Proverbs 16:25

“There is a way which seems right to a man,

But its end is the way of death.”

There once was a girl who owned a computer. For whatever reason, her computer was not working properly. She was concerned that she had a virus. Rather than take it to a specialist to fix it, she decided that she would handle it herself. In order to fix the problem, she started randomly deleting files that she didn’t recognize as important. This was very dangerous, because a lot of the files with weird names are the ones that are most important to the computer. This was obviously a bad idea. But she thought it was the most effective way to get rid of a virus.

That image is a good representation of what happens in our day to day lives. There are many times that we do not know the best way to conduct ourselves. So we find ourselves randomly guessing. It is sad we do that, because the Lord has given us an owner’s manual. In His word, He has told us the best way for us to live our lives and to deal with situations and problems we encounter. If we do not even take the time to read the manual, we find ourselves randomly deleting things. A little bit of this may not make an obvious difference, but if you delete too many files or pick a very particular wrong one, then the entire system is ruined.

Another problem we face is that rather than humbly accepting what the Lord has told us, sometimes we think we can improve it. We are not content to accept the Lord’s way. We try to add to it, or make special exceptions that He did not set forth. It makes sense to us, because if we were God we would make it this way. However, as God very powerfully reminds Job, we are not God (Job 38). To assume that we know more than God is foolhardy. Doing so assures our failure.

“There is a way which seems right to a man,

But its end is the way of death