Unfamiliar Paths

“I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.”
(Isaiah 42:16 NIV)

“And I have caused the blind to go,
In a way they have not known,
In paths they have not known,
I cause them to tread,
I make a dark place before them become light,
And unleveled places become a plain,
These are the things I have done to them,
And I have not forsaken them.”
(Isaiah 42:16 Young’s Literal Translation)

1 God leads the ‘blind’:
Because only the ‘blind’ allow themselves to be led, are aware of their need for guidance (humility).
But in reality we are ‘blind’! We cannot naturally perceive what God is doing or comprehend how he is doing it. Any attempt we make to ‘second guess’ God is futile. We can NEVER predict how he is going to achieve his objective. Sometimes not even AFTER he has revealed to us a glimpse of what that objective is.

Think a little about Moses. When did it become clear what God was doing in his life?

• When he was abandoned as a baby?
• When he was adopted into the Egyptian royal family?
• When this Jewish boy was raised as a pagan prince?
• When he become a murderer?
• When he fled for his life into the desert?
• Whilst he worked as a shepherd for 40 years?

Just exactly when did it become obvious to those who saw his life unfolding, that God would use this man to lead a nation out of captivity! Do you get the point? God's almost always indecipherable from a human perspective. If you think Moses is a special case, just consider St. Paul – A fanatical Jew, with a burning hatred of Christians who God would use to take the gospel to the Gentiles!

2 God mostly takes us along ‘unfamiliar paths’:
Because even the ‘blind’ can learn how to follow a set route. And, when we think we know the way we inevitably neglect our relationship with our guide. We neglect the channels of communication through which God reveals himself and his ways - the Bible, prayer, the church, circumstances.

3 God not only leads he progressively reveals:
As we journey through life with God He makes the dark places light. God allows us to increasingly perceive the spiritual realities of what we are going through. But this has to be balanced with our tendency to grow confident when we think we know the way. Thus those who feel most their weakness and are humble, often have the deepest spiritual perception (it’s safe for God to give it to them). In Paul’s case God had to give him compensatory suffering to prevent the revelations he had received leading to pride (see 2 Cor 12:7).

4 God not only knows the way, he prepares the way:
God promises to make the rough places smooth. God does not call us to walk along any path that he has not prepared for us to travel. As before the smoothness of the path has to be balanced with our tendency to grow confident in our ability to negotiate it ourselves. But this preparation of our paths by God allows us to be confident, and to have faith.

5 God promises to do this for us and to be with us:
We finish where we started – the relationship is the fundamental basis of everything. We have God’s promise that any break in the relationship will not be instigated by him. He is forever committed to leading and guiding us.