Ask God to Lead You

Two fences built together can cause a bit of trouble. I appreciate that so much. Not that we have had any trouble at all when we built our home here at Rankin Park. The boundary fences were already there when we bought the block and when we built our house. All very good.

But being on a corner, we had to build a fence on our property, which gave a bit of privacy, and we wanted a slat-type fence, which we reckoned would be great.

Getting someone to do it was going to be more of a problem than we first thought. Some of our friends suggested that we do it ourselves. Unfortunately, I wasn't that way inclined. If I had done it, I hate to think what it would have looked like.

We had lots of advice about getting quotes and then thinking about it. Did we get a lot of quotes for that? No, we didn't.

Jesus didn't get quotes or anything like that, but what he did get confronted with, when he arrived at the temple this particular day, was by none other than a few of the Chief Priests. They hauled him to one side and wanted to know where he supposedly got his authority from. 

"Who do you think you are?" They gabbled on to him and kept on gabbling, but Jesus refused to tell them anything or even where he was from or who he actually was.

He ended up telling them a story/parable, which we will get back to soon:-

Back to my fence; we rang a lot of fence people. It was an interesting experience and one that I still get amused by. We had absolutely no answers to our problem when we first started, but things changed, well, in a way they did.

One place seemed so interested in our suggestion, "Yes Mate, we will be there. How about two o'clock tomorrow afternoon"? I felt that would be great, and we arranged for one of us to be here, and the family and I had talked about it at length. So, we all knew basically what we wanted.

One of us made sure we stayed home and stayed home and stayed home - hour after hour. I finally gave them another ring. "Aww, sorry mate, we got caught up - will be there tomorrow morning - sorry about that."

So again, the next day we waited and waited - nothing! Don't you love that sort of thing!

Back to Jesus:- He ended up telling all around him, including the Chief Priests, a special story about a Dad who had two sons. You can read about it in the Bible in Matthew 21: 28-31 and it goes something like this.

Dad went to the first son and said, "Son, go and work today in the vineyard."

"I will not," he answered his dad, but later he changed his mind and went and did what his dad had suggested.

Dad ended up going to the other son, probably after the first son gave him the heave-ho and asked the same thing that he'd asked of the first boy.

"I will, Dad - of course," but he didn't go at all.

Jesus then asked the Chief Priests, "Which of the two did what their father wanted? 

The first,"  they answered

Back to my fence guys:- the waiting continued, and finally, my common sense took over, which can be very limited according to my life's experiences. "They aren't coming, are they?" I asked my family. "No dad they aren't coming so well done!"

So, we rang around yet again. Some never answered at all, so we kept on trying. Finally, I got an answer, and they told me they would come tomorrow at around one p.m. "Hmm, I thought, we will see".

Amazingly, they showed up and built the fence - here is a picture of the completed thing, and it is quite good actually.  Absolutely no one else turned up or phoned me back.

The whole thing reminded me so much of when Jesus told this parable to the Pharisees and those around him. They had listened to the story that Jesus told them, and when they answered Jesus that it was actually the first son who did what his dad had asked him to do, Jesus came back with an answer. (my words.)

He said so many people will be entering the Kingdom of Heaven long before you. He then mentioned John, who came to show the way, who they beheaded. You did not believe him at all, but the poor and needy people are going to heaven way before you lot. They would have got a shock. 

Our own personal promised obedience and our best intentions aren't necessarily real obedience. We need to put God first in our lives. We can pretend to be a Christian and say all the right things, just like the Pharisees were doing, when Jesus pointed that out to them. We can say yes to God with our lips but no to God with our actions. But we really need to turn to God in real terms and live our lives with God. 

So, where are you? Where am I? We need to turn our lives over to God and our hearts and minds as well. God really needs to come first in our lives every single time. Life won't be easy; it never is, but God has to come first in our lives. How do we do that?

By firstly giving our lives over to him and coming to him daily and asking him to lead our lives throughout each day. Doing that and relying constantly on God gives us confidence in the case of any problems that can come into our lives, so often.

So many times, we can truly be absorbed with everything that can happen daily. It can be truly amazing, or it can be truly heartbreaking. Good times and, unfortunately, bad times happen to all of us; that's life, but you know, when we ask God to come into our lives and lead us, then whatever happens as we trundle through, God is going to be there for us.

God will never leave us or forsake us. You can read that in the Bible in Hebrews 13:5. That's a huge promise that, regardless of where we are at the moment, his huge promise of never leaving us is there for us all, regardless of what we are going through at present.

God's huge blessings to you and yours today. Hope to see you next time.