Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly.
I Corinthians 3:1-3
Once upon a time, a group of people went snowmobiling in the woods. As the group travels through the woods, one person is designated as the leader, and the others follow that path in single file. In this story, let's call the leader Larry.
At one time in the middle of the day, as Larry was leading the team through the woods, he came up to a tree and was not able to turn, and as a result, he was stuck in the snow in front of the tree. A few minutes later, another person in the group came to help him....let's call him Nick. For a few minutes, Nick and Larry both worked together to turn the snowmobile to the left enough to allow Larry to get past the tree.
Before Larry left, he told Nick to stay back to help the rest of the group get through the area, so they would not get stuck in front of the tree. So Nick stayed, and as each snowmobile came by, Nick would grab the left ski of each snowmobile, and pull them to the left to help them miss the tree and keep moving.
Well, near the end of the line was a very nice lady...let's call her Kristen. As Kristen was driving her snowmobile through the area, Nick leaned over and grabbed her left ski just as he had done for the others, and the sled missed the tree just as planned. Only this time, when Nick stood back up, he noticed that Kristen was no longer sitting on the snowmobile. After looking around for a minute, he found Kristen about 10 feet away laying in the snow. Nick looked at Kristen, puzzled, and said: "Kristen, what in the world are you doing laying in the snow? Your snowmobile is way over here?" Kristen just looked back at Nick, threw her hands up into the air, and said: "I wasn't ready for you to turn the snowmobile, and i went flying off to the right when you pulled the ski to the left."
As I was thinking about this story, I realized that, many times, we act like this as Christians, don't we? We are just living our lives and enjoying our stuff, and one day God comes along and suddenly makes a change in our lives. Because we don't take the time to get to know God daily, the change comes to us as a surprise, and we don't know how to react to it. We panic and worry, we lash out against others, and we become insecure.
God doesn't want us to live this way. God tells us not to worry about the future, or the things that happen in this world. He tells us to stay focused on Him, and he will guide us through our circumstances. How do we do that? We do that by studying God. Get to know Him. Get to know how He works and how He thinks. How do we do that? We do that by reading the Bible. We can study the history of how He handles situations to predict how He will handle similar situations in the future. I think many people would be surprised to see that God really isn't all that difficult to understand, and that His next moves can be predicted easier than we think.
So, today, don't be like Kristen. Let's take the time daily to get to know God and understand how He thinks. That way, when God comes along and pulls our ski to the left so that we miss the tree, we will be prepared for it, and we will not be thrown into the snow.
