Do you remember when you were a child (some of you may need to rack your brains) but remember when your mum or dad told you NOT to do something that you thought at the time was a great idea?
Do you also remember the times that their well meant words fell on deaf ears as your under developed senses felt that jumping up and down on the bed was the best thing to do and you in fact jumped higher?
Do you also remember falling off soon afterwards and discovering painfully that perhaps, just perhaps, your parents had a wise thought about the whole bed jumping thing?
Of course you could insert many examples of childhood remembrances into this same train of thought.
Don't touch the flame, put down the knife, cats scratch, dancing on the table is a no no.
Now apart from you sounding mildly homicidal as a child right now, we're also trying to bring home an important point.
Because now at your present age, I doubt too many of you have failed to learn that yes, putting your hand in a flame will burn your fingers! In other words you learned certain wisdom from someone's warning or ignoring the warning and putting your hand to the flame and discovering the pain of unwise action.
You see our parents goal with us, was to keep us from experiencing pain and coming to harm. Same with out father God, he aims and plans to keep us, his children, out of harms way.
But even as Christians, believers, those who have received the amazing gift of salvation, we still do things, take actions that are very unwise.
So Gods angels who he's placed around us, often work hard to keep us out of harms way.
Jesus described himself in John 10 as the good shepherd who gave his life for his sheep (you and I). It describes there the great care that he has for us but also gives indication of the possibility of sheep to mess up and go wrong.
Sheep as you know can be incredibly stupid. Take for example the sheep we'll call Wooly.
Wooly is often observed feeding contentedly on the edges of the A9 in the highlands while trucks fly past his oblivious head. Why Wooly feels that the grass tastes better right on the edge of death, I'll never know but it does beg the question WHY? Should this sheep be committed for a mental exam on its intelligence.
The thing is, we can all do things or take actions that other people are caused to exclaim… 'what were you thinking?'
In Psalm 23 (the shepherds Psalm) we read all about our God who's one desire is to steer our life's course through many difficult occurrence and also good ones, and to bring us safe into his presence.
We read how as the Shepard of our souls, he uses his rod or staff (speaking flock driving here) to pull us and even prod us out of harms way. Which lets face it can be painful if we're a particularly stubborn kind of a sheep. Even when we're walking through the valley of death, so to speak, he doesn't fail us or give up on us and let's be honest, we can of walked ourselves often as not into that dark place by not closely following his voice which says to us "this is the way, walk in it "
Yet as great as that would be all the time, people get remote from the shepherds voice and begin to wander off to munch like Wooly on the A9.
Seems to me that Gods care for us often exceeds our devotion to him and I'm all about correcting that imbalance.
We need to not just say we love God but be prepared to walk worthy of him as we walk in his grace.
It's a two way street and its on our journey with him that we learn the wisdom of doing what his word says. If the word says keep away from things that might compromise your Christian walk, then it does so for a reason. Don't be somebody who only ever learns a lesson after they've gone through it twenty times.
Even our friend Wooly after feeling a truck brush past his lug hole learns, and if he doesn’t, he ends up in the ICU for quadrupeds.
So people of God, let's walk in his love, his grace with our lives guided and controlled by his Spirit, listening for his voice within that says;
"This is the way, walk ye in it!"
Let's face it, it's the best advice you could take!