When you base your decisions on people's opinions (even your own) it's like wearing a seat belt that's not attached to anything.
Audio Transcript
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.
Here's the first thing I want you to see — you need to replace opinion with godly direction. You need to replace opinion with godly direction.
As we were on vacation a couple weeks ago, we went to Red River, New Mexico and just spent a week together as a family. It was awesome. Kathy found us this timeshare Airbnb place that was just like living in a mansion for us. It was great man. 125 bucks a night. Let me.. if you need to know where it is I'll be glad to tell you, but we got up there.
You know, we were gonna go hiking, whitewater rafting, all that stuff and the day we got there, because of a wildfire, they closed the national forrest. So we go all the way up there. We had driven up to 8,500 feet and they closed the national forrest so we had to find alternative things to do.
And if you're not aware of this one of the things that the Addis family — it's a requirement for it to be a good vacation — the closer to death you come the better the vacation it is.
Well we like to do things that if you can't — when you come back you're like glad that you made it back and that's what made it a good vacation and when they closed all that stuff down we were like man we aren't gonna be able to find anything, but we found one touring company that said they were still doing some stuff.
They said what you can do is they have these converted Ford F-150s that you can ride in the back of and they take it up to Mount Baldy up there to about 10,500 feet on these old trail roads. I said well that's about as adventurous as we're gonna get so let's do that.
We hiked up there and got on their scooter and they took us out to the base camp and we found these trucks they were talking about and they're pretty sketchy if I could be really honest with you. They had just taken the bed off these trucks and welded a frame that had three bench seats on it and they were feeding seatbelts through as we got there. Kathy and I got the front seat and Noah and Nathan were behind us. This family from California was behind them and we got in and they started taking us up.
Man and it was just bumpity-bump bump and going down these trails and I mean the wheels were like — I'm telling you was straight-up scary. We're right on the edge and they said, "You want to get out? No. There's nowhere to get out you know what I'm talking about?
We'd go around this go around that well we finally got to a place where we got out to take some pictures and we got back in and my seatbelt had slipped through. I asked Nathan behind me said "Hey feed the seat belt backup for me." And he did. I got it and I buckled up and as we start taking off again we're ascending and it's bumping real bad and I'm like oh man I need to adjust and I remember kind of adjusting like that and I felt like it was a little too loose so I sinched it real tight and then I still felt really loose.
That's when I realized that Nathan had handed me the other end of the seatbelt and hadn't wrapped it around the pipe at all. I was just wearing a seat belt like a belt. Y'all know what I'm talking about?
Now here's the problem — you can wear a seat belt like a belt but it doesn't do you any good. Can I get an amen in the house?
If the seat belt isn't attached to anything then all it is a fashion accessory that's doing — by the way and it's not a good fashion accessory — and so I was wearing a seat belt that wasn't attached. I looked around at him and I went, "Are you trying to kill me?" He goes, "Oh sorry."
And so while we're bouncing around he's trying to feed that through there and I'm trying to buckle up again it was a terrifying couple of moments while we were on the trail there.
Now what does that have to do with this?
When you base your decisions on people's opinions (even your own) it's like wearing a seat belt that's not attached to anything.
You may feel secure. You may think you're okay. But the only thing you're strapped into is yourself. Is nobody else... I thought that was really good. I've been waiting for this all week...
When you wear a seat belt that's not attached to anything all you're strapped to is yourself. And when you base your decisions on opinion — opinions of others and opinions of yourselves, that subjective data, that somebody else had an idea or you had an idea, or somebody had an experience, you had an experience...
The truth is that you're missing the most solid secure place to buckle yourself to which is the wisdom of God Almighty.
Watch the full sermon here.