Have you ever felt like you were dancing with God?
Have you ever felt like God was leading you in a particular way or in a specific direction, but you did what you wanted to instead? It happens sometimes more than we want to admit, doesn’t it? Why is it, even when we feel like we know what God wants us to do, we still do what we want to? It’s like dancing with God but not following His lead.
I was recently talking to a friend and coaching client of mine and she had a wonderful metaphor for what it means to do God’s will instead of your own.
Dancing with her dad
She explained she loves to dance with her dad. He’s a great dancer, and we’re talking classical, ballroom dancing. And one of the things he does really well is lead. By the slightest gesture, a simple change of pressure of his hand on her shoulder or waist, or a nod of his head, or by the look in his eyes she knows exactly what he’s going to do next. For her to be a good dancer is to know what the clues mean and then be a good follower.
She loves to dance just looking into her dad’s eyes, not having to think about what’s going to happen next, but just responding to the directions he’s giving her. She holds him lightly, or rather lets him hold on to her, in whatever way is appropriate for a particular dance, and she trusts he will lead her well in the dance. And often can’t see where’s she’s going because she’s dancing backwards a lot of the time. But she feels totally comfortable trusting him to lead her.
Those subtle gestures which he has mastered have become a language between them, which they both understand. And they each know their part to play to dance beautifully together.
Dancing with someone who doesn’t know how to lead
Have you ever danced with someone who didn’t know how to lead, or how to follow, depending on which role you were in? It can sometimes be amusing, but more often it’s just awkward, perhaps embarrassing, but at times it can even cause emotions to flare.
The first time my wife and I tried to ballroom dance, I was a little rusty with my ballroom skills, and because she had been tall for her age in school, she had usually been the one to lead when there weren’t enough guys to dance. So we were both trying to lead. It was confusing for both of us. She didn’t know how not to lead, because that’s the role she had always been in. I didn’t know how not to lead either.
Well, over the years we got that figured out and now, when we have the opportunity to dance, it’s a lot of fun.
A metaphor for dancing with God
In talking to my friend about how she loved dancing with her dad, she realized that dancing, with the leading and the following, can be a metaphor for being receptive to and doing God’s will.
And that’s where the title of this episode comes from: Why are you trying to lead when God asks you to dance?
Take a minute, and just imagine, not in some weird anthropomorphic way, but just as a metaphor, that God has asked you to dance with Him. It’s actually not such an unusual idea. Life itself can be one giant dance and God invites us to participate.
In fact, there are several references to dancing in the Bible in the context of praising and worshiping God.
Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with timbrel and harp. Psalm 149:3 NIV
When the Ark of the Lord was returned to Israel, King David was overcome with joy and praise to God
David danced before the LORD with all his might; 2 Samuel 6:14 KJV
Dancing with God is a new idea for me
I’ve often thought of God as the divine choreographer, coordinating all the events and people in our lives, or how we can dance with joy, gratitude, and praise to God, but I love this new metaphor of God being our dance partner.
Do you go through the Dance of Life, always following God’s lead in all the subtle little ways He guides you? Or do you try to maneuver God to the part of the metaphorical dance floor you want to be on? Do you miss His gentle leadings because you’re preoccupied with your own agenda? Or do you know what He’s guiding you to do but ignore His lead?
And what would happen on a dance floor when the musicians are playing a waltz, the person leading dances accordingly, but the dance partner attempts to dance the Foxtrot? Things would get chaotic pretty quick.
On the dance floor of life
But isn’t that what we do sometimes on the dance floor of life. We don’t pay attention to the music God has picked for the band to play. All the while, God is giving us gentle but clear leadings as to what we should do, how we should live, how we should treat others. We don’t even notice at times or we misunderstand how He is leading us, always wanting us to be in the right place at the right time by being in step with Him.
Of course, there are lots of times when we do hear God’s voice, we recognize how God is guiding us in a particular way, and we follow accordingly. It’s no surprise the Dance of Life goes more smoothly when we do this.
In thinking about this dance metaphor with God leading us and each of us learning to follow His leads, I see some of the stories in the Bible in a whole new light.
Dancing with God in the Bible
Did you ever think of the Children of Israel escaping from Egypt and going to the Promised Land as a dance? I never had, until now.
Think about it. He was guiding them each step of the way. And in this case the cues were not at all subtle.
Here’s the way it’s described in Exodus:
And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night. He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night from before the people. Exodus 13:21, 22 NKJV
God’s guidance, God’s lead, was always there.
