It's Our Turn to Walk

Jesus wants us to walk with God.

I started thinking about this idea of walking and realized over 240 times the Bible either illustrates or commands God’s people to walk.

God walked among us in the Garden of Eden. Enoch in Genesis 5 is said to have walked with God for 300 years. Noah in Genesis 6 walked with God. God commands the Israelites to walk the land of milk and honey. Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph all walked with God. When God parted the Red Sea the Israelites walked out of Egypt.

Time and time again we see an illustration of how God’s people never stop walking. They press forward. They move ahead. They further the story. They further the journey.

Micah 6:8 says that which we must do beyond all other things is “walk humbly.” Leviticus 26:12 has God saying, “I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.”

Even God is in on this action of walking. God walks. We walk. Together we are growing and learning and studying and praying and following and walking and choosing and helping and walking in order to find ourselves – becoming.

Deuteronomy 8 says to impress upon our children: “walk in the ways that revere God.” Samuel chose Saul as king because Samuel’s boys refused to walk in the ways of God. Elijah walked up Mt. Carmel to defeat the worshipers of Baal. David says in Psalm 1, “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked . . . but rather the righteous.” Again in Psalm 15 David proclaims, “He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous . . . speaks truth in his heart.” Psalm 23 says we all walk through the valley of the shadow of death but we can fear no evil for surely goodness and mercy will be with us.

And as we walk we feel the presence of God. We connect with God. We utilize the strength that God gives us as we journey. We listen to God’s directions, God’s footprints, and we follow. We find where God is working and we go there. And when we do, we find that the righteous are there. The humble are there. The hands and feet of Christ are there. Walking is now our calling.

Psalm 86 says if we learn the ways of our Lord we will walk in truth. And that as we walk the word of God will be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Proverbs reminds us to walk in the ways of justice for that will bring righteousness.

The gospels say Jesus walked the Sea of Galilee. The lame man that Jesus heals in Mark 2 gets up off his mat and walks home. The blind man in Mark 9 gets up and walks home to his parents. The centurion’s daughter whom Jesus raised from dead got up and walked out of the room.

When we walk with Jesus, we see miracles. We see lives changing. We see relationships mending, lives restoring, and bodies resurrecting.

A good, fulfilling Christian life is a life that takes you somewhere. It moves you. It opens you up to a world that otherwise is completely unknown. Its when you find yourself on a journey.

God needs our lives to walk alongside God’s. God needs our lives to progress and grow. God needs us to join in and start journeying. We are the hands and feet, we are the mouthpieces of God. We have the Spirit. It’s our turn to help bring redemption to all we meet. It's our turn to walk.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Most Difficult Parable Ever

Image
Theologian N.T. Wright finds the parable of the fig tree to be quite strange.  He says, “Jesus' warning in Luke 13 is at once amplified by this almost humorous, yet in fact quite sinister, parable of the fig tree in the vineyard.” And it is sinister.  It’s a hard pill to take.  Jesus' parable goes like this: A man has as fig tree planted in his vineyard.  One day he comes out looking for fruit on it, but there are no figs.  He says to the vineyard keeper, “Look at this tree.  For three years, I've come hoping to find some fresh figs, but what do I find? Nothing.  So just go ahead and cut it down.  Why waste the space with a fruitless tree?” The vineyard keeper replies, “Give it another chance, sir.  Give me one more years working with it.  I’ll cultivate the soil and heap on some manure to fertilize it.  If it surprises us and bears fruit next year, that will be great, but if not, then we’ll cut it down.”...
Read more

The Bird of Dawning Singeth All Night Long

Image
This Christmas I was moved by the words of Frederick Buechner.  For my last blog of the year I offer to you his wisdom rather than my own ramblings.  I hope it does for you what it continues to do for me. Frederick Buechner says in his book The Faces of Jesus: On the dark bulwark of Elsinore, Shakespeare has Marcellus and Haratio reflecting on Christ in the opening scene of Hamlet: Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad, The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, No fairly takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallowed and so gracious is the time These lines from the first scene of Hamlet in a sense say it all.  We tend to think time is just progression . . . as moment following moment, day following day, in relentless flow, the kind of time a clock or calendar measures.  But we ...
Read more

Sacrificing Joy

Image
I have been told my biggest weakness is I take myself too seriously. I agree. But here is my dilemma: My life is filled with responsibilities and deadlines. I go to school, pastor a church, assist my seminary in their admissions process, and feel obligated to be a good friend. My school takes up twelve hours a week plus roughly twenty hours of study. I work at least 10 hours on my sermon and spend two days a week with my congregation. Fifteen hours of my week is given to the McAfee Admissions Office and every Saturday I play softball with some friends. With this schedule I am up to 57 hours of responsibility time plus two days are given to my congregants. Why do I do this you ask? Because I can. Because God is blessing me in it. Because it gives me a sense of fulfillment. All of these shape an identity for me. And I love every second of it. We are all busy people. We all know what it is like to work the extra hour or sign up for one my volunteer role. We all over...
Read more