“Direction—not intention—determines our destination.”

A thought by Andy Stanley (2009-03-31) in his book, The Principle of the Path: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be (p. 14). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

I was almost born in a car. The truth is I was born in a hospital but within 3 weeks we were back on the road. My dad was an evangelist. We would hold services in a church from Wednesday through 2 Sundays and then we would travel to the next church and start again on Wednesday. It was a good life.

Now when I got a little older I was in charge of the map. It was my job to get us to where we were going by the best most direct route. And I was good at it. So I am an experienced map guy.

A couple of months back on a Saturday, Margaret and I wanted to go in New Jersey to Thomas Edison’s home and factory but I couldn’t find my Jersey map. So I broke down and went and got a Garmin GPS. It is great. At least it is if you put the right info in it.

The next day was Sunday and Margaret and I wanted to go to Forefront Church in the City. So I put in the GPS, New York City and then 127 West 23^rd Street and we headed out at 10:00 am for a 11:30 am Gathering at the church. Now the kind lady on the GPS started taking us into Brooklyn. For a while I thought that it might be the most direct route until I realized there was a West 23^rd in Brooklyn and Brooklyn is a borough of New York City and that was where we were headed. So I put in Manhattan instead and headed out. We found 23^rd Street but finally realized the church was on East 23^rd instead of West 23^rd. But we finally made it just on time.

You see our intention was right. Our intention was to go to an exciting church but that didn’t matter if our direction was wrong. The direction was what mattered in getting to our destination and our direction was wrong.

Some of us have great intentions in our life. We intend to live a long life but as a teenager we decided we didn’t want to follow the directions for a healthy life so we gave in to peer pressure and started smoking and now at 50 we find we have lung cancer and we are mad. The same with eating unhealthy things or living a sedentary life style or under great stress and we end up with a heart attack. Our destination is determined by our direction that we have chosen to take not our intentions.

Our intentions may be good but it is the path that we are on that determines our destination.

So where is your direction taking you?

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