Episode 404: I’m Talkin…Path

I’m Talkin’, episode 404 for January 11th, 2026.

This is Joel from the I’m Talkin’ microcast, where I share my thoughts on a topic that has piqued my interest this past week.

This week, we’re talking path.

Path is a fairly simple word.

I don’t know that there’s a lot of mystery in its definition.

And so I was thinking, you know, what do people think about when they think of the word path?

And I think maybe most often, it’s, you know, they think about like a hiking or a walking path, and it might be in a park, or it might be in a trail on a mountain.

You know, I think of my childhood, and I grew up in Alaska, and the path in the woods and through the mountains, the trails that I followed, maybe that’s another word for path as a trail.

They were fairly rugged.

It wasn’t necessarily making it easy to walk, but at least it provided some direction.

And I think that’s the other word or the other definition that comes into play in the world, and that is a direction.

What path are you on?

It might be a career path.

It might be a life path.

It may be a, you know, some other type of direction that you want to go, and you call it a path.

And therein lies the challenge for those of us who call ourselves Christians.

As a Christian, the word path as a word does not change.

But when you think of it as life direction, it has a different meaning because of who we believe in and because of what we believe.

So you know that my word for the year is intentional, and the first verse that I memorized is from Proverbs 4, verses 25 and 26 that says, Look straight ahead.

Fix your eyes on what lies before you.

Mark out a straight path for your feet.

Stay on the safe path.

So what does it mean, fix your eyes on what lies before you?

This is focusing on God.

It’s focusing on God directing our lives.

It says, mark out a path for your feet, a straight path for your feet.

Well, it’s not telling us to do that without any direction.

It’s telling us to do that with our focus on who God is and who God wants us to be and our relationship with him.

So we fix our eyes on God, and that is the way that we can mark out a straight path for our feet.

And then it says to stay on the safe path.

And some would say, well, that’s just playing it safe.

You don’t ever have any adventure.

No, I think the idea there is that God has provided guardrails for us as Christians, and we don’t want to stray off of that path.

It’s like straight and narrow is the way that leads to what God wants us to do.

And it says God will direct our path if we keep our focus on him.

So while we have some say in what our path is, that say needs to be directed by who God is, where God is, and we only know that by conversing with him, by staying in his word, and through prayer.

And it says stay on the safe path, and we rely on God to help us do exactly that.

Until next week, this is Joel from the I’m Talkin’ microcast.