Sustenance and Life

January 27

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.
Proverbs 16:25

We can understand the word ‘way’ to mean both a narrow, single aspect of a whole spectrum of issues or we can understand it to mean one event within a range of issues. The point within the context of the proverb is that mankind is frequently driven by blind self-deception or ignorance.

Man often has no absolute certainty regarding right and wrong because his ethics have been impacted by the standard of the world and he has never seriously compared what he has accepted as truth against God's immutable verity. How does our understanding of the word ‘way’ compare to the Holy One’s irreversible, incontrovertible law?

Until we have thoroughly investigated God’s truth and embraced it to ourselves as the only word worthy to be the foundation of our lives, we cannot say with any assurance that we know truth. Until we have searched for truth, we can literally know nothing.

The Word says, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” John 8:32, so until we have sought the One who is truth, “You shall seek Me and find Me when you shall search for Me with all your heart,” Jeremiah 29:13, we can know neither the truth nor He who is Truth!

Until we have sought the truth, we can merely scamper down trails to captivating rabbit holes where we will stumble over the very thing we thought was our foundation for life.

The great advantage of that fall, the enormous benefit to our well-being when we have toppled from the pinnacle of our deception is that in our plummet we often find we have landed on the veracity of God’s word that we once discounted as foolishness.

When we have lost our way sufficiently to seek the Bible as a roadmap for our further travels in life, we will understand the veracity of the Word which says, “There is a way that seems right to a man but the end thereof is the way of death,” Proverbs 14:12, Proverbs 16:25.

When we have made that life-saving discovery, we will allow the Holy Spirit to re-chart our course, we will allow Him to “teach us all things,” John 14:26. And the things He will teach us will be sustenance and life to us.