despair with maturity always beyond our grasp. But incredibly, the God who “knit us together” in our mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13-16) is the same God who is at work in every situation to bring us to an eternal good (Romans 8:28-29). What he has begun in us, he is determined to finish (Philippians 1:6) until we share in the glory of his perfect Son (Romans 8:18; Philippians 3:20-21).

    Satan would love to defeat us through discouragement. He would love to have us stay off the road and quit our life as a traveler. The allure of no more difficult travel, of no detours and potholes, is tempting. But the biggest wrong turn we could make on our journey would be to quit making turns altogether and settle down where we find ourselves. While we may not be where we want to eventually be, that is what our journey is for. Ours is a journey of detours and potholes, but it is also a journey to Jesus.