shipwrecked

Acts 27: 21-22 “… Paul stood up before them and said: “Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete; then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss. But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed.”
This passage really stood out to me while I was reading the stories and history in Acts. Paul had warned these men not to sail a certain way, but they still went ahead and did it anyway. It reminds me of how we are with our Lord, He warns us and tells us not to go a certain way but we do it anyway. We think that if we are reaching the final goal he wants for us, and then is does not matter how we get there. We think that taking short cuts or ignoring the present to get to the future goals is ok. It is not, we will be shipwrecked and we will fail. I was so encouraged by these verses, because often I want to take short cuts, or miss the lesson I am supposed to learn. I do it all the time and then find myself in a huge mess. I could have saved myself much “damage and loss” but selfishly I want to do things my own way. However the Lord is merciful there are consequences our ship may be destroyed, all that we have built on and relied on may be annihilated however we are spared. He still takes us to our final destination, but we get there in through a much more painful process, than if we had just listened in the first place.