When You Find Yourself Moving

"...those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God." - Romans 8:14 (NIV)

Have you noticed how people seem to know rain is coming before the first drop falls? Windows get pulled shut. Laundry comes off the line. The chairs and tools in the yard get gathered in. Nobody has to tell them what to do. They just start moving, all reading the same sky, busy with familiar tasks. No one decided to begin. They were moving before anyone stopped to consider it.

You were watching for God, and then one day you realized you had begun responding to Him too. The response seemed to arrive before you had time to explain it, the way a hand brings in the laundry before the rain. Years later, these words were written to believers in Rome. He is not far away. He told that same group that God's Spirit "...lives in you" (Romans 8:9), and that "...those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God" (Romans 8:14). Being led felt different from being told what to do. It was closer to finding your hands moving before you had stopped to think it through. Only later did you realize where that impulse had come from.

His leading is easy to miss, because you keep waiting for something louder. But the change He makes in us is often present before you pause to look for it. He often works below notice, without requiring us to understand each step before we take it. That is the kind meant by the line, "...walk by the Spirit" (Galatians 5:16). To walk is ordinary, and there's nothing heroic in it. Much of His guidance comes this way, showing itself only after it has started. He was at work in you long before you knew how to describe it.

Over time, you start noticing this new movement does not stop, even on your ordinary days. The life God stirred in you holds steady, one step joined to the next. And none of this began with you. Whatever good has grown in you, He was the one growing it, the way it is written, "...yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me" (1 Corinthians 15:10). That is the very thing those words describe, "Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25). One step rarely feels important while you are taking it. Yet days become years, and small acts of following become a life shaped by His direction. It can feel as if you joined something God had already started before you noticed.

You may not feel the leading as it happens, and you don't need to. Look instead at what is taking shape in your life before you decide where it came from. That was not yours alone. Where you are unsure, ask Him to lead, and trust the One Jesus promised would "...guide you into all the truth" (John 16:13). You are His child, and His children are led. He was moving in you before you knew it. Stay in Him. Move with Him.

Prayer

Father, thank You for moving in us before we know to, and for leading us as Your children. Teach us to follow the life You placed in us, and to trust where You lead today. Amen.