Our “Walk”

Part 1

Have you ever considered the word “walk” and what it truly means? The word walk on the surface is a simple word. It can be one of two parts of speech, a verb or a noun. The verb definition for the word walk is to “move at a regular pace by lifting and setting down each foot in turn, never having both feet off the ground at once” or to “guide, accompany, or escort someone on foot”. The noun definition is “an act of traveling or an excursion on foot” or “a route recommended or marked out for recreational walking.” This all sounds pretty cut and dry doesn’t it? But in God’s word, the word “walk” means so much more than just putting one foot in front of the other. It’s much more than a leisurely stroll down an easy path. In our daily lives, we can relate every definition of the word walk that I listed above, to our Christian “walk”. When we put one foot in front of the other and “move at a regular pace” through life, what are we walking towards? Where are we going? Who is walking with us? Also, are we trying “to guide, accompany, or escort” others as they “walk”? Those questions are related to the verb definitions of the word. We are to first “walk” on our own, and then we are to “guide” others along the way as they “walk”. Now, let’s relate the noun definitions of the word “walk” to our Christian walk. Which “walk” or “route” are we taking? Who has “marked out” our walk or “route” for us? And what should our “walk” look like? What types of things should be a part of our “walk” or “excursion” of life? 

So…..sisters in Christ, I ask you as well as myself, what are we walking towards? What will we have when we are finished walking? Are we walking towards earthly treasures or heavenly treasures? Are we walking towards an eternity with God? Jesus says in Matthew 6:19-21, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  All the earthly things that we enjoy are the treasures on earth that this verse is speaking of. It can be money, things, jobs, activities, hobbies, places, or even people. We have to have God above all of it. He knows where our treasure lies. Okay sisters…let’s try and form a picture in our minds of what our lives should look like. I am a visual learner, therefore I can picture myself walking through life from above. I know what my picture should look like. I should have all the worldly/material things that I enjoy moving around me in an outer circle as I walk through life. But those things should be only a part of my life. They don’t define my life and they don’t guide my life. Is this easy all the time? No, it can be very difficult to keep everything in its proper place. In the center, walking with me is where God, Jesus, His word, and His church should be. God should be slightly in front of me, because I should be letting Him guide me and dictate where I go and what I do through His word. I should be walking in His footsteps. This requires me to walk with trust in my Father in heaven. David wrote in Psalm 143:8, “Cause me to hear Your lovingkindness in the morning, for in You do I trust; Cause me to know the way in which I should walk, For I lift up my soul to You.”  David is pleading with God to show him the way that he should walk. David knew how dangerous it was to walk away from God and go his own way. Remember the Bathsheba and Uriah incident? Any one of us can get off track if we don’t stay cautious and focused. So….as I walk, the worldly/material things that are a part of my life follow me as I follow God. Those things don’t control me. God controls me through His word. Now, let me remind you, this is just a picture of what my life SHOULD be like all the time. This is the way I want to be. Is this how it really is for me all the time? No, it’s not. I fall daily. I walk in the wrong direction sometimes. I look down and God’s footsteps are not there, because I have left Him. But I can tell you that when I notice myself slipping away, I get myself back where I need to be immediately, which is walking in God’s footsteps. I have spent too much time away from Him and it was miserable. I may stumble and make mistakes, but I won’t be away from Him again. 

