“Keep your eyes on the road, with both hands on the wheel and stay in your own lane.”

Those are just a few of the most basic and essential lessons to safe driving...if you want to arrive at your destination in one piece. Oh, and staying vigilant and alert goes a long way in keeping you alive as well. And if you break the laws and do dumb stuff, there will be consequences. Costly traffic tickets can be painful to pay if you have never experienced that.

We sure teach and engrain those lessons to our student drivers. Why don’t we do a better job of teaching new ‘babes in Christ’ the same lessons when it comes to abiding in or with Christ?

That really is what learning to abide in Jesus is all about- keeping your eyes on Him (Col. 2:2) ...staying vigilant and alert (1 Pet. 5:8) and for goodness sakes...pay attention to the road as you stay in your lane, given how narrow it is! (Matt 7:13-14).

You know as well as I do what happens when you ‘drift’ out of your lane – you hit those ridges or speed bump caps in the road; or if you have a newer car, that sensor beeps at you for crossing a line. This is an alert you are drifting and you need to make a course correction fast. If you don’t, you might end up in a ditch...or worse. (Heb. 2:1)

Did you know that your Bible teaches that IF...you are truly abiding in Jesus, you will not only be bearing an abundance of good fruit, but you also won’t be sinning any more. (John 15:1-8; 1 John 2:6; 3:6,9; 5:18).  - His words, not mine.

And walking in this manner (abiding) is the only way you can truly ‘go and sin no more’. You and I can’t do this on our own, for goodness sake. You’d be foolish to think otherwise. Jesus was not kidding when He instructed others to ‘go and sin no more’. (John 8:11) Why it even came with a warning of “or something worse might happen to you”. (John 5:14)

Did you by chance catch my post yesterday about how the Lord ‘chastens and rebukes those whom He loves’? (Rev. 3:19). He even said it can be ‘unpleasant and painful’, (Heb.12:7-11)...sort of like traffic tickets can be. But that is how we ‘learn’ to stay in our lane. It is such an important lesson for any new believer to learn early on. But let's not forget how easy children/kids can pick up on bad examples around them.

I should go on record here, and repeat as I have in the past...this is not to say that as a young ‘carnal babe in Christ’ (1 Cor. 3:1-3) you won’t stumble and mess up at times. And IF...IF...IF...you sin (not when), you have an advocate with the Father who is just and faithful to forgive us. (1 John 2:1) But that should be the exception, and not the ‘norm’, like so many others have been mistaught to believe.

If you learn to abide in Jesus, you can pretty well count on being highly aware of His presence that is marked by peace and joy and freedom. (Isa. 26:3; Ps. 16:11; John 15:11; 2 Cor. 3:17). His ‘peace’ is supposed to be our ‘guide’. (Luke 1:79; Phil. 4:7). That’s how we can know quickly when we ‘mess up’...we lose that peace, in the same way you might veer out of your lane and hit those ridges. Oh...would you like to know how God ‘corrects or chastens us’ to let us know when we do mess up? He uses the ‘enemy’ as a rod of correction. (Hab. 1:12) That ‘hedge’ comes down and we let the enemy in. (Eph. 4:27; Job 1:9; 1 Cor. 5:5). This is designed with the hopes we learn quickly to not only hear His voice, but ‘do what He says’. That’s the best way to avoid being destroyed with the ‘enemy comes in like a flood’. (Isa. 59:19; Matt. 7:24-27)

Have you ever been made a long road trip and after a while, you get this gnawing sense within you that you are going in the wrong direction? So what did you do? You pulled over and get the map/GPS out and traced your route to make sure you didn’t miss a turn. Sort of like ‘going back to check your work? (Post yesterday) Then, you make the course correction even if it is painful to burn more gas and time to retrace the route so you can be on your way. So why don’t we do that with more diligence when we lose our way/peace with God? (Luke 1:79)

I bet it has something to do with a lot of that faulty ‘theology’ out there about how ‘we all may take many paths and roads but they all end up at the same place’. Were you familiar with the passage in Proverbs that says “There is a way that seems right to man but in the end, it leads to death”? (14:12)

So...back to those early days of my conversion when I had first come to Jesus and was being taught to walk according to His ways. There were some impactful lessons I learned early on. The first one having to do with a spiritual world we live in and how there are forces or powers of darkness that exists in ways most of us would rather just pretend to ignore. (1 Pet. 5:8; Eph. 6:12; 1 John 5:18-19)

I should point out that at this time, I had not yet settled in to a local church body. I had begun to visit a few different ones just because all this was so new to me, but during this early formative time, it was pretty much me and Jesus. I am sure this might cause some to bristle inside...but we will come back to this later.

