Have you come to a place in your life or a relationship
where you can no longer continue?
Has the road come to an end?
Are you frightened?
Even though the way has been difficult and painful for a long while, do you look behind and find yourself wanting to turn and go back that same way again? Back to the security of what has been.....
?
Fear of the unknown is probably the most common universal fear.
FEAR! It can cripple us. Turn us to stone.

Distress and confusion, which I had so foolishly allowed
to sink its' roots of fear and doubt within my spirit
where they ruled mercilessly over me
pushing me, pulling me.... bewildered, again and again and again....
to a crossroad at which God was waiting to lead me and I failed to look up.

Instead, I just kept going in circles and ending up there,
knowing I was to move on, yet continuing in my own efforts.
Trying ever harder to understand and choose when I had only to follow.....
To look to Him and just `follow'.
Until this last experience of finding myself doing this,
I would have thought, and claimed that I had come away from such childish, inappropriate independence. Yet once again.....

Crossroads are invariably Gods' announcements that He wants to take us into a new direction. We arrive at one because God has chosen to meet or call us to that time and place. Whether we arrive on time, or late, He is there waiting patiently.

Either He has drawn us there by His will, or we come to the junction in our own time, tardy because we have not been listening. But whenever the moment comes, it is a special time and place where God knows our need before we do and waits there to guide His child by the quiet voice of His Spirit speaking to ours in direct counsel within our spirit.

When `The Path' is met by other paths that confuse us as we face the dilemma of choosing which ONE is the `Right' one, we have only to "Be still" and know that He is God. He is good. He has promised to be with us always. He wants to shepherd us. He will not force us with rope or chain about our neck. He wants us to follow. We have only to "Lift our eyes up" and follow.

In our youth, we often just sprint on down whichever one looks right or inviting. As we mature (if we choose to mature) our experiences teach us that most essential lesson and foundation of all future wisdom There is only ONE `best' way and time.
And....... God has already chosen it.

Even when we come to know there is only one right way, so often, we try first to see if we can find it ourselves. How foolish of us! Why would He meet us there if we didn't need Him? I have found that the crossroad always comes enveloped in a misty darkness...... Therein, despair lies waiting to waylay you at this most vulnerable time. It's ambush seeks to ensnare you in its' false counsel of looking at where you have been and what may lay just ahead.

Although that is good counsel for our daily walk that we might closely examine how we use our days and what good we may bring to ourselves and others in our choices of how we invest ourselves and our time...... God waits at our crossroads because He knows how dark it is there and how much we need Him. He remembers the garden hours of Gethsemene and the loneliness of spirit at finding His companions asleep when He asked them to be there for Him.

Fear, dressed in its' cloak of despair, aims to invade and occupy your spirit. Uncertainty follows, and has you squinting your eyes in desperation, trying to see far enough down the roads that lie before you to catch a glimpse of the horizon that is not quite clear to you no matter how long or carefully you strain to see. If this demon can influence and fill us with our own voice protesting the darkness, the still, small voice of God will go unheard. You may stand still awhile, so overwhelmed by fears' loud and clever distraction within you that you do nothing at all. Doing nothing at all is when we begin to harden in our hearts and become statues.

There are always four directions at the crossroad places.

#1) Gods' choice.

#2) Return down the apparently safe, familiar way from which you've come, because after all, you survived it and arrived where you now stand.

#3) There is also a very short path where you are invited to rest and sleep if you will.

"Make yourself comfortable. Stay as long as you like here.
Why hurry along on your way, so weary and footsore in the effort.
Where are you going, anyway? Isn't this a nice place, after all?"
So reads the signs' invitation as it points the way to this roads' destination known as comfort and complacency.

#4) And then there is the way that Satan would most have you choose, though the other two do just as well in accomplishing his purpose in diverting you from the
One Way.

At the end of this road, and the other two, lies eternal darkness and the end of all hope. Once you reach the end of any of these other  roads of choice, there is no turning back.

If at any time before you reach its' end, you turn back, the way will be hard and fraught with dangers and despair until you may succumb to futilities' exhortation and give up the hope that you can return at all to the crossroad again and find God waiting for you. But, He will be. He will always be there. That was His promise and the Spirit will remind us.... that wherever we go, He will be right there within reach of our outstretched hand.

He will never forsake us, even unto the end.

I ask you..... What more could we need? Do we want Him to create another Heaven here on earth? Or, is it enough that He abides with us in the Spirit here and will accompany us to the home He has already prepared for us to occupy with Him for all of Eternity! ? The question is TRUST. Whom will you trust...God? Or yourself.

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Written materials © Nina Roberta Baker