Direction Over Distance: How My Perspective On Spiritual Formation Changed
A turning point in my understanding of how God normally works in our lives, the way God makes us into the men we are called to be, came in the form of one simple idea: When it comes to our spiritual lives, direction matters more than distance. The most important factor in our spiritual progress is not how fast we are going but that we are moving in the right direction. The world is filled with men running fast—in the wrong direction. It looks like progress, but it’s not. It’s just heading toward the wrong destination faster.
This idea of direction over distance was embedded into my heart through the writings of David Powlison. This illustration of his is helpful:
Do you remember any high school math? ‘A man drives the 300 miles from Boston to Philadelphia. He goes 60 mph for 2 hours and 40 mph for 3 hours, then sits in traffic for 1 hour not moving. If traffic lightens up and he can drive the rest of the way at 30 mph, how many hours will the whole trip take?’ If you know the formula ‘distance equals rate times time,’ you can figure it out (8 hours!). Is sanctification like that, a calculation of how far and how fast for how long?
Not really. The key question in sanctification is whether you’re even heading in the direction of Philadelphia. If you’re heading west toward Seattle, you can drive 75 mph for as long as you want, but you’ll never, ever get to Philadelphia. And if you’re simply sitting outside Boston and have no idea which direction you’re supposed to go, you’ll never get anywhere. But if you’re heading in the right direction, you can go 10 mph or 60 mph. You can get stuck in traffic and sit awhile. You can get out and walk. You can crawl on your hands and knees. You can even get temporarily turned around and head the wrong way for a while. But you get straightened out again. At some point you’ll get where you need to go.
As much as I wish life was filled with dramatic moments and seasons in which we feel like we are driving full speed ahead toward Jesus, the reality is, most of life feels like we are crawling on our hands and knees. But as Powlison reminds us, crawling on our hands and knees toward Jesus is better than sprinting toward anything else.
If we don’t believe that deeply in our souls, we will miss most of the work God is trying to do in our lives. We will sacrifice direction for distance and just end up getting to the wrong place faster.
Following God’s Word
Elijah stood before King Ahab and declared that it would not rain until he said so. That’s how his ministry started—one big, dramatic moment. Then, in order for the Lord to prepare him, the Lord led him to a secluded place and made him hide in obscurity for three years. The Lord knew what was ahead and was graciously preparing Elijah for it. To Elijah, however, it must have seemed like wasted time. But no moment is wasted in the providence of God.
One of the secrets to Elijah being the man for the day was his willingness to just keep moving. He just kept doing the next right thing. He heard from the Lord and did what the Lord told him to do. One step at a time. Elijah trusted that the direction of his life mattered more than distance. If he didn’t, he would have never been the man God called him to be. This is how God prepared him, and this is how God prepares us. We see this over and over in 1 Kings 17.
Immediately after Elijah took the step of obedience to speak to King Ahab it says, “And the word of the Lord came to him: Depart from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there…” Nothing about this made sense. This was not a command of distance. This was a command of direction.
What would Elijah do? “So he went and did according to the Word of the Lord. He went and lived by the brook Cherith that is east of the Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. And after a while, the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.”
He obeyed. He took the next step. He moved in the right direction. And instead of that leading to a life of immediate overflowing abundance, it led to a dried-up creek. What would he do next?
“Then the word of the Lord came to him, Arise go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” And then it says, “So he arose and went to Zarephath.”
Elijah took the next step in the right direction. And this was Elijah’s life for three years. For three years, Elijah took one step of obedience at a time. If Elijah would have been consumed with distance, he would not have been able to simply move in the direction of obedience. And if he had not learned to simply move in that direction, he would have never been prepared for what God had for him in the future.
After three years of obscure preparation, God led Elijah into something that finally felt like distance. “After many days the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year, saying, ‘Go, show yourself to Ahab and I will send rain upon the earth. So, Elijah went to show himself to Ahab.’
In those years of preparation, we see a pattern emerge. A pattern that would determine both the direction and distance of Elijah’s life. The pattern is: The Lord spoke, and Elijah obeyed. That is one of the most important secrets to Elijah’s life. Elijah learned to walk in the direction of obedience even when that direction did not seem to lead to distance.
Obedience to the Lord, in the smallest things of life, is always the right direction, and always the pathway toward greater distance. Every step Elijah took in the right direction, God met him there, God used him, and God prepared him for what was next. All of that would have been missed if he had not simply kept moving in the right direction. This was the pattern of Elijah’s life. And it must be the pattern of ours as well.
This excerpt is from The Man for the Day: Answering the Call to Godly Manhood by author J. Josh Smith published by B&H Publishing.