Those early days and weeks in my new faith were like living in a new world for me as I learned to abide in/with Jesus. I had a hunger for His word and was reading my Bible profusely. I wanted to share this new faith with all those I worked with and hung out with, but the level of ‘receptivity’ to my new zealous faith was not real high. Most really did not want to hear about it and that included my girlfriend at the time. I’m sure some of you have heard this story before as I am always eager and willing to share it.

Water and oil do not mix well. And in a spiritual sense, I was beginning to learn what it means to ‘be in this world, but not of this world’. Yet sometimes, we find ourselves still trying to ‘make it work’. You know...just ‘stir harder’ and maybe it will all blend nicely together. Then I hit this skid or patch where you might say I was ‘losing oil pressure’ and my peace and joy were diminishing and I didn’t know why. But the Holy Spirit was willing to teach me ...if I was willing to learn and follow.

It seemed that every time I would open my Bible, I came across a word that I was not even sure if I knew the meaning of it. The word was ‘fornication’ and the Bible is pretty clear that this is sin and unacceptable behavior (sexual) in the eyes of God. And you know what I began to find out quickly? You cannot... continue abiding in Jesus...while sinning at the same time. They just don’t mix. You will lose your peace quickly. You see...my girlfriend and I were still engaging in certain ‘activities’ that fell under the category of ‘fornication’ and ‘sin’. I was clueless; really, I was. I knew there was a commandment about not committing adultery, but that had to do with marital vows and we were not married so I saw no problem with what we were doing. That is, until the Holy Spirit began to deal with me and pointed out how I was veering way out of the lane I needed to be in. But what remained to be seen at this time: was I willing to make a ‘course correction’?

I was... but it was not easy at first. In fact, it was painful because she could not understand what on earth was happening to me. But there was no questioning that I was committed to following Jesus with all my heart and He made it clear to me, in only ways that He can do, that I had a choice to make. So I chose Him. I told my girlfriend that these ‘activities’ had to stop and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt our days together were numbered.

You have to understand this...I cared for this girl and I ‘loved’ her; but I now loved Jesus more. She was struggling with this new reality too- that she was no longer 'first' in my life. But she hung around for a while and even started visiting some churches with me. She did this more to appease me as I saw no signs of hunger, let alone interest, in her heart for God and what He was doing in me at the time.

I had eventually found a church I started attending regularly and by this time, I was so ‘on fire with zeal for God’ and just knew that I needed to get myself off to some Bible school or college and learn as much as I could so I could ‘serve God full time'. I had even picked out a school in San Antonio I wanted to attend. I just was not sure how I was going to make this work in the sense of uprooting from Arizona and what...was I going to do about ‘her’? I simply could not see how she would be willing to go along with this; so once again, it was decision time for me.

It happened one particular Sunday morning at the close of the church service where I started attending. The altar had been opened up for anyone needing to pray so I told her I needed to go down to the front and pray for a few moments. She seemed annoyed and impatient but relented to wait for me. So down to that altar I went. I basically laid my heart out before God...affirming to Him that I was ‘all in’ and felt this compelling to make this move to Texas and begin this pursuit of ‘ministry’ (whatever that meant at the time). But I was unsure what to do with ‘her’. I just knew...it could not work this way being so different and separate in what our hearts wanted at the time. This was well before I had heard the scriptures about being ‘unequally yoked’, too. So I just told God....if it was meant to be...that I was willing to part ways with her and follow Him...alone to Texas.

But I sure made the case to Him as to how nice it would be if she could join me and be a part of this journey; yet I had little hope in seeing how that would work. Unless God changed or opened her heart, we had reached a dead end in our relationship.  So I just set her before God and surrendered my heart to His perfect will. And I kid you not...at the very exact moment I did this...telling God it was Him first and foremost, I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I turned around and looked up, there she was...next to me...tears rolling down her face as she knelt beside me and told me she was not sure what was happening...but she wanted Jesus in her life as well.

Last month, we celebrated our 43 wedding anniversary.

There’s a reason why I make it a point to share my story with others. I hope you join me tomorrow and find out why. :- )