As creatures of habit, we take the same roads to work, school, and church each time we go. We call it efficiency. But we also have a road we take when we’re struggling. Typically it’s the same road each time.
When faced with a problem or a temptation, we tend to retrace our steps and head in a direction we’ve gone a thousand times before.
There’s a road in the book of Genesis called the “Way to Shur.” The patriarchs took it more than once.
It’s the same road we take when we’re struggling.
The most-traveled road from biblical Canaan to Egypt—the International Highway—ran the full length of Israel. Joseph’s unwelcome journey to Egypt from Dothan took this coastal International Highway (Gen. 37:25, 28).
But another road also led to Egypt—less common, but important. Joseph’s brothers took this different route.
This road played a key role earlier in Genesis:
In these instances, the attempts to escape from the difficult will of God only found each person back at the same place of having to trust the Lord all over again.
Taking the Way to Shur in this way solved nothing. It never does.
Not every instance of God’s people taking the Way to Shur represented an attempt to escape from God’s will. As Jacob and the Hebrew children left Canaan to enter Egypt at Joseph’s invitation, they would travel the Way to Shur.
God spoke to Jacob in a dream, telling him four truths in Genesis 46:3-4:
In our own lives, we need to hear these principles as well. The difficulty of God’s will surface our tendency to repeat patterns of escape—taking the Way to Shur in a way that lacks faith.
But God allows the challenge to urge us to take the journey in a different way.
You’re facing a difficulty today. Walk down the road God leads you by faith. Trust Him for every step.
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