Have it Your Way?

I have inclined my heart to perform Your statutes forever, to the very end.
I hate the double-minded, but I love Your law.
You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in Your word.

Psalm 119:112-114

I am grateful that we have the Holy Spirit to guide us into truth!

For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

James 1:7-8

I haven’t heard the Burger King® jingle “Have it Your Way”, of late – probably because I avoid the conduits of communication where I might be thus accosted – but I believe it was registered as a trademark in the 1970s, during the decade of my graduation from high school and military service. Nonetheless, it seems to have stuck in my brain… scary as that is.

It came to mind when I was considering the lament of God to Isaiah about the people’s hardness of heart. God told Isaiah to address their attitude, lest it go unchallenged. Jesus quoted from that very passage in Mathew when the disciples asked Him about His teaching style.

10 And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”

11 He answered and said to them, “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

12 For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

13 Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

14 And in them the prophecy of Isaiah [6:9–10] is fulfilled, which says:

‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand,
And seeing you will see and not perceive;

15 For the hearts of this people have grown dull.
Their ears are hard of hearing,
And their eyes they have closed,
Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
So that I should heal them.’

16 But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear;

17 for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

Matthew 13:10-17 (NKJV)

Did you see what attentive hearing with hearts of understanding would bring? Repentance and resultant healing! The “turning” that Isaiah and Jesus spoke of is under our control. Having once granted us autonomy over our own decisions, God does not violate them while we still breathe the air of earth. There are often negative consequences, to be sure. I have endured many of these myself. But such repercussions are really signposts of mercy; glaring evidence we are on a degenerating path, descending to a dreadful terminus. Turn around!

The Apostle Paul had some heartfelt things to say on this subject as well:

1 For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh,

2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ,

3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

4 Now this I say lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words.

5 For though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.

6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,

7 rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

8 Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

9 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;

10 and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.

Colossians 2:1-10 (NKJV)

God is the source of “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”. What is left if one rejects the source of wisdom and knowledge?

What is left is human “philosophy and empty deceit”. Often what is left is delivered passionately with words that can persuade those who are not intimate with God and His word. But look where that is going:

6 However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.

7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory,

8 which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

9 But as it is written:

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”

10 But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.

11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.

12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.

13 These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

15 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.

16 For “who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

1 Corinthians 2:6-16 (NKJV)

Because God really does allow you to “have it your way” and as the rulers of this age, not even realizing it, are “coming to nothing”. Do not go with them. Neither lean on your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). Set your heart on Him. Let Him direct your paths!