For 40 plus years, they were dancing with God. God led and the children of Israel followed, sometimes better than others.
Unfortunately, they didn’t pick up on all the dance cues. For example, even though God had provided food and water in the wilderness day after day, they hadn’t really learned to trust God to provide for them in every situation.
Not dancing with God
When the 12 representatives of each of the 12 tribes of Israel went to scout out the land of Canaan, ten of them came back doubting God’s ability to help them conquer the land and lead them to victory.
You can read this whole story in Numbers, Chapter 13.
Instead of learning a new dance in the Promised Land, they had go back and relearn the dance of the wilderness until they could completely trust and follow God’s leads.
Who else do you think of in the Bible who learned to trust God and follow His every lead?
Gideon was dancing with God
I’m thinking about Gideon. Once he was convinced God had chosen him to deliver the Israelites from the oppressive Midianites, Gideon did everything God directed him to do. In a way, it was like a dance and Gideon was following God’s lead.
There were lots of metaphorical dance steps along the way.
That same night the LORD said to him, “Take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. Then build a proper kind of altar to the LORD your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering.”
So Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the LORD told him. Judges 6:25-27 NIV
Then came the next dance move
The LORD said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’ Now announce to the army, ‘Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.’” So twenty-two thousand men left, while ten thousand remained.
But the LORD said to Gideon, “There are still too many men. Take them down to the water, and I will thin them out for you there.”
Three hundred of them drank from cupped hands, lapping like dogs. All the rest got down on their knees to drink.
The LORD said to Gideon, “With the three hundred men that lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands. Let all the others go home.” Judges 7:2-4, 6, 7 NIV
And that’s exactly what Gideon did.
Gideon kept following God’s lead
Next, God told Gideon to go into the enemy camp to see what he could learn, which he did. He heard the Midianites expressing their fear that Gideon would defeat them. This gave him courage and he attacked the enemy camp, which had too many soldiers to count, and Gideon only had the 300 men he had chosen earlier. And they defeated the enemy.
The point here is that each step of the way, Gideon did what God told him to do. He followed God’s lead.
Another story comes to mind that I had never thought of as a dance, but it’s interesting to look at from that perspective .
Baalam’s dance with God
Remember when Balak asked Baalam to curse the children of Israel. If you want to read the whole story, you’ll find it in Numbers, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, and Chapter 24.
This is a multi-faceted and complex dance with Balak trying to convince Baalam to go against how God was leading him.
Balak tried every way he could to get Baalam to curse the Israelites but Baalam replied, in effect, each time:
But Balaam answered them, “Even if Balak gave me all the silver and gold in his palace, I could not do anything great or small to go beyond the command of the LORD my God.” Numbers 22:18 NIV
Baalam was faithful to God’s direction. I’ve always been impressed by Baalam’s strong commitment to do only what God told him to.
Jesus was always dancing with God
It reminds me of several things Jesus says. And I quote these verses a lot on The Bible Speaks to You Podcast. But here again, think of these verses in light of following the lead of someone you’re dancing with.
Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. I can do nothing on my own. I judge as God tells me. Therefore, my judgment is just, because I carry out the will of the one who sent me, not my own will. John 5:19, 30 NIV
Just for fun, let’s paraphrase that in dance terms:
Imagine Jesus saying: I tell you, I cannot dance by myself. I only dance the way the Father leads me. However the Father leads me is what I dance. I can’t decide what dance moves to take. I dance as God leads me. Therefore, my dancing is good and beautiful, because I dance the way the One who sent me leads me. I don’t have my own agenda on the dance floor.
And then there’s this passage
For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say. John 12:49, 50 NIV
Let’s paraphrase this in dance imagery: I don’t dance the way I want to, but the Father who sent me leads me every step of the way He wants me to take. I know that when I obey my Father, it leads to eternal life, so I always dance just the way He leads me.
Jesus is the best example
Jesus is really the ultimate example of doing God’s will, following God’s lead, dancing the way God directed him in every detail of life.
Sometimes we do a pretty good job of hearing God’s voice and picking up on the cues on how God is guiding us. But sometimes we miss the cues altogether or we ignore them because we have our own ideas about what we want to do.
So here’s my question for you.
What causes us to want to do our will instead of God’s will? We can make all kinds of excuses but it really goes back to the way the serpent tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. He deceived her to think she wanted to disobey God and be her own little god, so to speak, deciding for herself what is good and evil.
