Joshua 3:5 NLT

Then Joshua told the people, “Purify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do great wonders among you.”

Canadian Wayne Gretzky, widely regarded as the greatest-ever ice hockey player is renowned for this quote, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” Gretzky here describes for me the way of the Christian disciple.

John records Jesus saying, “The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). If we are to follow the Spirit and engage with God’s agenda as opposed to becoming cultural commentators or, worse still, culture bound, we need spiritual adaptability.

Anticipating where the puck will be is an act of risk and faith. It relies upon the skill and foresight of others to make use of the space I create in skating to where the puck is meant to be. As a Sunday league soccer player many years ago, I frequently made breaks up the wing from my defensive position. Most of the time I was ignored or just not seen. But on some occasions I received the ball, ran down the wing and crossed it into the six-yard box, where our tall centre forward converted many crosses into goals.

When we wonder why God appears not to be acting in the world in which we live, and remember nothing is impossible with God, it may well be that we have stopped skating to where the puck is going to be; we have stopped running down the wing. We fail to exercise faith or to take a risk on God. We fail to observe where the Spirit is stirring. Wayne Gretzky also once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

QUESTION: How do you discern where the Spirit is moving, what is genuine and what is counterfeit?

PRAYER: God of the miraculous, open my eyes to see where you are working, open my ears to hear your guiding voice, give me the gift of discernment to run in tandem with your ways and stir my faith to expect big things of you.