Beaten Paths
Soul Snack 8/95 ... Beaten Paths
A sullen and weary Job sits head in hands, brow beaten again by another friend. It was as if Job's losses and tragedies were not already sufficient for mortal man to endure.
Incorrectly Eliaphaz regales against Job, his friend.
" Will you keep to the old path
that evil men have trod? " Job 22:15
Sensing Job's sins as the cause of his many and enduring troubles, Eliaphaz will not restrain himself in counseling Job to close self-examination and then to repentance.
Yet as unhelpful and discouraging Eliaphaz's point is for Job, his question still remains.
The unexamined life, the life of little personal growth, the life of poor repentance and the life absent of healthy sober self-enquiry is of little interest to God.
God will neither restrain or contain us, for who can control the human spirit except the owner of that spirit?
Yet, as always God has fine intentions.
In His unfathomable goodness, God won't restrain but retrain!
In His unsearchable deep love, God does not constrain but convict!
The missionary David Livingstone once reflected "... beaten paths are for beaten people."
God no more wants us on our old paths than David Livingstone wants to walk them.