“Did you ask the Lord about it, Nellie?” said a Christian girl to a companion who had engaged herself to a Roman Catholic mistress as nursery maid and who was prohibited by her mistress from going to a Bible class for young believers on the Lord’s Day afternoons, where before she had received much help and instruction in the things of God. “You know, Nellie, the Word says—‘In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.’ I have always found it true, that the Lord does so order my paths, and give me situations in which I have the privilege of doing His will, and assembling with His beloved people, since I learned to acknowledge Him, and seek His guidance in the matter of service. I once had the same difficulty as you have, but it was owing to my taking my own way, and not seeking guidance from Him in the choice of a place.”
The girl hung her head, and with a tear in her eye answered, “No, I did not ask Him about going to this last situation. I thought it would be so nice and so much better than my last one, that I engaged before I thought of praying about it at all.”
“I thought so, Nellie; and now you are reaping the bitter fruit of following your own desires, without the guidance of the Lord. You must just bear it patiently now, and confess your sin to Him who is faithful and just to forgive. But, O, remember, my dear sister, that the truly happy path is to acknowledge the Lord in every step of life. There is nothing too small for him to order, and such is His love for us, who are His loved ones that He delights to choose for us, when we leave Him to do it.”
The lesson was not lost on the young servant maid. She never forgot it in her afterlife. That engagement without asking guidance from her Lord, and the trials she had to endure as the fruit of her own choosing, taught her that it is a bitter thing for a Christian to move along life’s path, without in all our ways acknowledging the Lord. It is no uncommon mistake among the Lord’s redeemed ones so to do. But it is an evil way. The world, of course, arranges its affairs without acknowledging the Lord. Those who “know not the Lord”, and cannot therefore seek His counsel, choose their situations according to their own desires, but it should not be so with the children of God.