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The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies
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WALKING WITH
GOD
Jo Fullerton at the Women’s Fellowship
All Bible references are to the Anglicised New International Version
(NIV-UK)
What does
the LORD require of
you? To act justly and
to love
mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
– Micah 6: 8
–
A DOG IS ONE of the few remaining reasons why some people can be
persuaded to go for a walk ― so said Canadian-American chemist and author, O.A.
Battista. Have you ever noticed that half the folks strolling through the woods
or along the canal have a dog or two in tow? So the towpath can still be
regarded as being appropriately named!
Some of you will be dog owners, but
I confess to a lifelong caution where dogs are concerned. We once had a yappy
Jack Russell called Jip, and I was rather afraid of him. Silly, isn’t it? I do
like cats, and they like me, but I’m resisting acquiring a cat until I am too
old to walk far, when I shall spend my days knitting in my favourite armchair
with my tabby on my knee. That is of course a distant
prospect!
I hear you asking, ‘Now what’s all
this nonsense?’ Well I do go walking and when greeting other hikers pass the
time of day, and am polite to their doggy companions who sometimes seem to weigh
me up speculatively. It’s reassuring when the dog is attached to a lead, but I
was surprised one day to see dog and owner at opposite ends of a flexible and
retractable lead over twenty feet long. Buster vanished into the undergrowth
doing his own thing, too impatient to stand still while we women chatted, and
the episode set me thinking whimsically, if not irreverently, that the Lord
might well have me also on a sort of extending
flexi-lead.
Let’s Take a Stroll
You may have heard Christian
evangelists challenging the flock, asking ‘Are you walking the walk as well as talking the talk?’ Doubtless they ask
themselves the same question, and they are only echoing the words of the Apostle
in 1 John 2: 6: ‘Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.’ Walking
is said to be the best exercise to keep the human body fit and active, and
walking the Christian walk must
logically be the finest way to cultivate good spiritual health. But how readily
we allow ourselves to be side-tracked! And how few of us can wear the jewel of
consistency in our daily walk and
conversation!
Ouch! Did you feel that tug? It’s
the Lord at the other end of the flexi-lead, reining you in before you’ve
strayed too far. It’s done lovingly and with a Father’s concern for His
children. You don’t like the idea of being constrained? The freedom of the
individual is much preached these days, even youngsters having in some respects
more liberty than they can cope with. You don’t even see many toddlers wearing
reins when out walking with parents, which means they could be in great danger.
As an infant freed one day from my reins I strayed too far from Mother and I
still remember my sudden dreadful panic when I looked about and she wasn’t
there. But she was watching from a distance and laughed at my alarm. It was a
salutary lesson for me, and ― alas! ― I find I am still prone to wander from the
straight and narrow.
The Narrow Way
The earliest believers were known
as brethren of the Way (Acts 9: 1, 2; 19: 23; 24: 22). It was a new way of life
they had adopted, a pathway leading ultimately to the Kingdom of Christ and the
fulfilment of the Divine promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was
a
difficult, narrow way, yet it was broader in its liberty than the bondage of Judaism which they had left.
Israel’s Messiah had come, and declared ‘I am the way and the truth and
the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14:
6).
Their description as ‘People of the
Way’ eventually died out, and Acts 11: 26 mentions that ‘the disciples were
called Christians first at Antioch’ ― an honourable designation that we are
still privileged to claim, as travellers on the same narrow way.
The keynote is perseverance. Having
graphically drawn attention to the faithful course of God’s Old Testament
witnesses, the Apostle encourages the faithful of a later dispensation, even to
our own day, saying (Hebrews 12: 1, 2):
Therefore,
since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off
everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run
with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the
author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the
cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of
God.
So it’s a race? Yes ― but a marathon rather than a
sprint. We’ve all seen the occasional sprinters, the folks who strike twelve all
at once ― join our fellowship in a great burst of enthusiasm, only to wind down
just as quickly and opt out of the race. On the other hand there are the plodders ― yes, I’m guilty! Our speed is
variable, our progress average or below, we are the ‘could do better’ among the
entrants in the race set before us. So how can we get up to speed? How can we
run with diligence the race set before us, and what weights are we trundling
along that impede our progress?
Prone to Wander
Brethren of the Way did not follow
the way of the world, and they would have found it challenging to witness to the
unwilling, noting the cautious avoidance by strangers, and sometimes even by
friends and family. I see that is your experience too, so we are in good
company. Yet there are times when our natural pleasure in the friendship of some
whose interests and habits we may not thoroughly approve, seems very desirable,
and we give in to the temptation to compromise. Of course, the worldly pursuits
of unbelievers are not necessarily evil, and the enjoyment of this life’s good
and honest blessings cannot be displeasing to the Creator. But the searching
words of the hymn writer come to mind:
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to
be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to
Thee:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I
love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it;
Seal it for Thy courts
above.
― Robert Robinson,
1735-1790
Does it seem that by default we are drawn aside from the
straight and narrow, tempted by all manner of pursuits, of worthwhile or of
dubious value, which craftily steal our waking hours? Do we absent ourselves all
too often from intimate contact with our Lord ― straining at the leash, so to
speak? Prone to wander, Lord ― I feel
it!
Viewing temptation as a clever
device of the Adversary to disturb our relationship with God ― to steal us away
from Jesus ― we realise how often it happens. It becomes a practical necessity
to ‘take stock’ of our situation, to examine our status with our Lord and ask,
‘Am I still on the narrow way that leads to life?’ How we spend our time, how we
spend our money, who we choose to be with, may be dictated to a great extent by
family obligations, which the Lord rightly regards as a mortgage on our time and
attention, but our habit of thought ―
like the needle to the pole ―
should unfailingly draw us back to Him we have chosen to follow.
The Unbroken Link
Sometimes our Master lets us run
ahead, doing our own thing, and we may even forget for a while the bond that
holds us securely in His grace ― not a
fetter ― but rather a loving, protective link between Father and child. He
doesn’t take away our free-will, but wisely lets us learn by our mistakes,
feeling the chastisement of a guilty conscience each time we stray too far from
the appointed path. Like Buster in the undergrowth, we can so easily get
entangled and find it difficult to retrace our steps back to our Master’s side.
But God does not expect us to be
perfect. History and experience show us that we are in good company with
unnumbered believers who faltered by the wayside, but recovered. Think of Peter, who once
denied the Lord, and Paul, who despaired of his own besetting sins. Like them,
we know that ‘if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive
us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1: 9). It is the
heart intention that matters, and as
the putting of one foot before the other achieves often surprising results, so
in our Christian walk we may reach vistas undreamed of in the days when we
loitered with the worldly. As the Apostle Paul reminds us (1 Corinthians 2:
9):
No eye has
seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those
who love him.
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