Why do we want to lead when we’re dancing with God?
The minute you or I start thinking we get to decide what is good or bad, and that we can be the arbiter of our own lives without God guiding our every thought, desire, and action, we have fallen for the same lie the serpent told Eve.
The serpent’s unspoken lie to Eve, and to us, is that we don’t need God to tell us what to do. We can decide for ourselves.
And somehow, we keep falling for that lie, over and over. Even though we know how it worked out for Adam and Eve. And we see what happens in our own lives when we take matters into our own hands and don’t follow God’s direction.
To make up your own mind without God’s help or involvement may seem very attractive to the human ego. But when you’ve made a commitment to follow God’s lead, as Gideon, Baalam, and above all else, Jesus did, it is no longer attractive to disobey God.
Following God’s lead
When you follow God’s leadings in the dance of life, you quickly realize you don’t have a better idea of how to dance than how God is leading.
And this brings us back to Jesus. Not just in Gethsemane, but throughout his entire ministry, Jesus never demanded from God what he wanted. He never prayed to carry out his own agenda. He never maneuvered events to be at a certain place on the dance floor. He always went where God told him to. He always said what God told him to. He always did what God told him to. He always followed the Father’s lead.
Can you and I say that? Can you and I honestly say we have no agenda when we pray, except for God’s will to be done?
When God asks you to “dance” with Him, which He does every day, do you
- Accept and follow His lead every time?
- Accept and follow His lead some of the time?
- Accept and try to lead Him?
- Decline the invitation altogether?
I know I’ve emphasized this dance metaphor a lot in this episode but it has really helped me see in a new way, how to set my own will aside and follow God’s will.
When you’re dancing with God, you can trust Him to lead
Let’s come back to my friend’s metaphor about dancing with her dad. She loved to look in his eyes because she saw his love for her and for the dance. And she usually couldn’t see where she was going because most of the time she was faced in the opposite direction. But because she trusted her dad to guide her, she didn’t have to think about what was coming next, because she understood the cues and could simply follow.
Now if you’ve been the dance partner who follows, you may be one step ahead of the dance partner who is used to leading. If you normally are the one who leads on the ballroom dance floor, it may be harder at first to embrace the idea of letting God always do the leading. But you know from experience how graceful a dance is when your partner follows your lead. Take this to heart and realize you are God’s dance partner. When you follow His every lead, the dance, your life, will be full of grace and beauty.
In this Dance we call Life, accept the invitation to be God’s dance partner. Let Him lead you to the dance floor, and embrace you. Look into His eyes and see His love for you. Follow His lead. Pay attention to and learn the language of the many ways He directs you and shows you what steps to take. You don’t have to have everything figured out all the time. You can trust God to lead you every time He asks you to dance.
Photo credit: Javier Allegue Barros
_____________
James Early, the Jesus Mindset Coach, is a Bible teacher, speaker, and podcaster. He conducts Bible workshops online and in person. His focus is on getting back to the original Christianity of Jesus by embracing the mindset of Christ in daily life. Contact him here.
Make a donation to support the show
_____________
Bible References
Psalm 149:3 NIV
3 Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with timbrel and harp.
2 Samuel 6:14 KJV
14 David danced before the LORD with all his might;
Exodus 13:21, 22 NKJV
21 And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night.
22 He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night from before the people.
Judges 6:25-27 NIV
25 That same night the LORD said to him, “Take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.
26 Then build a proper kind of altar to the LORD your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering.”
27 So Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the LORD told him.
Judges 7:2-4, 6, 7 NIV
2 The LORD said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’
3 Now announce to the army, ‘Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.’ ” So twenty-two thousand men left, while ten thousand remained.
4 But the LORD said to Gideon, “There are still too many men. Take them down to the water, and I will thin them out for you there.
6 Three hundred of them drank from cupped hands, lapping like dogs. All the rest got down on their knees to drink.”
7 The LORD said to Gideon, “With the three hundred men that lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands. Let all the others go home.”
Numbers 22:18 NIV
18 But Balaam answered them, “Even if Balak gave me all the silver and gold in his palace, I could not do anything great or small to go beyond the command of the LORD my God.”
John 5:19, 30 NIV
19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
30 I can do nothing on my own. I judge as God tells me. Therefore, my judgment is just, because I carry out the will of the one who sent me, not my own will.
John 12:49, 50 NIV
49 For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken.
50 I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.
