The notion of wind is often used to portray the Holy Spirit.
A sailing boat uses wind to move to its destination. When there is no wind, it cannot go anywhere.
Likewise, when we trust in God and let him control our lives through the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will help us to move to our destiny in our lives and in God. The Holy Spirit is the power moving in us to motivate us to live as God would want us to live, to live for God and to continually aim towards the will of God.
In a boat, we use the wind as our source of power, but we steer in a direction, using the rudder. We can choose which way to steer, navigating ourselves through the water. We can choose to steer with the wind or against the wind. We can choose to go with full sails or without any sails.
Sails can be similar to how we move in God. We have the Bible, Christian literature, worship, prayer and fellowship. We can choose whether we read God’s word, whether we pray or worship God. We can choose the length of time spent doing these activities, and this will form the power of our advancement in God and in the destiny planned for us. If we choose against spending time with God, i.e if we lower our sails fully, we would still move, but much more slowly because the Spirit will always be with us.Then we would have to work harder to get to our destination as a rower would use oars rather than sails.
When there is wind on the ocean there are also waves. The stronger the wind, the greater the waves. Waves can be seen as being problems in our lives. We have ups and downs. We cope with the small waves as we become used to the little problems and do not worry about them much. We get used to making decisions to solve the little problems. We get used to seeing or hearing and accepting the “small” sins, which like the sea, go down deep. However, where there are small waves there is not much wind. Our problems are small. We can cope. We don’t need to rely much on God. We don’t need to have real prayer sessions about them, we don’t need to read the pages of God’s word looking for answers to these insignificant problems. There is less activity taking place and less relationship with the Holy Spirit within us. - Jesus has fallen asleep!
God then has to send a storm to wake us up. A storm comprises of high waves and strong wind. We have to solve a huge problem. We put the sails up. We awaken our Spirit. We start praying, we start reading. We move! As our relationship with God becomes stronger, we become more exhilarated. The Spirit is strong. Now we go faster and experience the Spirit as he wants us to know him.
BUT with the wind there are high waves and other winds. The enemy does not like us in revival time, when we are living in God’s purpose, living full in the Spirit. The enemy sends us breakers , problems designed to trip us up, cause us to travel in turmoil and to make us flounder on rocks away from our true course. We look at the waves towering above us and around us, like Peter (Matthew 14 V 28-32). When waves tower over us, crash around us, flow over the bow of the boat, we begin to loose our perspective, to loose sight of our destination. We cannot see the other side and we think of the deep. Other winds are in the storm like fear, anger, jealousy, revenge. We pray more, read our Bibles more, but nothing seems to happen. We go around in circles. We then don’t pray, don’t read. We lower the sails, trying to keep the boat still in the raging, ever changing maelstrom around us.
In desperation we cry “JESUS, WAKE UP”. Jesus will then take control of the problems, the raging storm. The waves stop. The winds stops, as Jesus commands them to stop. Jesus will always have final control.
Jesus asks us “where is your faith?”, for through the storm we were moving well in God’s destiny, because the Spirit was strong and was carrying us through the waves. We should not give up. We need to have faith while we are strong in the Spirit. They go together. Without faith, it is like a lost rudder and then there is no way to guide the boat. Jesus allows us to experience problems to test our faith and to keep us strong in God. We can learn to use these problems to move to our ultimate destination in God.
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