Galatians 5:25 “Let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
The Spirit is always on the move. We can easily run ahead or lag behind, so the challenge for us is to keep in step with him. Because most of us want to be in control and fear change, more often than not our greater danger is to lag behind and play it safe.
However, although a ship may be safe in the harbour, to fulfill its purpose it has to take on the high seas; and no new land was ever discovered without the ship’s commander agreeing to lose sight of the shore he’d embarked from. Anticipating future regret, Mark Twain warned us: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
A survey was taken of people who were over 95-years-old. They were asked an open-ended question: if you could live your life over again, what would you do differently? The three most common replies were:
1. If I could live my life over again, I would reflect more.
2. I would risk more.
3. I would do more things that would live on after I’m dead.
So let’s learn some lessons from them! We must choose freedom from our natural inclination towards safe convention. We don’t want to look back with regret at what could have been. Just after his college days at Cambridge, Muggeridge scribbled his own epitaph to a fellow student, “Here lieth one whose soul sometimes burned with great longings, to whom sometimes the curtain of the Infinite was opened just a little, but who lacked the guts to make any use of it.” What tragic candour!
Lord, give me both the wisdom and the guts to keep in step with your Spirit today. Amen!
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