Guardrails

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Proverbs 4:20–27 (NKJV) My son, give attention to my words; Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes; Keep them in the midst of your heart; For they are life to those who find them, And health to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life. Put away from you a deceitful mouth, And put perverse lips far from you. Let your eyes look straight ahead, And your eyelids look right before you. Ponder the path of your feet, And let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or the left; Remove your foot from evil.

What it is speaking to me:

Have you ever tried walking backward or sideways without looking where you are going? You know it won’t work for long; eventually, you’ll hurt yourself. You stumble into something, stub your toe, or run into a wall. Because our eyes determine where our feet take us. Because our feet follow our gaze, this proverb is about establishing guardrails for our walk.

Guardrails exist to keep your car on the road and out of a ditch—or worse, oncoming traffic. The city provides guardrails for our physical roads, and if we had good parents, they provided guardrails for our lives while we were growing up. But what about now? As adults living on our own, with total freedom and no parents to tell us "no," how do we stay on track?

The Word gives us these guardrails. They exist not to repress us, but to free us into fulfilled living. With them, we are free to drive safely on the paths God sets before us, without the fear of sliding into a ditch of sin or destruction. Destruction happens in the ditch; life happens on the road. Embrace the guardrails of Scripture and see them for what they truly are: freedom and safety.

What is it saying to you?

How have guardrails helped you in the past? What have they spared you from? Do you need to put up new ones over a specific area of your life today?

What are we going to do about it?

Outline a specific "guardrail" you need to set up against a known temptation, a "ditch" in your life, or potential oncoming traffic. Maybe its not even a sin, just a guardrail you know would make your life better, or will help you follow God more. What can you do today (e.g., download a specific app, change your route, call a person, or schedule a meeting) to put that guardrail in place?