Need to Know

When I picked up the mail on Saturday, I was greeted with a letter from Subaru regarding a Safety Recall on my car. Of course the repair/replacement that is necessary will be done at no cost to me, but it's not something that was on my agenda for the week and now it needs to be because "Until this repair is performed, do not allow passengers to ride in the front passenger seat" is clearly an indication that this recall is kind of a big deal.

Don't you almost wish God could send a Safety Recall notice to us that was just as blatant about what we need to do, when we need to do it, and why we need to do it? I know He gives us His Spirit to guide and direct us, but wouldn't it be great to get something tangible that has a skull and cross bones on it saying DANGER ZONE? Think of the amount of grief and heartache we could avoid if we would just heed the call!

But the truth is, we probably wouldn't. Years ago I was getting ready to lead a Bible/book study with a group of friends through Beth Moore's So Long, Insecurity. I don't remember much of the study, but there is one quote in that book that has haunted me for the last 6 years.  In this particular chapter, she is writing about our insatiable desire to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She writes:

God protects what He directs.  But when our curiousity takes us beyond 

a knowledge that edifies and fortifies to a knowledge that exposes and 

terrifies, we might find that we are in for the psychological and 

spiritual battle of our lives.

I read those words probably two whole weeks before I needed to remember them.  That was my notice of a safety recall, warning that a danger zone was ahead. And I didn't heed it. I've been paying for it ever since. Because just like my notice from Subaru is telling me of the impending danger should the part that needs replaced malfunction, God used Beth's words to warn me what I was in for if I didn't allow Him to take the lead.

Safety warnings might come through a friend's words, the lyrics of a song, an author's book, or a blogpost you happened to decide to read because you stumbled upon it out of the blue. And if you have read those words, perhaps God is giving you the same heads up He gave me. I just pray that you take the warning more seriously than I did and let Him determine how much you need to know.

God, since the fall, we have had an immense desire to know things that are either too much for us to handle or too magnificient for us to understand. Help us to trust that You always give us the need to know facts when we need to know them. We may not always welcome the information, but we will trust that You always have our best interest at heart. Amen.