One of the first pieces of advice that I received after moving to Hickory NC was that I needed to be sure to drive around with my GPS on. We were moving into an apartment complex full of “out of towners” like ourselves, and they knew from experience just how important it was to just let Google maps get you to where you needed to go. As a directionally challenged person, this made me a little nervous and so before I left to go anywhere, I made sure my cellphone was fully charged that the address of the appointed place was already typed in before pulling out of my parking place.

As I began to get a little more comfortable with the area, I decided to give driving around without my GPS on a shot. It ended up being a disaster. I made turns that day that I felt were the right way to go and those turns ended up taking me completely the wrong way. My gut instincts were nowhere near right!! It took me forever to get home that day, and the mental stress of it left me exhausted and extremely frustrated. I needed my way completely directed for me in order for me to get me from point A to point B.

Much like moving to a new place and needing your way laid out before you with each and every turn, so is our life here on Earth. Life was not meant for us to be self-directed but rather it is one that is to be guided each and every step of the way. We are a “do it myself” kind of people and acknowledging that we need help often blemishes our pride, but I have learned that when I take my own self-directed steps, I, more often than not, choose the wrong way and get completely turned around. There’s nothing more discouraging than to look around yourself and realize that you are standing in a place that you did not intend to be. We lack the wisdom and foreknowledge on guiding our own lives.

Lives self-directed end up being full of wrong turns, road blocks, and hindrances. Lives self-directed often end up becoming full of useless idols that have slowly, and subtly appeared.

BUT God! (Can there be more of a hope-filled phrase than ‘But God’?!) But God grandly intervenes and offers us a gracious route of deliverance. He offers us a directed life, with directed heart towards HIM, and in doing so, we receive the RIGHT directions and moment by moment deliverance that we so desperately need!

1 Samuel 7:3 says:

“And Samuel said to all the house of Israel, “If you are returning to the LORD with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and {DIRECT YOUR HEART TO THE LORD} and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.”

But what does direct even mean? Looking at these definitions helped the meaning of this passage of scripture grow deeper roots for me as I strive to understand what God is calling us to do as we direct our hearts towards Him:

• Adj: without intervening factors or intermediaries
• Adv: with no one or nothing between
• Verb: to aim something in a particular direction or person

In essence, a heart directed to the Lord is one that has no factors that interferes with our hearts and God’s. A heart directed to the Lord has no one or thing standing in between our hearts and His. A heart directed to the Lord is a heart that is perfectly aimed towards the heart of God.

How lost my heart can become when I am self-directed. How I long to have a heart directed towards God, my Creator! Our connection to God’s word must be constant in order for Him to direct our steps, but the beauty is that when we lose our way, He is graciously there waiting for us to seek Him and to direct our hearts towards Him once again!