Instincts without Direction

We continued our series about "The Me I want to Be". Last Sunday we talked about "The God-Centered Life" and this Sunday we discussed "The Transformed Life" and Deo Volente we will talk Sunday about "The Obedient Life".

Instincts without direction will always lead you down the wrong path. Roy Riegels is a classic example of this. Roy was a football player who played for the University of California. In 1929 at the Rose Bowl, Roy's instincts kicked in. Roy was not a brand new football player, he had played his whole life. He was not a dumb player as his coach called him the smartest player he had ever coached. He was not an average player as he has been inducted in The Rose Bowl Hall of Fame. Roy just ran the wrong way.

Roy played center. Centers handle the ball but don't run with it. In this Rose Bowl game a fumble took place and the ball hit the ground, Roy saw it, grabbed it and started running. Instincts took over and he ran as fast as he could. He had a caravan of his players running alongside him, yelling, screaming and to Roy cheering him to run on. When he crossed the end zone, he discovered he had been running the wrong way. This great play in football history cemented his legacy as Wrong Way Riegels.

Wrong Way Riegels' legacy is a metaphor of our own lives; our instincts to run with the ball but disconnected from direction so we run in the wrong way. Instincts without direction will always lead you down the wrong path. Saul discovered this principle.

Saul saw a fumbled ball. Judaism had dropped the ball allowing this "Jesus movement" or people of the way to go to far. Someone needed to pick the ball up and run, so Saul ran. Saul thought he was running for his team, working for his God, scoring for his beliefs only to discover, HE HAD BEEN RUNNING THE WRONG WAY. Instincts without Direction will always lead you down the wrong path.

We look like Saul. Living life by raw instincts. We think only radical rebellion can lead you down the wrong path but more often than not, it is through disregard and disconnection that we began to stray and start running in the wrong direction. Whether it is through self-directed living, abandoned restraint or transitory joy, instincts without direction will always lead you down the wrong path.

Even though God sends us runners to run alongside us like Roy Riegels had to show us we are headed in the wrong direction, we don't see it until either we are buried under a pile of disappointing results or we have a Damascus experience. The disappointing results reveals to us the errors or our judgments, over spending, over eating, wrong choices etc. However, the Damascus experience shows us the excellency of God who gives us direction and frees us from living a life based on our instincts. He transforms our lives.

John Ortberg shared this in The Life You Always Wanted (p.55-56):"It's like a motorboat and a sailboat. A person can operate a motorboat without assistance, given the right equipment and effort. Operating a sailboat is different--it is dependent on the wind. The operator of a sailboat does whatever enables him to catch the wind. Spiritual transformation is like this: ...we can open ourselves to spiritual transformation through certain practices, but we cannot engineer it. We can take no credit for it."

A Transformed Life is a life where God:
Changes your Outlook 9:5, "Who are you, Lord"
Changes your Outreach 9:15 "he is a chosen instrument to carry my name to the Gentiles"
Changes your Outcome

Shortly before his death, the legendary film producer Cecil B DeMille wrote this beautiful meditation:"One day as I was lying in a canoe, a big black beetle came out of the water and climbed up into the canoe. I watched it idly for some time. Under the heat of the sun, the beetle proceeded to die. Then a strange thing happened. His glistening black shell cracked all the way down his back. Out of it came a shapeless mass, quickly transformed into beautiful, brilliantly colored life.

As I watched in fascination, there gradually unfolded iridescent wings from which the sunlight flashed a thousand colors. The wings spread wide, as if in worship of the sun. The blue-green body took shape. Before my eyes had occurred a metamorphosis--the transformation of a hideous beetle into a gorgeous dragonfly, which started dipping and soaring over the water. But the body it had left behind still clung to my canoe. "I had witnessed what seemed to me a miracle. Out of the mud had come a beautiful new life. And the thought came to me, that if the Creator works such wonders with the lowliest of creatures, what could he do with me!

That is a changed outcome, I was in the mud, headed in the wrong direction, living life by instincts but I met the Lord...........

Owens