Christian Living

Live by Leadings

by Terry Barlow
04/21/20
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The Christian life is not one of trying harder and harder to keep a set of rules,  it is one of surrendering more and more to the gentle promptings of a Benevolent Guide Who dwells within us.  It is not a life of trying harder and harder to resist the dictates of our fleshly desires but of faithfully following the lead or the leadings of that indwelling Guide.  Notice that we either live by dictates or promptings.  Our fleshly nature  which is our reason and our 5 senses apart from God is a dictator that issues dictates.  A dictator drives his subjects by means of his dictates.  It is not accidental that the sexual urge is called a sex "drive. "  A benevolent guide, on the other hand, leads his subjects by means of promptings. "For as many as are led by the Spirit  these are the sons of God. "  Romans 8 v14  The tense there is actually a continuous one,  those who are regularly BEING led. 
   This is well illustrated by the type of irrigation employed in the Promised Land  by the children of ancient Israel thousands of years ago and continuing in some similar form today making use of gravity and water flow,  and the kind used by its neighbors which required continual pumping action. There is a flow to being led and prompted to thrive,  but a striving necessarily involved in repeatedly pumping up what you need to survive.