When It Rains. . . .

I recently downloaded and started using the fitness app Strava. I downloaded the app for better analytics on my swims and rides, but I soon found Strava offered so much more. Strava offers social networking which allows you and your friends to encourage one another to reach your fitness goals. And, there are monthly and weekly challenges to push you even harder.

I signed up for a virtual “Ironman” challenge this week. To complete the challenge, I have seven days to complete 70.3 miles in any combination of cycling, swimming, and running. My Dystonia keeps me from running, but I already swim about a mile a day and ride 7.5 a day—all I need to do to complete the challenge is increase my rides a couple miles a day for a week, nothing too terribly difficult.

On Monday, I swam my mile before work, and I went home that afternoon looking forward to riding at least 10 miles on my bike. The clouds looked a tad ominous, but I had checked the radar and the weather forecast; the storms were going around Deer Park and wouldn’t affect my ride. Well. . . . . I made a lap around my neighborhood—a whooping 0.49 miles—before the lightning started and I had to go home.

I thought I had timed everything perfectly, but things didn’t quite work out well for me; the best weather advice I was viewing across several apps all missed the lightning that was coming. Sometimes our own reasoning and education don’t amount to anything, and we still get things wrong. Jeremiah understood well that man’s reasoning and knowledge often fail: “I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps” (Jer 10:23). Man cannot direct his own steps, for God has turned man’s wisdom on its head: “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? [T]he foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor 1:20, 25). It doesn’t do any good to use your head for how you think things ought to be; only God’s wisdom matters.

God has given his wisdom to man in the pages of holy writ. “Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet 1:21). If you wish to know truth, checking apps and asking others for opinions and making deductions just won’t work, you need the Word of God. Study the word to know truth.

This article was originally written by Dr. Justin Imel, Sr., for the weekly newsletter at Church of Christ Deer Park in Deer Park, Texas.