Disclaimer: Any parallels I draw between my life and our spiritual walks with the Lord are faulty and incomplete. That said, here is my analogy.

For a long time, I have had a desire to learn Hebrew. My daughter, who lived in China told me that she was learning Chinese on Duolingo, so I downloaded the app to learn Hebrew. For whatever reason, Hebrew is a lot harder than when I learned Spanish in high school.

I wondered if walking in the Spirit can be compared to learning a new language. At first, with Hebrew, I could not even recognize the letters nor understand the sounds they made. Nothing made any sense. I have not reached this point with Hebrew, but with Spanish gradually it became more natural, less conscious. Finally, at some point I actually formed thoughts in this new language without concentrating on translating each word or phrase.

In order to learn a language, we must realize it is a slow, purposeful process. We make mistakes and must continually practice. If you don’t use what you have learned, you become rusty.

Let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil which is opposite of that the Spirit wants. (Galatian 5:16-17) Letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. Letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace…. but you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you.”   (Romans 8:6,9)

God has enabled us to walk by the Spirit by equipping us with His indwelling presence. Do we appropriate this power? I was considering this as I was sitting in a plane on the runway at the airport. The plane was cumbersome and bumpy as we left the gate and the proceeded to take off speed. Once we took off, gravity no longer held us back. We were soaring. It is my hope to walk fluently by the Spirit, not lumbering around like a plane on the runway but flying to the heights God desires.