Isaiah 7:15  He will eat curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right.

I grew up in southwest Michigan.  I remember hearing my older hunting friends talking about the compass problems they encountered in parts of the Upper Peninsula due to the presence of iron ore.  The ore can cause the magnetic needle of a compass to spin crazily or to point the opposite to where it should.  That’s not good to be in the middle of the boondocks, relying on your compass for directions and to have it go haywire.

Other things can help when our compass can’t identify true north.  If the sky is clear and the sun is setting or rising, general directions can be figured out.  But how do we determine direction in the middle of the day, with clouds, rain or fog; or finding ourselves in the middle of deep woods (and we don’t have a GPS)?

There are a number of major scandals that are unfolding in the news right now where it seems a whole lot of people got ‘lost in the woods’ due to malfunctioning moral compasses – assuming they had them.  I wonder how many of those involved are Christians – or ‘church goers’?

Maybe their jobs were threatened if they didn’t ‘go along’.  Maybe more significant threats were involved – or maybe none at all!  Maybe their moral compasses were so inadequate that they didn’t recognize that ‘wrong’ was being substituted for ‘right’.  Or they simply accepted the perceived reality that they didn’t have a choice, but to go along.

It’s not an issue of being judgmental but one of learning what could happen to us when we find ourselves being similarly tempted.   How do we know right from wrong?  How well will we do in the ‘fog and rain’ of circumstances that might threaten us?  Will our moral compass be immune to the cultural ‘iron ore’ around us, that will try to misdirect us?  Will we choose the right?  Or if we choose the wrong, will we justify our actions because of the consequences of not going along?

In any circumstances we as Christians find ourselves in, we have a ‘Heavenly GPS’ to guide us.  It not only tells us where we are (a compass can’t do that); it also tells us where to go; but we must be attentive!  The assets of our Heavenly GPS include: 1) We are new creatures in Christ Jesus, freed from the tendency to sin, 2) We have the Holy Spirit within us, 3) We have the Scriptures, 4) We have God’s grace to enable us, and 5) The faith in God to trust and believe.

These resources enable us to choose righteously no matter what we face.  The Holy Spirit is with us, to guide our decision making process as we go step by step through any trial.  He enables us to choose the right – no matter what the cost.  The choice is simply ours.  Choosing the wrong must never be perceived as a tenable option.  Our goal is to live for Christ and to always honor Him.