Surf’s up!
Isaiah 55: Seek God while he’s here to be found.
I’m coming up on four decades of ministry and along the way I’d like to think I’ve learned a few things. One of them is that there are “tides of the Spirit.” Even as the ocean has times of high and low tide, so do we (individuals as well as churches) experience such cycles in the spiritual realm. In my career as a pastor I have seen churches that seemed to be doing everything right but weren’t seeing the results one might expect. Then, to our delight, one positive thing kicks off a whole series of positive things. Suddenly, the efforts that had been fruitless before take on a new life and wonderful things start happening. I laughingly told someone once that I was thinking of writing a book telling how our church had seen significant gains over a two year period. The problem was that I had no idea of what to write; we were basically doing all the same things we had done in the years previous when there was nothing special happening. I’m sure that there were things associated with those memorable days that I simply didn’t see. For instance, secret prayer by some saints of God comes to mind. Still, the difference was that God moved, not because we got all our ducks in a row, but because of his own schedule and purpose. We were the happy recipients of it. Today, Isaiah reminds me, not only that there are tides of the Spirit, but that I must seize the moment when the tide is in. I move because God is moving. Because God is moving, some doors that have been closed to me might just be open for a while. You might say that when the tide is in it’s a good time to take a swim!
Take Away: As people who live in the Spirit we move when the Lord moves.