I can hardly call myself a sailor. You wouldn’t want to hire me to chart a tour on your local lake. Still, I’ve done a fair amount of sailing. When I was young, my father owned a small sailboat, large enough to comfortably hold Dad and Craig, me and lunch. In the summers we’d drive three hours to Elephant Butte Lake near Truth or Consequences, NM and sail for a weekend. Dad always let me and Craig have a turn at the rudder. One of the basic lessons focused on maneuvering the sail so it would catch the wind. It didn’t matter how steady the wind was or how strong the wind was. If you didn’t keep the sail turned in just the right direction to catch the wind, you were dead in the water. But once you learned to trim that sail, the wind would carry you fast and far.
This image is important, because it lies behind a vital scene in the life of Jesus:
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. (Matt. 4:1 ESV)
This takes place immediately after Jesus’ baptism and immediately before his public ministry. Notice the description: “Jesus was led up by the Spirit.” The phrase “led up” is translated in an interesting way in other Scriptures. More than twenty times this phrase is translated “sail.” Ten times in Acts, the phrase is used to describe the “sailing” that Paul or others did as they moved from one place to another. The Spirit was like the wind. Jesus had trimmed his sails to catch that wind. And the Spirit blew Jesus to the next place Jesus needed to be.
A form of this same word is picked up by Paul. Writing to Christians in Rome and in Galatia, Paul calls us to be people who, like Jesus, are “led” by the Spirit (Rom. 8:14; Gal. 5:18).
Jesus uses the image of wind to describe the Spirit:
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3:8 ESV)
The Spirit blows where he wishes. He has places where he wants to send us. And our job is to trim those sails so that the Spirit can propel us where He wants us to go.
So, the Christian life is about listening to the Spirit, who is regularly speaking to us, instructing us, guiding us (see previous post). And the Christian life is about being led by the Spirit. Filling our sails with his wind and going where he directs.
This is a very different image of faith than most of us are used to. Many of us, John Ortberg writes, have a view of faith that is like a motorboat (The Life You’ve Always Wanted, 53). If you own a motorboat, you are in charge. You do everything yourself. You fill it with gas. You use the throttle to determine exactly how fast you will to go. You turn the motor and can make the boat go anywhere you want it to go. You are in complete control of speed, destination and pace of the journey. Sailboating, however, is different. Your speed, and destination, are set by the wind. While there’s work for you to do, there’s much you cannot do. You are literally at the mercy of the wind. You cannot will the boat to go if the wind does not blow.
The Spirit has places he longs to send you, even today. Lay down your own agenda. Put aside your own plans. Trim your sails. And let the Spirit chart your course today.
