I am thinking of the ordered life, what that looks and feels like. I am inclined to interpret that as meaning set patterns or certain routines that I follow every day. It was the Lord who said there would an entire reordering of my life. Then He hit the reset button.

If there be anything predictable about God it’s that He can be unpredictable. He shows up when you least expect Him. He says things you would never in a million years anticipate.

I am thinking the ordered life is not a routine one. On the contrary, I am thinking it is exactly the opposite. The ordered life may well be a disordered one. Meaning, instead of predetermined activities and day-to-day patterns of living, you live life unpredictably.  By this I mean you follow the Holy Spirit’s leading.

Jesus said, “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” The wind–or, breath–is of course the Holy Spirit.  If you live life in the Spirit you may not necessarily know where things are coming from nor where things may be headed. But you can be confident that you are always on course when you are following the Spirit.

Gone then are the pressures to be doing thus and such. Absent is the guilt you feel for not doing certain things you think you should be doing.  You are relieved of all the ‘should-a’, ‘would-a’, and ‘could-a’s’ you think must govern your life.  You’re only concern, really your only responsibility, is to follow the Holy Spirit.

This is what we hear the apostle Paul saying in Galatians 5.  From Kenneth Wuest’s translation we read, “Through the instrumentality of the Spirit habitually order your manner of life.”  And, “In view of the fact that we are being sustained in spiritual life by the Spirit, by means of the Spirit let us go on ordering our conduct.”  Or, as our standard renderings would say, “Walk by the Spirit.”

In practical terms this means abandoning the idea that an ordered life equates to doing certain things at certain times, consistently.  It means stepping out of the box of predictability and into the realm of the Spirit.

It’s not that we’re not faithful in the fulfillment of our responsibilities.  I mean, we all must get up and go to work, attend to personal needs, and so forth.  What life looks like here is keeping in step with God. “As many as are led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God.”  It means hearing His voice and patterning your day-to-day accordingly. If we plan, and we must and do plan, it is in and by the Spirit we make our plans.

The Scripture says, “To him who orders his way aright, I shall show the salvation of God.”  That is, if we set our course as that of the Spirit’s, we shall see great and glorious things.