I've always loved maps. I mean, I've really loved maps. Some people take a good novel to bed with them at night. I've been known to take an atlas. I can spend hours looking at highways and backroads, studying the names of towns, figuring out how places connect to one another. There's something fascinating to me about seeing the big picture, knowing where you are, where you're going, and all the different ways you might get there.

And that fascination started when I was pretty young. When I was growing up, our family would take long road trips. And we didn't always stop at motels along the way. We would often just drive straight through, taking turns behind the wheel, traveling through the night until we reached our destination. And when it was my mom's turn to drive (which was always the night shift), I became the navigator.

Now, think about that for a moment. Here's a grown woman driving down the highway in the middle of the night, and her navigator is a little kid with a road map - one of those huge folded things about the size of a bedsheet, and one that once unfolded, never truly was folded back the proper way.

Today, of course, we have GPS. We type in our destination, and a nice, pleasant voice tells us where to go. "In half a mile, turn right." "Continue straight for three miles." "Take the next exit." And if you decide you know a better way and therefore ignore the directions, what does it say? "Recalculating." I have been known to actually argue with that voice OUT LOUD!

But here's what I've learned about navigating, whether you're using a paper map or a GPS: Knowing where you want to go doesn't necessarily mean you know the best way to get there. And sometimes the problem isn't that we don't have directions. It's that we don't like the directions we've been given.

We look at the route and think, "This isn't right. This is NOT the right way." But I've found - for the most part - ignoring your GPS makes things inconvenient. But when I do this in my relationship with God, it turns out worse than a little inconvenience. Which brings us to our Scripture today.

April of 2025, something rather unusual happened on Mt. Fuji in Japan. A 27-year-old Chinese university student decided to climb the mountain in the off-season, when climbing is more treacherous. Mt. Fuji is 12,000 ft. above sea-level; the highest peak in Japan.

Things didn't go according to plan. He developed altitude sickness, had trouble with his climbing equipment, and eventually had to be rescued by helicopter on April 22. Now, you'd think that being airlifted off a mountain would be enough excitement for one week, right? You might think he'd learned a valuable lesson about respecting the mountain and knowing your limitations. But apparently, he had left something behind...his cell phone.

So four days later, on April 26, he went BACK on Mt Fuji, attempting to retrieve his phone. And again, he got into trouble. AGAIN, he developed altitude sickness. And AGAIN, emergency responders had to rescue him from the mountain! Twice in four days, from the same mountain, all over a cell phone!

It's an almost unbelievable story, but it raises a question: What good is being rescued if you simply go right back to the thing that put you in danger in the first place? And as crazy as that story sounds, I wonder if we sometimes do something very similar in our relationship with God. We cry out to Him when we're in trouble. We ask Him to deliver us from the consequences of our choices. We rejoice when He answers our prayers. But sometimes, once the crisis has passed, we go right back to living the way we were living before. And then we wonder why we keep finding ourselves in trouble!

Everyone has a cell phone, right? In fact, if you DON'T - first of all, way to go; I respect the heck outta you! Secondly, raise your hand proudly. These things are now such a huge part of life, it's kinda scary. Now, for those who DO have a cell phone ,how many of you have had that cell phone that recently did an update? A little inconvenient, right? It seems like every time I turn around, my phone is telling me there's a new update available. And apparently, this update is going to make my phone faster, safer, smarter, and improve the quality of my life!

HOWEVER, when I do all the things you gotta do to get the update, when my phone restarts, everything pretty much looks the same - except they've moved three buttons and now I can't figure out how to set my alarm!

And it's not just our phones. Computers are constantly updating, too. You sit down at the computer to get some work done, and Windows announces that it's time for an update. And it doesn't ASK - it just tells you, "This may take a while." And suddenly what was working five minutes ago will be unavailable for the next 2 hours, it seems.

Software updates are only part of the problem. Every year, the companies that make these things announce that they've developed something even better. There's a new phone, a new computer, a new tv, a new smartwatch. And each new model comes with features that apparently make the one we bought last year hopelessly inadequate.

But wait - my phone was FINE yesterday. It made calls. It sent messages. It took pictures. It gave me directions. I could get online with it. So why do I NEED an upgrade? It's because they TELL me I need one. Did you know there's actually a term for the idea that products are designed or marketed with a limited useful lifespan. It's called planned obsolescence. We are living in a culture where products are more easily replaced than repaired, where newer models are constantly being introduced, EVEN IF THE OLD MODEL STILL WORKS.

Now I bring that up because if we're not careful, this upgrade mindset - the "I need the 2.0 or the 3.0" way of thinking - influences the way we think about everything, even our relationship with God. What do I mean?