Are you following Jesus, or is Jesus following you

In the last chapter of John, just before His ascension, Jesus spoke these words to Peter: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, when thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldst not."

In our youth and immaturity (spiritually) the Lord permits many things in us that He later strips from us as we become more mature in the Spirit. One of these is the freedom of our own choice. When we were young, like Peter, we girded ourselves with our Armour and went forth to battle, walking wherever we desired, wherever we saw an opportunity to do a good work for God. There was a freedom granted to us, and God graciously blessed and anointed our efforts as we prayed and sought His help. If you pastored, He blessed and gave increase. If you decided to go on the evangelistic field, He blessed and anointed and gave us souls. If we decided to teach, He blessed and gave us revelation of His Word. And though we sought for His guidance and tried to be led of the Spirit, there was not that absolute binding to the perfect will of God and the voice of the Spirit. This was in our strength, our youth and immaturity.

But with growth and maturity there came a discipline of the Spirit, a bringing us into submission to His perfect will. Sometimes because of the strength of our own wills, or the stubbornness and hardness of our own spirits, there had to come affliction and tribulation to weaken our own flesh in order to make us submit to His purposes in us. Paul prayed three times for deliverance from a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, but God would not deliver him, but in effect told Paul that He was doing this to keep him weak. For the Lord said: "My strength is made perfect in weakness."

Peter found that as he grew old in the Lord there was to be no more of the walking "where thou wouldst." But there was to be a binding of his own strength, and his girding would come from another, and he would be carried to destinations determined by someone else. This is a mark of maturity. For there is a work of the Spirit now going on to bring us to a place of absolute imprisonment to the direct guidance and will of the Spirit. What a glorious confinement! Just to know that I am bound up in His divine purposes, regardless of what He chooses to do with me and to me! It is a difficult and torturous path at times, until we recognize who our Jailer really is. We fret and worry when we think that we are bound by our circumstances, or by our associates, or by the devil. But those who are called into the High Calling of God need to come to the realization as to who controls their destiny, so that they can come into a Rest, and submit to His workings and dealings in their lives. For like Paul and Peter and those other heroes of faith. . . we are Prisoners of Jesus Christ the Lord