- Guide
Psalm 73:24a
Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel,
Having the promise of a guide through life is really comforting. We need a guide when we travel through some place we haven’t been before and we don’t know the path to get where we want to go. A guide leads us in the right way to bring us safely to our destination. The Guide counsels us with advice and directions. We are not forced to go that way, but we choose to follow the direction of someone who knows the way, who has been there before, and who knows where to turn right or left and stop and go.
Such also is life: it is a journey to a place we don’t know and we don’t know the way. Every new day is a new place along the way with new experiences demanding decisions for which we do not know enough to choose aright, and we often make bad choices. Every tomorrow is full of the unknown and the unpredictable. We cannot know the way through life, what we do know is wrong, and we make choices according to our own warped and darkened selfish understanding. We are in desperate need of a guide: Jesus says, “I am the Way.” Once we believe in Jesus and follow Him we are on the way, and He will never let us go without wise and unerring counsel. We may not like His Word or want to do what He says, but the Guide is the Good Shepherd, and He is always right and good. “He leads me in the paths of righteousness.” (Psalm 23:3).
This promise is unconditional: the Lord will guide me with his counsel. What is not so certain, however, is whether I will heed that counsel. If fact, I definitely will not, but He will not give up and stop guiding me. His counsel is clearly spelled out in His Word. When I don’t listen or don’t follow I repent, believe, and get going again. My pride doesn’t see it, but the Word shows me that I am lost without Jesus the Guide. I will not find my way through this jungle on my own. Thank God, I have a Guide. He guides me all the way to Glory.