On the Wrong Track
by David Silvester
I woke up one morning with a picture of a railway engine prepared and ready to move to it`s destination, but the coaches it should have been pulling were on another track. They weren’t hitched to the engine.
I contemplated on the spiritual significance of this picture, and it seemed that the Lord was saying this can be a picture of some churches, or individual Christians. Like those coaches they can be separated from their engine. They aren’t being led by God’s Holy Spirit. And it’s also important for the church and its leader to be connected together and on the same track spiritually.
In John 16:13, Jesus said, ‘When He, the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak’.
When the Holy Spirit’s leading us He reveals what’s on the heart of God for us. He guides us in the way we should live, guides us in opportunities for witnessing about all He’s done for us through our Lord Jesus Christ, and enables us to serve Him in the kind of way that glorifies Jesus.
But sometimes messages of people’s personal experiences are presented which have nothing to do with the message of the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the reason the Father has sent Him to us and His sacrifice for us on Calvary.
When we fail to convey the real message of the Gospel, and fob people off with empty talk about ourselves, like the train, we’re going nowhere and achieving nothing. The apostle Paul speaks of people who can become ‘like sounding brass or a clanging cymbal’ (1 Corinthians 13:1).
When we’re truly connected to God by His Holy Spirit, He lives and works within us in ways we may be completely unaware of. We’re able to reach others and witness for Jesus. In Acts 1:8 Jesus told His disciples that they were to be ‘His witnesses’ wherever they went, and we are to be too.
Prayer: Father God, thank You for bringing me to Yourself through the saving work of Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Please forgive me for the times I’ve wasted opportunities to be a true witness and have projected myself. Please help me to be fully ‘connected’ and ‘on the right track’ I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Silvester is married and has a son, two daughters and eight grandchildren. He trained as a production engineer. He then moved on to become a lecturer of engineering craft skills before being called of God in his early fifties to become a pastor of a Baptist church. He says that,"having previously experienced an amazing healing on a day others expected me to die, it came as no surprise that God directed me and my wife, Margaret, to become involved with Ellel Ministries."
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