Recalibrating Your Compass

I will lift my eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help. Psalm 121:1

There may be times and we’ve all been there – when we find that we are walking along and the Lord seems to have left us. Slowly but surely, we have allowed distraction to distance us from Him. He never truly leaves us, but He will patiently wait for us to reconnect when we drift off. I was in that type of season. For months I struggled to maintain my seek to go deeper in the Lord. I was coming into a place where I needed to go deeper and higher in the things of God and it seemed it was all I could do to maintain the spiritual discipline I had come accustomed to. There was more and I would have to press for it. I was not doing well. I would come to find out that there was a reason that this season would require more of me. I would have to sacrifice more time, more sleep and dedicate myself more intently to prayer and fasting but my flesh was weak. I was battle weary and just feeling like sitting on the bench. Giving up was not an option but tapping out for this round certainly was. My flesh was fighting for rulership and it was winning. Time after time I could not muster up the strength to break through. Yet I kept moving forward and would find myself on autopilot and then suddenly in a ditch.

So I did what I knew to do. I pressed in one early morning and I sat before the Lord just waiting to hear from Him. I heard “recalibrate your compass”. So I began to search out what it meant to recalibrate a compass. I knew it had something to do with navigation and I was familiar with the term but I would come to find a deeper meaning and its application to my spiritual walk. A compass is used to help one determine their location in relation to their desired destination. Every now and then, it needs to be recalibrated so that it can accurately reflect the true position and point the traveler in the right direction. Our spirit man acts as a compass but it needs to be calibrated to Holy Spirit – the Spirit of Truth and at times it needs to be recalibrated. In the natural, the way to recalibrate a compass is to use a map to determine your approximate location based on bearings of two landmarks visible from where you are located. Think of being lost in the woods where all there is are trees all around but if you look up a mountain would be visible to you even amidst all of the trees. If you can locate that mountain on the map, you are on your way to recalibrating your compass and getting back on your way to your destination. There are more mechanics involved but the spiritual parallel should be coming into view for you now. Our walk with the Lord can be much like having to recalibrate our compass. He is our Rock and we can look to Him for our help. No matter how lost or far we may drift away, we need only locate Him by looking up and setting our gaze back upon Him and we will find our way back on the path to our destination. We have all heard the term, “catch your bearings” – it refers to determining the direction you are facing. True North is the fixed point and if our compass is calibrated properly then it should reflect where we are currently relative to True North. Our fixed point is Jesus. The author and finisher of our faith, the Word made flesh. He will always lead us back to our Heavenly Father, Our Lord and Creator.

Scripture Study: Psalm 121:1, Jeremiah 29:13, Luke 2:43, Psalm 61:2-4