Between the Two Ponds
One passage. One idea. A few quiet minutes. Short devotional readings for people being formed by grace, written from a small chair beside still water in Falcon, Colorado.
Pull one up. Read slowly. There is no hurry here.
Led, Not Driven
Not to strain. Not to grit. Not to summon whatever is left of your resolve at the halfway point and force your body up the rest of the hill.
"But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." (Galatians 5:18)
What does it actually mean to be led? Not to strain. Not to grit. Not to summon the last of your resolve at the halfway point and force yourself up the rest of the climb. Led means something has hold of you and is drawing you forward, and your one task is to stop resisting it. That is the whole assignment: to become responsive rather than reluctant, aware rather than distracted, open rather than braced, obedient rather than forever negotiating. And then to walk into whatever God is calling you into, even when it looks impossible from where you stand.
Be careful here, because this is exactly where people hear grace and reach for their coats, as though being led meant nothing is required. It does not mean that. Peter still had to get into the boat. Abraham still had to leave the country. You will still, at some point today, have to do a thing you do not want to do. Being led is not being carried while you sleep.
But there is all the difference in the world between a man dragging a cart and a man on a horse. Both are moving. Both are tired by the end of the day. Only one is spending his own strength to make the load go, and only one is likely to make it home. The flesh drags the cart. The Spirit gives the horse.
Most of us have tasted only a crumb of what it is to be carried like that, a moment here and there when prayer stopped being a shove and became a being-drawn. Do not settle for the crumb as though it were the whole meal. There is a loaf. Ask for it.
Halfway Up the Hill
When I was about twelve, my best friend Ryan and I were inseparable, and we would ride our bikes all over Jane Lew and out past it.
"Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." (Galatians 5:16)
Every rider knows the hill. You are moving along the flat, you see it coming, and you do the only thing there is to do. You pedal hard, build every ounce of speed you can, and throw yourself at it, hoping momentum will carry you up. And it does, for a while. Then the ground steepens, the momentum bleeds out, and you have to change gears and actually climb. For most riders the legs give out about halfway, and the rest of the way is spent off the seat, pushing the bike to the top, breathing hard.
That is most of our praying, if we are honest. We hit it with everything we have, in our own strength, and we run out halfway up, and the rest is a grim shove toward a summit we are no longer sure we will reach. We call it discipline. Often it is only momentum, and momentum always runs out.
But watch the word Paul chooses for life in the Spirit. He does not say driven. He does not say pushed. He says led. Led is a different thing entirely. Driven is force applied from behind, the whip, the will, the last of your own strength. Led is something out ahead of you, drawing you forward, so the power is no longer coming from your spent legs.
This is the difference between a prayer life you generate and a prayer life you receive. One ends halfway up the hill. The other is drawn to the top by Someone stronger than you, who was never depending on your momentum in the first place. So stop trying to power up the hill on your own. Ask to be led up it.