The Winds of God

Did you ever have a song pop into your head, completely out of the blue?
This happened to me today. For some unknown reason, the song ‘Come Sail Away’ from the group Styx permeated my brain – especially these lyrics:

I’m sailing away, set an open course for the virgin sea.
‘Cause I’ve got to be free; free to face the life that’s ahead of me.
On board, I’m the captain so climb aboard,
We’ll search for tomorrow on every shore.
And I’ll try, oh Lord, I’ll try to carry on.

The oddities didn’t stop there.

But wait, there’s more…
When scanning some loose notes that I found in my file cabinet, I stumbled across this quote:

The winds of God are always blowing. We must raise our sails. ~Anonymous

(I honestly love when the Holy Spirit does this to me. There is always a message followed by some sort of directive that I need to be taking. Here is my attempt to decipher this coded message.)

Our journey needs to start here
According to the online dictionary, ‘raising our sails’ means to begin to move or when the journey starts. Raising the sail is one of the first steps in setting sail on a boat. If you think about a sailboat, you cannot really move unless you have wind. Basically, if you don’t have wind, you won’t have any movement. You’re basically just going to sit there and rock with the waves.

The meaning isn’t much different in the spiritual life. We need the wind of the Holy Spirit to move us. But the winds of God will not be able to move us if our sails are not raised. We need to be able to listen for the voice of the Lord which will always directs us to where we are being led to go. But if we don’t quiet ourselves and listen for that voice, we may rock aimlessly to-and-fro in the rough waters of our lives.

It’s time to raise our sails
We must, therefore, raise our sails so we can catch the winds of God (Holy Spirit). We are the captains of our own boat, so we must take control of the rudder of our faith and steer our way to follow the will of God.

The winds of God are always blowing. Are we ready to carry on?

The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. ~John 3:8

Are you open to the Holy Spirit? Find out.