We have a bit of a romantic notion about being led by the Holy Spirit. We sing “where He leads me I will follow” but in our minds, we often picture the Spirit leading us to where we want to be, to where we expect God to take us. We fail to remember that you only need to be led if you don’t know the way or you don’t want to go. “Lead me” is a powerful but dangerous prayer, it is a prayer of dependence and surrender, of trust and reliance, it is a prayer, but it is also a promise, the request for leadership must also be a promise to relinquish control. We cannot control our lives and follow the Holy Spirit’s leadership at the same time. In today’s text we find the disciples in difficulty while Jesus was in prayer, He was not with them but they were where He had sent them. They followed His leadership and found themselves in the midst of a storm, they were not where they wanted to be, but even more, Jesus was not where they believed they needed Him to be. Today my hope is that we will discover that the Holy Spirit drives us to some difficult places. If we are following Jesus we will face some seasons and situations in our lives that we have not expected and do not enjoy, but even when we cannot see Him, His eyes are on us and when we feel it is impossible to get to Him He will show us that He is always with us. I pray that we will learn to trust the Holy Spirit’s leadership in and not just out of the difficult seasons of our lives and that we will be willing to see Jesus in places we didn’t expect to be found by Him.