Living in the Spirit

I don’t know about you but for me there’s nothing quite so invigorating as walking along the coast on a really windy day. Especially when fulmars are flying. These are gull-like seabirds that are masters of the storm.

“Stiff-winged, swinging on the unseen stream of gale-force wind,
The fulmars ride the storm,
Sliding effortlessly on fragile wings,
Confident of wind-lift
Over foam-flecked ocean rollers’ crash
Against unyielding rocks below.”

How do they do it? Well, it’s just that they are, as we say ‘in their element’. Riding the wind is what they are meant to do. That’s how God designed them.

And He designed us to live in the Holy Spirit. Of course, He lives in us, but He also wants us to live in Him. We’re filled with the Spirit, but also baptised (or immersed) in Him. Like fulmars, God wants us to ride the wind of the Spirit. He wants us ‘to go with the flow’; but not as so many do, just conforming to the world around, or taking the line of least resistance. No, He wants us to be sustained, supported and directed by the flow of the Spirit’s power.

Just as the fulmars are in their element, soaring and swooping with the wind, so when Christians are ‘in the Spirit’, they are in their element. And when they are in their element, their own weaknesses don’t matter anymore. The Hebrew for Holy Spirit is Ruach HaKodesh. Ruach also means wind. Ruach HaKodesh! Mighty Wind of God!

“Safety unseen
Bearing me up
As I yield my fragility
To the strength of Your eternal flow.”

Like any other day, today will bring its challenges. Perhaps there are situations, problems, relationships, that seem beyond you. The question I keep asking myself is this: “Is my life one of constantly reacting to the difficulties, or am I in the Spirit, my element, the place where God designed me to be? Where’s my focus today? Is it on my weakness and the issues that seem so big? Or on the sustaining current of the Spirit’s flow?”

Prayer: Father God, I praise and bless You for the Holy Spirit. Thank You for His strength and power over every circumstance that will confront me today. I submit my life afresh to Him. Please give me the grace to yield my weakness to His power and trust Him to be my resource in everything that will happen today and every day. Amen.