It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known. (Rom. 15:20)
WHEN I BOUGHT MY FIRST really nice bicycle, I wondered aloud to the sales clerk if I was buying “enough bike.” Would an even better model help me go faster? He said, “Larry, you have a really good bicycle here. It’s light, has a good gear set, great wheels. If you can’t go faster with this bike, it’s not the machine . . . it’s the motor.” Ouch. He was right, of course. The rider, not the cycle, makes it go faster.
On a bicycle, you use legs for power. If you’re a strong sprinter, you can probably get a burst of about two horsepower. Most of us, most of the time, run on about 0.5 horsepower. We pedal as fast as we can, but we don’t get very far.
Another kind of bike, a motorcycle, is a whole different story. Some models have a six-cylinder engine that produces 118 horsepower—almost 250 times as much power! So if you had to get yourself to California, which bike would you rather ride?
In spiritual terms, you and I are riding around on bicycles, wearing ourselves out, running on 0.5 horsepower. We don’t make progress spiritually as individuals, and probably not as much as we could in our congregations. It isn’t that we don’t love God or want to do better. It’s that we lack power.
The Holy Spirit is power, and we’ll only make progress if we depend on Him.
Ask the Holy Spirit to bring you to the places He wants you to go.
Lawrence W. Wilson is a pastor, author, and blogger from Fishers, Indiana. He is the author of A Different Kind of Crazy: Living the Way Jesus Lived (WPH).
