Have you ever lost your way? There’s the time you got on the wrong bus and ended up in the wrong part of town, or as a kid you got separated from your parents at the amusement park. But that’s not what I mean.
Some people reading this have lost their way by taking a wrong turn in life and having an affair, developing an addiction or deciding on an abortion. Some have fallen in lust for the wrong reasons with a person on the wrong path. Some have given up on church, a dear friend, or family. Some have overspent credit limits and created financial turmoil.
Perhaps for you in the past you lost your way, but now you’re back on track, thank God. Perhaps for you, if you’re honest right now, you’ve lost your way and are still lost. Or maybe you’re one of those followers of Jesus who likes to take your own way, stray a bit once in a while but stay just close enough so that you don’t feel lost—at least most of the time.
In any of those situations, let me suggest that it isn’t your way that is lost at all. Like I’ll joke with my wife Cara when we’re riding somewhere on our motorcycle (I can’t check Google Maps), and I look confused, and she asks, “Are we lost?” I’ll say, “Nope, I know exactly where we are. We’re right here.” So it really isn’t your way that is lost. It’s you.
That’s why Jesus came. “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). Jesus did not come to just show us the way.
Jesus did not point us in the right direction and say, “Hope you make it.” Jesus did not demonstrate how to walk this way and then say, “You try it and see if it works.”
If you think that Jesus is a great moral teacher, that’s wonderful but so was Gandhi and Gandhi is no Jesus. If you think that Jesus tells people how to get to heaven, that’s wonderful but so do I and I’m no Jesus. If you worship Jesus because he shows God’s love, that’s wonderful but so do birds and birds are no Jesus.
Jesus doesn’t just show the way. Jesus is the Way. He says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
Jesus is the Way. The way for our own guilt and sin to be punished fully and finally by the justice of God at the cross. The way for a substitute sacrifice—namely Jesus—to be accepted by God in our place.
The way to forgiveness. The way to heaven. The way to your new life right now. The way for you to never be lonely, never lose your faith, never go to bed and feel unloved. The way for you, for your children, for the person who has hurt you.
So you’re not lost after all.
PRAYER: Dear Jesus, we’ve all lost our way on our own. I need you, Jesus. You show me the way, but that’s not all. You are the Way. You are my Savior. Lead me, Lord, that I may follow you as the only Way. Amen.
FURTHER MEDITATION: Read Isaiah 53:4-6 to see Jesus as the Way. Select 3 words in that section that resonate with you right now. Pray about them.
