“I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me.  So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.” (Psalm 81:11-12)

One of the not so enjoyable chores when you come home after being away for 10 days is to unpack everything you took and put each item in its rightful place.

We had to unpack one great big suitcase, which had both of our clothes in it. I promptly removed some of my apparel which formed the top layer, came to a couple of layers of Sulojana’s clothes and decided to stop until she returned them to their proper habitats.

Two days later, she reminded me that there was a bottom layer of my articles of clothing which still needed to be unpacked. I noticed it too, but being always in a hurry, chose not to do so right away. After all, they were not exactly hurting anyone, were they?

Picture this. Big, open red suitcase on the floor on the path from the bedroom door to the bed. It was sufficiently out of the way that you could step around it and still get to bed without any problem.

Yet another alert from the missus. “Isn’t it time to get those clothes out of there?” I nodded in agreement, but still did nothing about it.

You will be glad to know that finally on Thursday all the clothes were outta there in a hurry…but not until something happened late Wednesday night.

Sulojana was already in bed when I came in, turned off the light and almost immediately went: “Ouch!” (rough translation). Yes, you guessed it, the red suitcase had become invisible in the darkness and I stubbed my toes when I tripped over it.

That’s when I realized that this needless shot of pain could’ve been completely avoided had I simply heeded Sulojana’s first request and acted on her subsequent reminder.

Have you ever learned lessons the hard way too? I would suspect that most of us can come up with at least one illustration of how we failed to follow the counsel of a parent, teacher, mentor, pastor or elder and got into trouble as a result. Amen?

There is a limit to how often they can tell us to do something or refrain from something. After a while, they let us learn our own lessons, when we trip up!

Do you realize that God does the same as well? Because He has given us the gift of a free will, He allows us to make mistakes, face the consequences, realize the folly of our ways and then acknowledge that He was right all along!

In the words quoted at the beginning of this DWOD, God talks about how He let the people of Israel go their own way even though He had warned them about not worshipping other gods. He “gave them over to their stubborn hearts.”

They could’ve avoided the pain, but they chose to stub their toes first. In the process they tied up God’s hands from “quickly subduing their enemies.” (v. 14)

God’s Word also warns us that failing to act after repeated warnings could lead to disaster: “Whoever remains stiff-necked after many rebukes will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy.” (Proverbs 29:1) Harsh words for hard hearts, eh?         

Dear DWOD friend, do you realize that you can accelerate the journey to your destiny if you choose to obey right off the bat? Of course, on the other hand, you could delay the journey by tripping yourself up along the way too 🙂 The choice is yours!