I will guide you with My eye
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will guide you with My eye.
Do not be like the horse or like the mule,
Which have no understanding,
Which must be harnessed with bit and bridle,
Else they will not come near you (Psalm 32:8-9).
For many years I worked in the management services department of British Gas North Western, whose headquarters were in Cheshire. We often undertook surveys in various parts of the business. One day, I was working near Chorley in Lancashire with a meter reader, going from house to house recording the readings. We had come to the end of a country lane with fields ahead of us. As we turned to go back along the other side of the road, we heard a voice shouting, “Stop the horse!” We turned around to see a stallion in full flight, heading towards us. The meter reader, who, to my knowledge, had no training in restraining out-of-control horses, said to me, “You get that side.” I immediately grasped that the likelihood of controlling a horse totally committed to freedom, and without a bridle, was thin. As the horse approached with increasing speed it, fortunately, decided not to come to my “side” but headed straight towards the meter reader. This was mainly because, I ensured there was a lamp post conveniently placed between me and the oncoming thoroughbred. I saw no sense in me and the horse coming to harm! The meter reader, for some reason which escapes me, thought that waving his hands in the air would stop the creature. It did not! And in a remarkably swift and wise attempt to avoid the horse, he tripped and sprained his ankle. The last I saw of the horse …it was well on its way to Chorley.
It struck me that day how difficult it can be to control animals and how even more difficult it is to control our own behaviour. Paul speaks of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (vv. 22-23). Interestingly, the last of these attributes is self-control, as though it was the most difficult to produce.
In Psalm 32 David helps us to understand how this aspect of the fruit of the Spirit is nurtured in our lives. The fruit of the Spirit displays Christlike features in us. To become Christlike, we need to be in His presence, drawing from Him the required strength to follow Christ in simple faith and obedience. The Psalm does not see such obedience as following a set of rules. This was tried under the Law and only proved our inability to do God’s will in our own strength. The learning of self-control and all the other attributes of the fruit of the Spirit come from looking into the face of God and hearing His word, “I will guide you with My eye.” In looking to God we find He looks in grace on us. The concept of communion and abiding in Christ is nearness. My wife June was a theatre nurse. Like all professions, there was a period of training. As she spent more time with surgeons and experienced many different and complex operations, she learned by simply being with and watching surgeons what instruments to pass without being asked.
The care of God our Father, abiding in Christ, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit through the word of God all combine to produce the fruit of the Spirit in us. We cannot change the flesh in us. We simply recognise, by faith, that it was crucified with Christ and no longer has a claim on us: “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:11). We have a new life, and God wants us to express it. Like gravity, the law of sin and death would always drag us down. But like the power of flight, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free to soar beyond the restrictions of the flesh and to enjoy and demonstrate the abundant life we have in Christ (Romans 8:2).
