Learning to Roller skate

The other day I was helping my daughter learn to roller skate. About an hour before this I had been praying and asking God about a few area of life where I was not seeing much progress. I was working at them but not seeing much results. 

Then through teaching my daughter to roller skate I received the answer I was looking for. 

When she first started on the skates every attempt to move forward would actually make her go backwards. She would try to skate but panic because she didn't want to fall, and when her wheels would contact the ground they were spinning backwards. She was putting out a lot of effort but the skates were going the wrong way. 

She kept working at it and figured out how to make the skates go forward but she would do so by keeping her skates on the ground the whole time. She would sort of shuffle them. This would move her forward but at a very slow pace, and it was a lot of effort. When she was in this stage she kept asking if she was getting it, and my response was that she was getting better, but still didn't have it yet. She kept saying " what am I missing, what do I need to do differently."

What she needed to learn how to do was glide. She needed to have it so that when her skates contacted the ground the momentum was moving forward and the wheels were doing the work.

Learning to walk by faith is kind of like learning to roller skate. At first it looks scary and we fear falling down. But then we learn to start moving forward, but it is out of our own effort. Eventually we learn to rest, and let God's power glide us forward. Much of it comes back to which way the wheels are spinning at the point of contact. Demands in life are constantly coming our way, and we must learn to make contact with them by staying at rest so that God's power glides us through them.