That's A Stretch

My friend Beth is great at giving word pictures that depict wonderful spiritual truth. The other day we were talking about forgiveness and she said it was a little like stretching - it loosens us up and frees us to move on. I like that.

In fact, I think we are often stretched in our spiritual lives. We can get stuck in so many areas of our life - the difference between knowing what we need to do and learning to do it.

There was a wonderful lady in one of our first congregations who, when she was in her mid-seventies, crawled under the wooden pews and scraped gum from underneath the seats. Even in my early thirties I couldn't do that - to say she stayed flexible is putting it mildly!

Stretch, grow, flex - have you ever thought of these as spiritual disciplines? We are often resistant to change - the very thing God wants for us ('be not conformed to this world, but be transformed' Rom. 12:2). Just like the transformation of our physical body when we are disciplined in our diet and exercise, so this is true of our spiritual lives as well.

My husband reminded me of this recently with one of his sermon illustrations. He talked about a time when he and I took a canoe out on Lake Huron and jumped out and swam in about twenty feet of water, then got back in and canoed back to shore - all without tipping the canoe over (yes - that was a few years ago - I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be physically possible for us now!) We've failed to maintain the balance and flexibility we had in our younger years and it will take a great amount of discipline to get that back.

I used to be able to jump on a horse and ride bareback. Now I think it would be a stretch to get my foot to the stirrup! Again - it would take the discipline of working and stretching my physical body to be able to accomplish that same task.

We are all growing older (if you aren't here yet - just wait!) but my point is that in order to maintain the flexibility of being able to be free to move on to other things in our life, or to continue to change and to grow spiritually, we need to continually be putting spiritual disciplines into practice.

And the good news is - it's never too late! Physically or spiritually. We can start today - and every little step toward that goal is an improvement. Feeling stuck in a rut spiritually? You can begin stretching those spiritual muscles - prayer, reading the Word, meditating and listening to God - and you will find that in your spiritual life you will begin to look like a new person - a transformed person.

The key, as my good friend Beth likes to say, is making sure that God's Word is getting in you. You have to read it, study it, meditate on it - then obey it.

That's when you're stretched and you find that maybe those things you thought were impossible - with God, they're not!

All for Him,

Missy