Guided by the Scriptures
What path will we choose?
“Direct my steps by Your word, And let no iniquity have dominion over me” (Psalm 119:133).
Kelsea Ballerini released a haunting song called, I Sit in Parks in 2025. In the song, she tells how she goes and sits in parks, watching a husband and a wife playing with their children. She sees how they love each other, and she wonders if she made the right choice to give up her own marriage and a future family to chase her dreams in music. One line of the song considers the man’s wife and says, “I wonder if she wants my freedom like I wanna be a mother.”
While Ballerini gave it all up for “freedom,” her song reveals that she does not feel very free at all. She supposedly got everything she wanted, but now her life feels very empty, and she wonders if she “missed the mark.”
We took that trip down Music Row to make this point: we all serve something or someone. Even if we chase what we think is “freedom,” we will still be a servant in some way. Many people run from God and His word because they think His way is too restrictive. They want to be free to live the life that they want to live.
But the psalmist points out in Psalm 119:133 that we will either live under the “rule” of God or iniquity. There is no middle ground or third option. If we refuse to let our lives be guided by God’s word, then we will be governed by “vanity” and “wickedness.” The apostle Paul makes this same point, writing to the Christians in Rome.
“Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:16-18).
Just as there are two eternal outcomes (Matthew 25:46), there are two roads we can choose to walk (Matthew 7:13-14). We either listen to God and obey Him, which leads to eternal life, or we listen to our own desires (1 John 2:15-17) and the temptations of the devil and follow sin, leading to death (James 1:14-15).
Let us store God’s word in our hearts (Psalm 119:11) and trust His word to guide our lives (Psalm 119:105).
So true.