Is morning time causing some facet joint irritation? Is walking in your new name flaring up your sciatica? Crazy questions, but hear me out. When we are learning to hear from God and have a deep desire to follow His lead, it can sometimes lead to a striving or working to please God. Have you ever gotten up for your morning time because you “had to” not because you “wanted to”? Has it ever happened to you where you were checking stuff off your morning time list; pray (check), worship (check), read the Bible (check), journal (check), and run (check, check!) just to keep God happy and to avoid being hit by lightning?
I know some of you are good to go here, but for the rest of us we need a little clarification. Serving God out of duty and fear is like rowing a boat into the wind. God is in the wind all around you, but you are fighting against what God is trying to do. Seeking God out of our own strength only brings fatigue and discouragement as we make little progress trying to get upwind. In the worst case scenario, if we pursue God in a narcissistic, egocentric way, trying to get something out of God, we end up completely exhausting ourselves.
Luckily, when we get to the end of ourselves and we can no longer keep putting our back into the rowing effort (hence the LBP), we begin to drift with the wind. Drifting with the wind teaches us about surrender and gives us time to rest and recover. Hopefully, we give up soon enough so that we don’t have to drift onto some rocks to learn our lessons. Eventually, given enough time drifting with God and healing from all the striving, we can put up a sail and really get up some speed moving in God’s direction.
Sailing with your sails filled with the power of God’s Holy Spirit is like morning time, where you experience God’s love in a profound way. You sense His presence and you hear His voice and you move with Him. You have revelation and you take action. You experience profound joy and it is noticeable and contagious. In a practical sense, we lay our hands on patients and we listen for what to adjust, what to say and how to serve. At the team meeting or team training we bring joy and we build people up and encourage as we train. We set the tone in the office and create an environment of joy. The same goes at home. We bring JOY home for dinner instead of some other undesirable state, like fatigue, frustration, anger or numbness.
Looking back over the last little while have you been in a row boat or in a sail boat?
Are you rowing upwind or are you on a long reach, spinnaker full, ripping along with God, full of joy?
Wherever God is blowing, that is where you should be going.
Love,
Yurij
Warrior Coaching
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