A sailor can dead reckon the ship’s predicted position as far ahead as he or she wants, but they are aware that a dead reckon becomes more and more inaccurate the farther ahead you predict—because of set and drift. Set and drift are the direction and speed of ocean currents which act in unpredictable ways to affect the course and speed of the ship.

It is because of set and drift that if I want to take my ship from Miami to the Mediterranean, I can’t just point my ship in the direction of the Straits of Gibraltar. If I did this, I would eventually end up somewhere between Greenland and Scandinavia—because of the powerful Gulf Stream current which pushes against my ship at between 2-7 knots to the NE. No, in order to reach the Mediterranean, I must set a course that takes into account the effects of set and drift. And along the way, I must get GPS fixes, and make constant course changes along the way.

This is why navigators today don’t rely solely on dead reckoning. They check their dead reckoned position against other, more accurate methods to tell them exactly where they are—like GPS. Plotting a ship’s position by GPS enables a navigator to compare his dead reckoned position (where he thought he’d be) to his actual position (where he actually is). The difference between the GPS position and his or her dead reckoned position is set and drift. With this knowledge, the captain then orders small course or speed changes in order to bring the ship to a course that will compensate for the effects of set and drift.

I find it too easy to live my life by dead reckoning. I often start off at the right place, and plot a course with the best of intentions, but find that along the course of discipleship I’ve come off my intended track slightly and require correction to the left or right.

I think this is perhaps the way that God intends for us to live. Were we to not require interaction with Jesus along the way, we wouldn’t be apprentices—we’d just be servants, starting out the day with what we’re told to do and carrying out orders until we drop. No, as apprentices of Jesus we are people who spend time with him in order to live to live more like him. And we are comforted to know that he is with us, now, (Matt 28:20) and desires us to teach us along the way how to live our lives as he would live them if he were us.

Do you see?

Our ever-present Teacher graciously provides us with ‘GPS fixes’ along the way to help us navigate. A few that may be particularly helpful along the way are the counsel of trustworthy and wise disciples around us, worship, humility, and prayer. When we seek the counsel of fellow disciples we trust, they can often help us to see a matter more clearly, and encourage us in certain directions. The Lord can speak to us clearly through the counsel of wise friends.

Through worship, adoration and thanksgiving for God’s goodness and relentless love, we are led to be open to the Spirit’s laying bare of areas of our lives where we have turned off track to the right or to the left.

Humility…oh, humility. To even begin to speak of the significance of humility before the creator of the universe is to understate it before a fully formed word leaves your lips. There is a profound, and all-of-life-permeating importance to being a person characterized by simple humility. Humility because everything we have comes from God, and not because we’re particularly clever or good person. Humility because in spite of what we look like on the ‘inside of the cup’, it was while we were sinners that Christ suffered agonizingly and died a horrific and humiliating death for us (Rom 5:8). Humility because Jesus is ‘with us always’ as our Teacher, and if we are willing to make the space, he is ready to teach us, real-time. Lack of humility removes the power source to any GPS fix we might receive—it’s like having cotton wool in your ears, and wondering why you can’t hear God speaking to you.

Prayer, and an understanding of the importance of quieting ourselves internally when we pray is also a grace the Lord gives us a navigational tool along the way. It is a key tool in which we place ourselves before the Lord and allow him to change us by his grace.

By using periodic GPS fixes to tell him the precise location of his ship, a navigator will compare this actual position to his predicted position, and make adjustments to his course and speed to ensure he arrives where he plans to. So we, as teachable and intentional followers of Christ can gratefully take hold of the navigational tools the Lord provides us along the way, and humbly and seriously consider our actual position in light of where we thought we were. It is thus that we leave the outcomes of our lives gratefully in the hands of our Creator, and focus on the journey with joy and peace.

Recommended resource: The Ragamuffin Gospel, by Brennan Manning. An essential ‘GPS fix’ for the Christian who finds that somewhere along the way, they have strayed off course and are more familiar with their Bible, their spiritual discipline, or their theology than they are with their Teacher and Friend. I find that Brennan ‘gets’ grace—he communicates our inability to earn God’s love or curry his favor in a way that blows like a fresh breeze through the smoke of my attempts to please God.

