Life in the Fast Lane

Joanie could scarcely believe her eyes. The woman speeding along the Los Angeles freeway next to her balanced cup of coffee and a cigarette in one hand and ignored her three children bouncing around in the back seat. At that moment, Joanie longed to quit her job and move to the mountains.. She prayed, Lord, I'm tired of this fast-paced life. Can I get off this merry-go round?

Maybe life in the fast lane doesn't appeal to you anymore either. You're tired. You need a break. Maybe you're thinking of buying a nice little cabin with a fireplace, a cat and a rocking chair. Anywhere but here, Lord, you think. But what does God think?

Following her release from Ravensbruck concentration camp, Corrie ten Boom purchased a house call Schapendunien and turned it into a home for disabled people and ex-prisoners. She thought that was where God wanted her to settle down. But in late 1945, she began to sense that God wanted her to travel to the United States to tell her story. So she crossed the Atlantic and became what she described as a "tramp for the Lord." It wasn't until 1977, when she suffered a stroke, that she finally retired to a home in Orange,California. Choosing to follow God's leading rather than her own comfort-level, Corrie ten Boom maintained an itinerant lifestyle of travel for Christ.

You may be facing unbearable pressures in your daily life, pressures you think will get better if you settle down in a peaceful location of your choice. But God showed the Israelites that he chooses our paths. He gave them a visible reminder of his presence to guide them: a cloud by day and a fire by night. When the cloud lifted, they set out; when it stopped, they camped. God's sign in the sky marked their course and set the pace. By looking up, the Israelites discovered that the Lord ordained the movements of his people, God saying "no" was just as important as God saying "go". God alone knew the reasons for the journey, the unseen dangers ahead and the ultimate purpose beyond each move.

God orders the lives of the Israelites. And he'll order yours if you will let him. If you need to know which way to turn, look up.
-Devotional Bible

{Numbers 9:17-18}
17 Whenever the cloud lifted from over the sacred tent, the people of Israel would break camp and follow it. And wherever the cloud settled, the people of Israel would set up camp. 
18 In this way, they traveled and camped at the Lord’s command wherever he told them to go. Then they remained in their camp as long as the cloud stayed over the Tabernacle. 

{Deuteronomy 4:1}
“And now, Israel, listen carefully to these decrees and regulations that I am about to teach you. Obey them so that you may live, so you may enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you." 

{Deuteronomy 8:1}
“If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world."

{Psalm 43:3-4}

3 Send out your light and your truth;

let them guide me.

Let them lead me to your holy mountain,

to the place where you live.

4 There I will go to the altar of God,

to God—the source of all my joy.

I will praise you with my harp,

O God, my God!