I have sung the song for years, “Where he leads I’ll follow….” Easy to sing, difficult to do. Where is God leading you? What does God want from you today? What will we do today that affirms that we are faithful followers?
I remember an illustration I have used since my early preaching years. Paul writes to the Romans that they should yield their bodies as instruments of righteousness and not as instruments of unrighteousness (Romans 6). As a teen, the little word “yield” caught my attention. A traffic sign that says “yield” means nothing if there is no opposing traffic. When God and I are traveling in the same direction, life is a joy and delight. I want what God wants; he wants what I want. Yielding is meaningless. This is surely what Paul meant when he spoke of the “mind of Christ” in Phil. 2:5.
But when my desires and God’s desires conflict, then I have to yield. I have to put his desire above mine. I remember a Bible professor who advised that we do for God each day something that we know would please God but that we would rather not do. My we never forget that we are living “yielded” lives. We are disciples–learning from and following the Master. “Where he leads I’ll follow….” “Sweetly Lord have we heard Thee calling….” The first line of the song says it well. The call of God is sweet and precious when we do not find his control chafing and when yielding is not bitter.