Lessons From Ballroom Dance

This semester I’ve been taking a ballroom dance class with my brother and a couple of other friends. I’ve really enjoyed the entire class, but last night we learned the East Coast Swing which was, by far, the most fun dance we’ve learned. (I must admit that my favorite part of it was the fast swings, I was wearing a skirt that twirled just right when my brother swung me, and it was so much fun!) In the process of learning the basics of ballroom dance, I’ve learned some important concepts which can be applied to our walk with Christ:

1. In order to dance well with your partner, you have to know the steps.
- In order to effectively serve Christ, we must be spending time in His Word, getting to know the things He has said and learning the guidelines of the “dance.”

2. It is important carefully follow your partner's lead. This means being in-tune to the movements of his hands and body so that it takes only the slightest pressure for you to respond in the correct direction.
- We must be in daily communion with Christ, in-tune to His voice and His leading so that we will recognize the leads which He gives us.

3. You never quite know which step your partner might lead you into next. You know that the step will be one which is part of that dance and which goes with the music, but you don’t know exactly which one it will be.
- This is pretty much a combination of the ones above. We know that Christ will never lead us into a step that is not part of the dance that does not align with His Word. However, within His Word there is a lot of freedom for the individual believer. We can also rest confident in the fact that it is not our role to lead, simply to be in-tune to Him, trusting that He will lead us into the correct steps at the correct time.

4. Sometimes it is hard not to take the lead, but two people cannot lead at the same time.
- Either we control our lives or He does, both cannot be true. As Scripture says, “man cannot serve two masters.”

5. Properly following means leaning on your partner, you have to lean back into the support of his hand, trusting that he will not let you fall. Otherwise, he cannot lead you correctly.
- We have to be willing to lean on Jesus, even when it makes us feel insecure, like we’re going to fall. We have to be willing to surrender that control and security in order to follow Him more fully.

By no means to intend to imply with this post that I have these things mastered. In fact, writing it has been pretty convicting for me myself. I don’t rely on Him nearly as I ought to, and I often struggle with wanting to control my life and the direction that it’s going. However, my experience has been that just when you think you have it all figured out and know exactly where you’re going is when something happens that turns all your plans upside down. These are the times when we have to learn all over again the importance of relying on Him, day by day.

As I was writing this post, the chorus of a song kept playing through my head. So I looked it up and it turns out it was DC Talk’s “What if I Stumble.” I actually don’t recall ever having heard the entirety of this song before, but the lyrics do go right along with what I was talking about. If I post them here now, this post will be forever long, so I'm just going to post the chorus, but I would suggest you look up the rest of the lyrics. They definitely provide some food for thought:
What if I stumble?
What if I fall?
What if I lose my step, and I make fools of us all?
Will the love continue if my walk becomes a crawl?
What if I stumble, and what if I fall?