«The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit» (John 3:8, NLT).
My friend Anne likes rock climbing; I do not. Heights and I do not get along. However, one day I allowed myself to be persuaded and we went to a sports center that had climbing walls. I climbed up to the top with my harness hooked on to the safety line, while Anne climbed the wall next to mine. Then, I noticed an inconvenience: the descent. The few times I had gone climbing indoors, I had come down by using an assisted descent technique, but this center had a system of counterweight pulleys. To descend, you had to let go and «allow yourself to fall.» Anne had explained that, but when I looked down from the top, the idea of letting go of the climbing holds seemed ridiculous to me. What did I do? I descended the way I had climbed, by going through the process backwards. After several other attempts, Anne convinced me to let go. The first three or four seconds I felt I was on a free fall, until the counterweight tensioned the rope and slowed down my descent. With her usual wisdom, Anne told me: «That is the way faith is.»
Many times it is hard for us to let go and allow ourselves to be led by the Holy Spirit, because we like control. Although trusting would be less painful, we cling to the climbing holds, to things in our lives we can still control, with numbed and sweaty fingers. The Bible offers a different, liberating alternative: it invites us to be born of the Spirit. Faith is learning to get carried away by wind; it is yielding control. As Gary Shockley writes in The Meandering Way, «We tend to control and correct the course of our lives excessively, while we keep our sails carefully rolled…fearing the wind will lead us to places we did not plan on going. We often settle for…doing things our way, instead of running the risk of hoisting the sails… to catch gusts of the Holy Spirit.»
Yielding control to God is a decision we make moment by moment. It is a daily discipline that makes our self die in order to be born of the Spirit.
Lord, I want to learn to yield control. Help me today to hoist the sails of faith. I give You my worries, my plans, my priorities, and I receive Your rest. I give You permission to change anything
You wish to change in my plans. I am willing for Your Spirit to lead me today wherever you want me to go.
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Take From: Devotional Thoughts for Women 2022
«NO FEARS»
BY: VANEZA PISSUTO
Collaborators: Alexandra Pérez & Angelica Cuate.
