Spiritual Transformation and Sailing

I am not a boat owner, I never have been. I have very little experience on the water, and I am not in any way whatsoever a sailor. I get motion sickness just spinning the kids, now grandkids, around in a circle. I start to feel sea-sick swimming in Deer Lake. I am not an expert in what I’m writing about. The idea has been stolen from one of my favorite Bible teachers, John Ortberg.

Spiritual Transformation is not an overnight event. It is instead a long trip. Transformation can be likened to a trip across the ocean in a boat. The trip is long, the obstacles are unknown, the days vary and sometimes there is ‘no land in sight.’

People approach the journey of transformation in different ways. Some of the ways seem to work and others are obvious failures. Here are some thoughts about three ways of approaching the journey of transformation.

The Row Boat
Some people try day after day to be good. They try hard to be spiritually mature and do what they are supposed to do. This could be likened to someone rowing a boat across the ocean. It is exhausting and usually ends in failure.

Adrift at Sea
Some people give up trying and throw up their hands in disgust. They decide that the only hope for experiencing transformation lies in ‘relying on the grace of God.’ This approach could be likened to someone being adrift in the boat letting the waves take them wherever the wave goes.

Neither rowing harder nor drifting is very effective in the journey of transformation.

Sailing
A better image is one of sailing. God’s Holy Spirit is the wind that can move us across the ocean to the land of transformation. None of us can control the wind. Each of us is at the mercy of the wind. We can, though, experience transformation as we lift the sail and adjust it to the blowing of the wind.

In John 3, Jesus speaks of the actions of the Holy Spirit using the simile of the wind. He talks about not knowing where the wind is coming from or where it is going. The Apostle Paul, when writing to the church in Ephesus about being ‘filled with the Holy Spirit,’ uses the language of a sail being filled with wind.

Transformation will not happen in the lives of Jesus’ followers just because they try harder or because they throw up their arms and expect God’s grace to get them there. Transformation happens because His followers lift their sail to the wind of the Holy Spirit and then cooperate with the wind of the Holy Spirit who will take them to the land of transformation.

We will be transformed and become who and what God wants us to be when we lift the sail and go with the wind of the Holy Spirit.