What types of things should be circling me as I walk? As I walk, I  must be careful that the things circling me as I walk are not sinful things. If that is the case, then I will automatically be away from God. I have already walked away if I have allowed sin to be a part of my life. I can’t walk with God and have sin in my life. Does this mean that I don’t ever sin? No, I will still sin and fall short, but I don’t stay in it. I don’t walk in it continually. There is a difference between sinning and being in sin. I recognize my mistakes and ask God to forgive me. I let Him speak to me through His word and help me to get back on the right path. Or…I may sin and not realize it, as we all do sometimes. Because I am in Christ, He cleanses me daily of those sins. I can’t, however, willfully continue to walk in sin. 1 John 1:6-7 explains this beautifully, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” We can’t have it both ways. We can’t walk with God and walk in sin. This is a lie from Satan. The world will tell us that we can, but the verses above clearly say that we can’t. Did you know that Satan can fool us into thinking we are following God, but in reality we are following him? Remember, Satan can transform himself into an angel of light. (2 Corinthians 11:14)  So let’s be mindful of Satan’s deceitfulness and be on guard with our armor on at all times as we walk. (Ephesians 10-18) Jesus says in John 8:12, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to walk in the dark, not knowing the truth. I want to walk with Jesus in truth. In 3 John 1:4, John says through the inspiration of God, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” Our Father is joyful when we are walking in truth. Isn’t that our desire? To bring joy to God? Acts 17:30 says that God once “winked at” or overlooked mankind’s ignorance of how to be saved, but now commands everyone to repent. But we can’t just take that one verse out of context and think that repentance is all that is required. We can’t ignore all the other commandments, such as baptism and remaining faithful until death. We know from many other scriptures that baptism is another requirement of salvation. Baptism is how we have our sins forgiven. (Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16, Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:16)  If we don’t know and obey the full truth of the gospel, then we are in darkness and Satan has us fooled. I want to walk with Jesus in the light. Don’t you? And I certainly wouldn’t want to begin walking in truth and then choose to walk back into the darkness of sin! 2 Peter 2:20-21 says, “For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them” This is scary, Sisters! 2 Peter 2:22 compares a Christian leaving his/her walk with God and walking back into the darkness of sin, to a dog returning to its vomit or a pig returning to roll in the mud after being washed. Sounds pretty gross, doesn’t it?  I can’t even imagine standing before God on judgment day knowing that I walked away from God and His church. Put yourself in that moment. You had salvation, you walked away from it, and now it is too late to make it right. I can’t stand the thought of that for myself, my loved ones, or anyone else. Stay strong and continue walking with God in the light, Sisters.

Can things in my life that are not sinful in and of themselves cause me to stumble in my walk with God? Yes! Even if something is not sinful, it can become sinful if I put it ahead of God. At this point, it has become an idol. Is it easy to keep everything in its proper place? No, it is difficult at times. Ephesians 5:15-16 says, “See then that you walk circumspectly,(cautiously) not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”  The Bible warns us in these verses to be careful as we walk. Satan wants to fool us into thinking that we are all “ok” when in reality we may be far from “ok”. So sisters….be cautious. Satan can subtly lead us into idolatry with worldly activities/things that are not inherently evil. I’m not going to try to name them all, because anything can become an idol. If you just name something, I guarantee you it has the potential to become an idol if we let it. It is perfectly fine for us to enjoy some of the things of this world that God created for us, as long as we keep them in their proper place, which is in that outer circle following us as we follow God. We can let something from our outer circle begin to lead us in place of God. And folks, this can happen gradually over time. You fill in the blank. We may put _______ ahead of church services one time. Then it happens again, and again, until it doesn’t bother us to miss services anymore. By this time, we just show up when it is convenient for us. When that happens, God is then outside my circle and is not leading me any more. And it is not because God left me. It is because I left God. And now, subtly and gradually, I am being led by Satan and the world. Don’t let this happen, Sisters. If something is regularly interfering with worship and Bible study, then it is not worth doing. Just a reminder, some things in life are out of our control and can’t be helped such as personal illness, family members illnesses, or our jobs. In those instances, our Father understands that we didn’t purposefully put something ahead of Him. He knows our hearts and knows where we truly want to be. This may be a stretch to visualize all this, but give it a try. Look at your life. Can you see yourself? Is God truly at the center of your life? Is God a half step in front of you guiding your steps as you walk? Are you in His Word enough for Him to really guide you? Do you consider God before making any decisions about where you walk? I ask you to really think about those questions. Take an honest look at your life. I am certainly taking a good, hard look at myself right now. Now, if we have this picture of ourselves walking through life in our mind, and we have been honest with ourselves, then we should know where we will spend eternity if Jesus were to return right now. Do we all agree that if we have God at the center of our life, leading us in our walk, that we are walking towards an eternity with God in heaven? I want this for all of us. 

