1. God's Rivers
Are they best crooked or straight?

2. God's Rivers
• Some scientists made a river in their
laboratory by sending water down a sandy
incline.
• Did the water go straight down?
• They started it straight, but in time it wiggled
and turned and snaked like the Mississippi
River which meanders and loops with
sandbars, deeps and shallows.
• Why did the river wiggle?

3. God's Rivers
• It seems that the reason for winding is the power of
flowing water to pick up and carry earth material.
• As a river flows it eats into the banks; a bank caves in
and a sandbar is formed downstream.
• Then the water has to go around the bar.
• As the current on the outside of the curve speeds up it
eats into the river bank on that side.
• At the same time the water on the inside slows down
and deposits its sand load.
• So the sandbar grows.

4. God's Rivers
• Through the years, the original slight detour
becomes an exaggerated loop.
• Coming out of the loop the river turns back to
the sea.
• The same things now happen in reverse.
• One loop thus causes another and a third and
the river wanders on to the sea.

5. God's Rivers
• Not only does the river swing back and forth in
curves, the curves themselves keep
moving, squirming and snaking.
• Each loop, once formed, moves downstream
slowly, so many miles per century.
• There are other motions of rivers, too, which
make it almost a living thing.
• It squirms, writhes, and thrashes; it never gets
comfortable in its channel as it makes its way to
the sea.

6. God's Rivers
• God has a destination marked out for the
believer. God intends to bring the believing
child of God to the sea of glass, clear as
crystal, in heaven.
• God also has a pathway by which the believer
is to reach this destination where he will be
made like God's Son. Often God takes us the
long way instead of the short cut.

7. God's Rivers
• He might allow things we thought were very
solid in our lives to break away and become
obstacles down the road, obstacles which we
must overcome.
• Sometimes God will change our direction in
what seems like midstream.
• Sometimes He will send us in what seems like
a meaningless loop.

8. God's Rivers
• Ours is not to question why, ours is to keep
flowing, moving, toward the sea of glass.
• The Master knows the way that we take (Job
23:10).
• He has designs that we cannot see.

9. God's Rivers
• The stops and starts, the loops, the obstacles
channel us and change us and make us to do
His will.
• We must go forward with God, forgetting
those things which are behind and pressing
forward to those things which are before
(Philippians 3:13).

10. God's Rivers
• We must remember that for every temptation
God makes a way of escape; God gives a way
to bear it (1 Corinthians 10:13).
• We must know that God's intent is good.
• We must realize we have not reached the end.

11. God's Rivers
• We must simply flow on in the direction of
God, knowing that all things work together for
good to them that love God, to them that are
the called according to His purpose (Romans
8:28).