Jesus’ grace and wisdom are like a river. If we get in it we are carried along to the best possible destination, the ocean of His love (i.e. eternity with God in Heaven). If we swim with its current we will get there faster. If we swim against the current it will take longer to get there and we will have far more difficulty along the way.
Although we will ultimately get to the ocean if we go with the current, we will likely still encounter difficulties along the way. Consider the storms, snags, rapids, and waterfalls one encounters if he/she follows the course of a long river from its headwaters to the ocean. However, the longer we swim with the current the more adept we become at navigating those things, and the power of the current itself helps us through them.
In order to get to that destination, we must first come to the river, we must first set out to approach God, we must first go in His direction. Heading to the mountains or desert (sin) will affirmatively prevent us from reaching the eternal ocean of His love, regardless of how beautiful those alternate destinations may appear to be.
God, in His wonderful mercy, helps us with that; just as we are all drawn to water, we all need God and are innately drawn to Him. Hence, we are given a natural pull towards the river. Although we are free to go other directions, it is that God given pull that eventually gets most of us to the river’s edge.
We must get into the river once we reach its banks. This requires a “leap of faith,” requires us to surrender to God. Otherwise, we end up just walking along the banks, missing the help of the current and stumbling over rocks, roots, etc. Furthermore, we can never get to the destination (the eternal ocean of God’s love) unless we get into the water. Even if we were to struggle along the banks all the way to the ocean we still wouldn’t get all the way there unless we got in, in spite of the effort expended along the way. We’d just be standing at the shore looking at, but not fully experiencing, the ocean.
Along our journey down the river it is possible to get into an eddy and lose momentum, or even move back up stream. The way out of such eddies is to realize you are in one and rededicate yourself to the journey (repent and confess), seek after the current (pray for help), and make the effort to swim back into the current. It will take some time and effort, but you will get there and notice the difference as soon as you do.[1]
One final point. The river we have been considering is not the only water available to us, but it is the only one that will get us to where we need to be (the eternal ocean of God’s love). There are plenty of swimming pools, ponds, and lakes around; they will get us wet and floating, but they will not get us to the ocean. Instead we will be trapped within a far more limited, and inadequate, body of water until we get out of it and get into the river.
[1] This dynamic is explored more fully in A good confession is like restarting your computer, Confession also seems to be a lot like composting, and What We Can Learn About Sin from Back Aches.
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