So as I end this post, I want to look at the noun definition of walk, “an act of traveling or an excursion on foot” or “a route recommended or marked out for recreational walking.” I recall two “walks” or routes that Jesus spoke of, a narrow one and a wide one. In Matthew 7:13-14, He describes these two “walks”, “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Jesus ends His sermon on the mount by giving us a choice. We can choose life or death. We can either walk the easy path, ignore God’s word, and face destruction at the end of it. Or….we can walk the narrow, difficult path to an eternity with God. It’s our choice. And I just want to say to myself and to you, if we are “Christians”, and our walk is easy, we may not truly be on the narrow path. This scares me. Am I on the narrow road? I want the difficult path or “walk”. If I am standing up for Christ and His church the way that I should be, then I will have some difficulties along the way. I will have to resist the temptations that are over on the wide path. You see….that wide path of destruction runs parallel to the narrow path of salvation. I can easily step over into it and get on the wrong path at any time. I may have friends on the wide path who try to pull me over onto it. I may face persecution from people on the wide path, because I won’t come with them. I may even lose friends. If you read the entire sermon on the mount which is Matthew chapters 5 through 7, it all leads up to these verses. I find it interesting that right after He tells us about the two roads, He gives us a warning. Jesus says in Matthew 7:15-17, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.” You see….the false prophets/teachers that Jesus is warning us about will be on that wide road of destruction beside us as we walk the narrow road. These false teachers have so many people on the wrong path. Why? Because people listen to them rather than opening their Bibles and listening to God. We are commanded to study. (2 Timothy 2:15) We have to study like the Bereans and make sure what we are being told is the truth. (Acts 17:11) They had the apostle Paul and they were checking up on him!! But they were called “noble-minded” because of this. So as you walk, “beware”, as Jesus said. Check up on your preachers and bible class teachers. Check up on me! Make sure you are being taught the truth.

If we are on that narrow path, then Jesus is our foundation, our rock. We are walking on solid ground with Him. He ends his sermon on the mount with these words in Matthew 24-27, “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.” There is no solid foundation on the wide path of destruction. The ground can wash out from under us at any moment if we are on that path. I want to be walking on the solid foundation of Jesus Christ. I know you do too. One of the noun definitions of walk is “a route recommended or marked out for recreational walking.” But our route is not for recreational walking. We may have things we enjoy on our walk, but it is intended to be for a purpose, a purpose that requires hard work, not just recreation. A walk or route marked out for recreational walking was marked out by mankind. Our walk or route is marked out by God and it wasn’t meant to be easy. Let’s ask ourselves, is the route or walk we are on marked out by God? I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Love you all. Thank you for reading. 

Next week will be part 2 of “Our Walk” which will deal with our influence on others as we walk.

Are you in Christ? Below I have added God’s plan of salvation with scripture references. If you need help in understanding, please reach out.

God’s Plan of Salvation

If anyone ever needs help in learning the truth of the gospel, please reach out and I can help you or put you in contact with someone who can. Below is the plan that God has set forth in His word, for mankind to receive His grace that leads to salvation and an eternity with God in heaven. 

We have to hear His word. (Romans 10:17) 

Upon hearing the message of Jesus, we believe it. (Mark 16:16) 

Then, we confess Jesus’ name before men. (Matthew 10:32) 

Next, we repent of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19) 

Finally, we are baptized into Christ for the remission of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:16, Romans 6:3-4, Acts 22:16, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:26-27) After baptism, God adds us to His church. (Acts 2:47)

Then, we remain faithful in our commitment to Christ until death. (Revelation 2:10, 2 Peter 2:20-22)