September 28, 2007

Walking Around Blind?

I'm driving down Western Ave. in Fairfield the other day towards my destination for a healthy breakfast. Hillman's Bakery always sets me up well for the challenges of the day ahead. There's nothing like a chocolate covered cake donut to put you in the right frame of mind--with sprinkles of course.

As I'm leaving I'm driving back down Western Ave. and the traffic, at 7:30 in the morning is substantial. So as I approach the area of Kennebec Community College, I spot a man walking on the side of the road and he's hanging onto a dog; a seeing-eye dog.

As I am intrigued by the guts it takes to walk in the "dark" so to speak, relying only on a dog for your utter and complete safety. I spy the dog take him around a little detour in the walkway and then stop at a cross street. I shoot up a prayer thanking the Lord for the gift of eye sight which we so take for granted.

But watching this man walk with his dog caused me to think about faith. This man was exercising true faith, a practical faith in his service dog. He was utterly dependant on this four legged creature for his safety and the confidence with which he walked showed he didn't lack trust.

So as I'm thinking through this, I realize that if the man didn't trust his dog, if he didn't have faith in his dog's ability to do what the dog had been trained to do, this man's life would be radically different. He would be utterly dependant on someone else to transport him to and fro and his freedom to come and go as he wishes would be essentially eradicated.

So two elements are needed for this man to be "alive." The first is to have a capable helper and the second is to trust the helper to do what he is trained to do.

How utterly like our walk of faith this is. We have a Helper whom the Father sent when Jesus departed for heaven, who is quite capable. "And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever." (John 14:16)

But we still need to trust Him. If we don't--by faith--grab the harness of our Helper our freedom is essentially eradicated leaving us spiritually housebound at the mercies of someone else's convenience. I wonder how many Christians are bound to a spiritual darkness as pertains to the vibrancy of life in the Spirit and all because they won't take hold and allow the Helper to do what He has been sent to do. Too bad; there's a world out there that needs your presence.

1 Comments:

Blogger Matt said...

Why are we walking around blind? Because so many of us have been scared from the one extreme of hyper-pentecostalism and all its excesses and heresies to the other extreme of basically denying the work of the spirit in our lives for anything beyond initial regeneration. Why are there such polar opposites within the supposed body of Christ? Satan knows that there is real power and victory and life if only we truly understood who the Spirit is, what it is that He does in our daily life and that we should be seeking and asking for His empowerment continually. There is a dearth of balanced, biblical, authoritative teaching/preaching that is backed up by real-life experience. Many of those non-pentecostals who are gifted in pastoring/shepherding also seem to have the temperament and discipline to walk the walk without (seemingly) relying on the Spirit for much of anything. It's almost as if we're so embarrassed by the possibility of being associated with the craziness of the counterfeit that we have neglected pursuing a true understanding of and submission to the Spirit.

9:34 PM  

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