DIRECTIONS
“Yeah, can I be in your TV show?” That was the phone call my brother decided to make one day. No kidding. He picked up the phone and cold-called a talent agency in North Carolina after learning they were in charge of casting for his favorite show.
In the days before social media, video meetings, and YouTube, we had to learn about stuff through an ancient device called a telephone. One day Brian decided he would reach out and see what might happen.
When my brother called the talent agency, I’m not sure what he expected, but he was surprised by the response. The agency told him to send them a picture. Which makes sense. They were in charge of finding people to be in a show about a lot of attractive teenagers. They didn’t want someone like me showing up on set someday. If you had chipped teeth from too many soccer balls to the face and a nose you could see coming around the corner, you probably weren’t getting in. But well, if you looked like my brother, you were in. He got in.
After spending his spring break hanging out on set filming, he returned home full of big dreams. He finished the semester at the university, dropped out of school, and packed up his stuff to move to the east coast.
The day he left, we loaded all his stuff into a couple of cars and hit the road. Man, that was a long day. Back then, we didn’t have the voice of a little robot Irish lady in our iPhone telling us what turns to take. So, we used an ancient device called a map.
We drove all day. We drove all night. We drove through the Smokey Mountains and just kept driving. We stopped too long for lunch. We took in too many sights on the way. We didn’t get in much of a hurry. Finally, it was so late that we realized it was time to stop and sleep.
Back then, when you were on a road trip, you couldn’t find little private rooms or old homes someone had decided to rent out through an app on the internet. You had to stay in these ancient accommodations called hotels. The upside is that they were everywhere. So we decided to stop at one. It was full. We stopped at another hotel. It was full. So was the next one. And the next one. Apparently, they were all full. There was no room at the inn. It was starting to feel like a Christmas story.
We decided to put some more miles behind us and banked on finding one a little closer to our final stop. So we took off back down the road. My brother was driving while I watched a movie on a portable DVD player. I was trying to be good company by staying awake. Then it happened.
I looked up and saw a sign we weren’t supposed to see on our trip, “WELCOME TO VIRGINIA.” Oh boy. We had driven in the wrong direction.
WRONG TURNS
We have all found ourselves in a similar situation. We got lost. We took a wrong turn somewhere. We wound up where we never intended to go. It happens. I’ve learned that Jesus doesn’t get mad at us for missing the turn. Instead, he shows up to help us find our way.
People will get mad at you when you miss their expectations. You may get mad at yourself for missing a turn from time to time. Some people build their entire careers, or even their lives, around celebrating missed turns.
When you do miss it, there are consequences. Sometimes, there are logical consequences, like winding up somewhere you never meant to go. We hadn’t planned on going to Virginia. No one plans to be an addict, to suffer a devastating divorce, or find themselves crippled emotionally because of a lifetime of wrong turns.
That’s the danger of wrong turns. If we don’t start moving in the right direction, we’ll keep making wrong turns. They add up over time.
One of the movies I watched with my brother on our wayward road trip was literally called Wrong Turn. Ironic. It’s a terrible movie about crazy cannibal hillbillies–in Virginia. None of the hillbillies I know are cannibals. And none of them live in Virginia. But the premise is pretty on point as metaphors go: wrong turns can lead to bad things.
Taking a wrong turn on a road trip can land you in the middle of some unexpected surroundings, but so will taking a wrong turn with your life. You’ll eventually find yourself in unfamiliar territory. It’s important for us to realize this isn’t just something that happens on the outside. I’m not just talking about rooms and environments here.
When you make wrong turns a habit, you eventually wind up in a place you never wanted to be. You become a stranger to yourself. You wake up one day wondering why you think the way you do. And you may not even like the person looking back in your mirror.
This is another reason why everyday with Jesus is better than any day without him. When you reach a fork in the road, you learn to take the right direction. It starts by asking Jesus which way he would go.
WWJD
In high school it was trendy to run around wearing bracelets with “What would Jesus do?” written on them. It was like a low-tech Fitbit for your soul. Instead of being there to remind you how many steps you’d taken, it was supposed to remind you to take the next step toward Jesus. We should all be trying to figure out what Jesus would do. Once you realize Jesus actually likes you and wants to be with you, it makes figuring out what he would do a little easier.
The truth is simple, but it takes work. When figuring out what Jesus would do–we make it way too complicated. But Jesus told us how to figure it out. Jesus said things like follow my voice, serve others, love your neighbor, be holy, and love God.
When my brother and I were on our trip, we needed our map. Every turn mattered when it came to getting to our final destination. Most Christians I’ve known have been focused on talking a lot about our final destination. Awesome. I’m 100% a fan of Heaven and, equally, of trying to get as many people there as we can. Still, we should take care not to treat every moment and every decision like something that could hijack the end result.
I think Jesus talked so much about following him because he wanted to show us the way. Yes, the final destination is a big deal. I like the part in the Bible about eternity with a God who deeply loves us and everyone’s tears getting wiped away. But life with Jesus is about way more than what happens when you die.
Wait a second?! There’s more than heaven? Yeah, I know. It’s crazy.
Jesus showed us the way. He wants us to follow him. “What would Jesus do?” becomes our guiding philosophy because we all need a guide. We all need to understand where we want to go. We all need to know how to get there. We all need to know how to make the next right choice.
We eventually got my brother to his new apartment on the coast. We spent a week helping him settle in and taking in a new city. It was a fun week. But the thing that has always stuck with me about that trip is the trip itself. It’s one of the only times in my adult life I’ve taken off across the country with nothing but a map. The map was the key to arriving at the right place.
Jesus' words to his friends were their map. When he said to them something like, “Go and make disciples in your city, and your country, and the whole world,” He wasn’t being generic. He was giving them specific directions. He was offering a route they could follow with their lives. And they did it.
The beautiful thing about life with Jesus is that it is life with Jesus. The end result sounds pretty awesome, but the road trip is pretty awesome, too. Because it is with Jesus.
When we take the trip with Jesus, we learn what Jesus wants. We can better answer what he would do. A lot of people are really good at looking like they follow Jesus. They say and appear to do all of the right things. But their heart is a mess. It’s full of wrong turns.
Jesus talked about people like this. He said, "They look like they’re doing it right, but their hearts are far from me.”
When we begin to spend everyday with Jesus, we’ll stop looking like we’re doing it right, and start to actually do it right. Because we won’t be concerned about appearances. We’ll stop caring what anyone thinks about our next turn. We’ll only have eyes and ears for one set of directions, “What would Jesus do?” As we do, we’ll stop following Jesus for the prize and start following Jesus with our heart.
Living with Jesus everyday means we call timeout on lip service. We give up on faking it till we make it. We trade in a life of appearing to follow Jesus for a life of actually following Jesus. The end result will be pretty awesome, but everyday with Jesus is pretty awesome, too.