The Right Thing Is Not Always the Convenient Thing

Personal News
After being gone for two weeks at two different conferences, The Birdnest got a much needed "family vacation". All five Birds(make that six) trekked in the minivan to Grand Rapids, MI. The goal? Simply rest and hangout with our good friends we met years ago while serving in Venezuela together.

So Leo - if you are reading this - thank you for the wonderful time. My family THOROUGHLY enjoyed the time with your family. I thank God that he has blessed my life with yours.

Personal Thoughts
Yesterday, LeAnn and I and the kids worked on our yard. The goal? Lay a weed barrier with rock on top of it. We already had the weed barrier netting, but we needed to purchase the rock. After looking at several different places yesterday, we settled on a gray slate because we thought it would look good with the black shutters on our house and really make the plants stand out. Boy were we wrong! The gray slate was too drab. So after dumping out 5 bags, we loaded the bags back up. I hauled all 38 bags back to the mini-van, and we returned them to purchase something else (ended up with 60 bags of common river rock).

Immediately after we made the decision to not go with the gray slate stone, my oldest daughter asked why we had bought the slate in the first place. I told her we originally thought the slate would look good, but once we got it home, we realized it wasn't what we wanted. She complained a little bit about the burden of putting the rock back in the bags and hauling it back to Menards and how inconvenient this all was (I don't know what she was complaining for - I'm the one who carried all those bags!). Suddenly I found myself saying "the right thing is not always the convenient thing".

Convience is not a Right
My statement struck me because I had just given that same advice to two different people concerning two different situations in the past two weeks. Each of them wanted the convenient thing. They wanted what was going to be easiest. And this desire for the easier road was causing them to justify the decision they either had already made or were about to make.

To be honest, I couldn't blame them. I want the easy way, too. I did not want to haul 38 bags of rock yet again (and haul 60 bags of the new rock we bought). I do not want to confront people concerning sin in their life. I don't always want to discipline my kids. I find myself gravitating towards the lazier route, the easy way, the convenient road.

But God's Word doesn't tell us that Christ promises us convenience. All God promises us is his presence.

Are you facing an issue in your life and you so badly want to take the convenient route? Chances are it isn't the right route. Doing the right thing is not always the convenient thing. But I encourage you to listen to God's Spirit whispering what the wise thing is to do and not just go for what seems to be easier. Most of the counseling I do with people are because they took a short cut when it came to God's plan for their life.

So whether it be a relationship you are in, or a job you are pursuing, or a project you are involved with - I encourage to not take the convenient route. Instead - take the RIGHT route. I don't know what that route looks like for you, but I have a feeling you already know what that route looks like for you.

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(DISCLAIMER: I am sorely behind on email and other stuff due to my conferences and family vacation, so please forgive my lack of Scripture references, links, photos, bad grammar, etc. in the above. I typed this as quickly as I could because I need to move on to other things. But I didn't want to forget this story because it seemed important to me to blog about. Ok, Disclaimer over. Back to your regular web reading...)