When the old man returned in the spring, he looked for the young man and asked how his first season as a fox hunter had gone. Discouraged, the young man admitted that he had not caught a single fox. The old man pressed further: had he followed the instructions given him? “Well, no,” answered the young man. “I found a better way.”
Have you “found a better way” when it comes to running your life? If you choose to follow it, rather than the Original Instructions, no wonder you “haven’t caught any foxes”! No wonder we still struggle with the pull of sin in our hearts. No wonder we feel our prayers are unanswered and our Bible reading uninteresting. We’ve been doing it our way, what we thought was a better way, rather than following the path that God has already told us is The Way.
The Better Way which God has designed may sound archaic and irrelevant to our modern way of living. After all, how could one man being nailed to a cross about 2,000 years ago make any difference in my life today? We figure that what we know and the experiences we’ve accumulated should be enough for figuring our lives out. But we fail–every time. We don’t “catch any foxes.”
When God says to us, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord” (Acts 3:19), we should understand that The Better Way is to accept what God has already arranged for us. Jesus came to die, and He did die a horrible death on the cross. Our part is to confess with our mouths “Jesus is Lord” and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, so that we can be saved (see Romans 10:9).
That, folks, is what this season of the year is always about. Every one of our sins emphasizes the truth that His is The Better Way.
--Rocky Henriques, www.uticabc.com