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God’s Piloting Spirit

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Years back, I had a show in a small North Carolina mountain town I’d never visited, though I’d played many nearby. Wanting a scenic drive, I planned extra time to meander through the mountains and arrive well ahead of schedule.
I’ve never trusted electronic GPS—printed maps were always my go-to. But this time, I consulted an online mapping service before leaving home and printed the directions. With a smile, my truck packed, and a sense of adventure, I set off into the unknown.
The drive was pleasant, winding through Tennessee toward North Carolina, until the directions went awry. I turned off a major highway onto a quiet county road, then a rougher one, then a gravel track. Soon, I was rattling along a dirt path—two lanes shrinking to one, pocked with dips and holes. I pressed on in faith until I hit a farm gate blocking a pasture. The internet map had led me to a dead end.
If this were a leisurely jaunt, I might’ve laughed it off. But with a job ahead and time slipping away, stress crept in. I still had hours to travel and a deadline to meet. Inch by inch, I turned my truck around on that narrow lane and retraced my steps to the last decent road. I stepped out, glanced at the sun, checked my watch, and reckoned the direction I needed. Pointing my truck accordingly, I navigated a web of backroads until I hit a familiar state highway. Pedal down, I rolled into town just half an hour late—still early enough to prep and take the stage, hoping to make memories for the crowd.
The conventional route would’ve taken three and a half hours. My “adventure” stretched it to six. Trusting my instincts had pulled me out of the wilderness, but had I leaned on them from the start, the day might’ve stayed leisurely instead of turning tense.
Why share this? On the surface, it’s a simple lesson: don’t blindly trust tech. Dig deeper, and it’s more universal. When we let others chart our course, we risk veering off track—sometimes innocently, sometimes not. I recovered thanks to a frontier spirit inherited from ancestors who braved unmapped wilds on foot and horseback. But what if I hadn’t?
It’s a reminder to weigh who’s guiding us. Do they care about our success? Maybe that’s why Reno & Smiley sang, “I’m Using My Bible for a Road Map.” God’s guidance—through spirit and sense—steered me where I needed to be, using my gifts to touch others. So, are you relying on GPS, or God’s Piloting Spirit?

The Spirit within

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Have you ever been in a room, and someone walks in and with your body you feel in your center mass of your chest a quiver.

As they draw closer to you, the disturbance within increases in its frequency of movement. Of course, exposing this in a public situation would be uncomfortable, so instead you hold your composure and let it pass. Hopefully, the situation does not place the person in your orbit.

I have experienced this and over the years as I moved on with my life, where I had the opportunity have watched those that the quiver warned me about. I have surmised that the Spirit within me was warning me that there was something within that person that was not coming from a good place, and they did not intend the best through their actions.

There have been occasions when such a person did come into my orbit, and it was all that I could do to withstand the impact of that exposure.

I have had similar experiences while seeing people on the news or while watching a TV show or a movie.

This feeling is much like a magnet when it pushes the same pole end apart. It’s there to warn us to protect ourselves against the evil around us.

That comes in many packages, sometimes with legs, sometimes through what we watch, hear, read, and see.

If you intake things that uplift your Spirit, reinforce it and feed it with positive, uplifting messages, love for your fellow man, then that will be reflected in the actions of your heart.
If you allow things that damage your Spirit, that expose you to darkness, evil, sadness, then your Spirit hardens and the warning quiver fades because you have in essence chosen to ignore it, then your actions will more and more reflect those negatives that you allow to invade your body.

When I have not ignored its warnings, that Spirit has guided me safely through much of my life.

Although like any headstrong child – of any age – during some periods and on some days, I have lost my way, giving in to other senses and feelings allowing those to overshadow the Spirit. That has always been to my detriment, emotionally, sometimes physically and financially.

When it occurs, it weakens my Spirit, depletes my energy and scatters my focus. It saddens me when I realize that I stepped outside the blessings my companion offers.

I believe that the Spirit is God’s way to be present in our lives and to walk with us in all that we do. When we ignore it, we are choosing to follow our own will, which is a choice that He gave us. Sometimes though when we follow the Pied Piper down the path, at some point we will have to pay the piper. Our hope then must be that if we choose to walk another path that it does not lead to our destruction or into the total hardening of the Spirit within us, so we no longer recognize ourselves.

Let’s fill our minds, our hearts, our eyes, our ears with the uplifting Word and with images, stories, films and TV shows, that reinforce the good within us. Let’s cast off that which is meant to draw us into a downward spiral with some aspect of destruction inevitable.