“If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.”

-1 Cor 13:2-3 (TM)

An idea that has damaged our modern understanding of the practical outworkings of a life devoted to being a student of Jesus is the notion that as Christians, we undertake things like prayer, fasting, study, and service just because we should. It’s the right thing to do—and we should just get on with it.

Are you motivated yet? I sure am.

Like most ideas that are ‘caught’ rather than ‘taught’, this one started off as something good and pure—a recognition that there are activities we call ‘spiritual disciplines’ which were engaged in by Jesus and his disciples; deliberate actions we undertake in order to ‘put on the new person’ (Eph 4:22). Where this teaching goes off track, of course, is when it becomes religion. Religion being a set of parameters inside of which we act…because that’s just what we should do.

This leads to a subtle trap: an unspoken belief (something we ‘catch’ by observing others) that we should do things like study and acts of service because they’re on our task list of Things Christians Do. This is a misdirection that must be deliberately checked by focusing on the ‘why’ rather than the ‘what’. It’s subtle, though—if asked why we were engaging in a discipline like, say, the memorization of scripture, we would likely have a ready (and correct) answer for why study is an important part of renewing our minds (Rom 12:2). But deep down, we might have slipped into getting up early in the morning because it’s on our task list. Not because we particularly care about transforming our minds.

Before we know it, we’re part of yet another weekly ‘church’ meeting for accountability because we think what we really need is someone to check up on us to make sure we’re doing the things we said we were going to do.

And the cycle continues.

The intentional acts we perform to place ourselves before the Lord so that we might be changed by his grace will shift ever so subtly from being a means to being an end unless we temper them with a focus on the ‘why’, and the outcome we desire to see in our lives as a result of our actions.

How can we prevent this from occurring? How are we to live inside the acknowledgement that these spiritual disciplines form a vital part of our entering into life with Jesus and living ‘freely and lightly’ (Matt 11:30), while never allowing them to become rules and regulations we feel obliged to follow? How are we to resist the urge to turn what we do into why we do it?

A useful self-evaluation we might apply to the impact of a spiritual discipline on our life is something I recently heard called the ‘1 Corinthians 13 Test’^[i].

“If I speak in the tongues of mean and of angels…if I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” (1 Cor 13:1-3)

Has my practice of a particular spiritual exercise resulted in my loving in greater amounts? Has it resulted in a life of greater compassion, mercy, and love for those around me?

Or is it leading to a subtle and buried pride that manifests itself in intolerance for others who are at a different point in their life? Am I able to rattle off 5 scriptures on the importance of watching my tongue, but find myself so angry with other drivers in traffic that I curse them under my breath? Am I fasting with regularity one day a week, but filled with criticism and judgment of the shortcomings of my friends or family?

What is the fruit of what you do?

This does not mean that the disciplines should be avoided simply because they have the potential to spiral us into legalism and loveless religion. No, this makes even less sense than pursuing a disciplined life and having no real relationship with Jesus and compassion for others. Thankfully, in our God-created universe, there are habits and practices by which we can engage our bodies, minds, and spirits in order to place ourselves before the Lord and be changed by his grace.^[ii]

When we perform acts such as giving to the poor, fasting, study, and prayer, they will inevitably become acts of loveless legalism and religion unless we do them because we are pursuing the One we have completely and utterly lost our hearts to. It is in this pursuit that we are changed, and become people who are like Christ on the inside. Love leads to love.

This is why Jesus berates the Pharisees for ‘cleaning the outside of the cup’ and neglecting the inside (Matt 23:25)—because it is not enough to just ‘do the right thing’. Our actions are important—and let us consider soberly that we will be judged in heaven by what we do on earth—but our Father calls us first to love Him. He calls us to embark on a life of romance and intimacy with him, and to let our actions flow from the wellspring of a heart saturated with love, gratitude, and joy.