6. Walking With Jesus
Six
Walking with Jesus
What a relief—after we have turned our lives over to our Savior Jesus, we do not need to be in charge of them any longer. The One whose invitation we have responded to loves us with absolute affection and wisdom, and He shoulders full responsibility for our welfare thereafter. It is entirely possible for us to wander off the path, and yet as we return to Him and go on through our days and years with Him, we learn just how trustworthy He is. Walking alongside such a Savior proves to be a life of happy surprises, one full of intriguing twists on our otherwise comparatively improvised version of life. Our love and our obedience walk hand in hand. “If anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did” (1 John 2:5–6, NIV).
Walking with Jesus does not imply “obedience or else.” We are under new auspices, for which we are everlastingly grateful. It is altogether possible to practice a form of obedience to a tyrant or to a neutral authority such as the traffic police out of respect or fear of consequences, and yet it is only possible for us to practice wholehearted obedience to someone if we enjoy an intimate relationship with him or her. What a joy it is to obey this Lord, who provides us with His Spirit to counsel and empower us and who ensures that everything that happens to us, even the cyclone that brings nothing but destruction, has come through the hedge of His love before it reaches us.
Apparently, from the Lord’s point of view, our trusting obedience is one of the most important things in the universe. Jesus tells us, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21, NIV). Maintaining our effort to learn to obey His will becomes all-important.
People object, saying, “I simply do not know what to do! The Bible is confusing. I wish it covered every detail.” Yes, but He did that on purpose. Not knowing His will in every circumstance heightens our awareness of our need for Him and enhances our ongoing relationship with Him. The Bible is not a rule book. We do find lots of rules in it, but they are not clustered together in one place and they do not cover every exigency. Jesus did not give us a one-size-fits-all formula. To a literalist, He will always prove to be the most elusive of teachers. In fact, there is very little of the letter of the law in what He tells us. A rule-bound system simply cannot keep up with His darting illumination. Had He meant for us to follow a prescription for every behavior, no relationship would have been necessary beyond the relationship with the pages of a book. The Law, says the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, is incapable of bringing anybody to maturity. Rules, codes, and policies are deadening. They cannot stimulate growth. No organizational policy, no set of tacit assumptions from your culture or religious group, will lead you to the full freedom of mature character that your sonship will do—characterized by independent, freely-given obedience.
Yes, it’s difficult to reconcile what seem to be some glaring contradictions. Should you hate “even the garment spotted by the flesh,” as Jude advises, and “avoid such people” as Timothy tells us, or should you “bear all things” in love as Paul counseled the Corinthians? Those seeming inconsistencies simply provide us with more opportunities to get down on our knees and ask Him, “Lord, how am I supposed to apply this right now? Lord, show me what to do.” The Lord loves to hear prayers like that. He will hear you and He will help you. Do you think the Shepherd is going to make it hard for the sheep to follow Him? The Shepherd is much more interested in making sure that the sheep get to where they belong than the sheep are in getting there—much more interested. I wish I had understood that when I was in high school and college, when I was so worried about missing the will of God.
The same God who urges us to obey also furnishes the desire as well as the strength to do so. Our part is to exercise our wills. This is far from quietism or pietism, in which a person is completely passive and expects God to do everything. Walking with Jesus means that His grace is at work in my human nature, making me willing to be taught, willing to be shown, and willing to do whatever He tells me:
If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. . . . The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
John 14:23–24, 26–27, NIV
Although God has deliberately left us in a quandary about many things, think of the crop of dwarfs He would have reared if He had made it all black and white. He did not leave us with a rule book; He left us with His own living Spirit. He wants us to reach maturity. He is not interested in conformity to a static code but to a Person, the living expression of Himself, the “likeness of His Son.”
Paul stated it even more comprehensively, “to know Him.” To know Christ is to be made like Him. Paul’s fellow worker, Epaphras, shared his vision: “He prays constantly and earnestly for you, that you may become mature Christians, and may fulfill God’s will for you” (Col. 4:12, Phillips).
The Simplicity of Obedience
When you walk with Jesus, you plant your feet on the same three steps at the beginning of every enterprise:
1. You present your body as a “living sacrifice.” Say to the Lord, “I need Your guidance and help. I’ll do anything You tell me.” You make that commitment before you know what He is going to tell you.
Remember the link between presenting yourself as a living sacrifice (Rom. 12:1, KJV) and obedience. Even if all you are bringing Him is your perplexity or your broken heart, He will receive it. “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou will not despise” (Ps. 51:17, RSV). The giving of yourself to him demonstrates your trust, your thanksgiving, and your “spiritual worship.” It makes a statement about who God is.
2. You pray and read your Bible. You cannot obtain His guidance and help if you don’t arrange time to be with God alone. Remember that you are not reading a rule book. Even the Ten Commandments, written on stone tablets, were not the last word. They needed to be interpreted and applied to specific situations. “Thou shalt not kill”—except in certain conditions, such as when God commands you to wipe out an enemy. The voice of God’s Spirit gives specific instructions for your “instant” or specific situation.
3. You do what you know. Do the thing you are sure that God wants you to do today. It wastes energy to direct your attention past the simple duties of today and start worrying about tomorrow. Do you have a huge decision that you are worried about? Leave it in God’s hands and go about your ordinary duties, trusting that as you are faithful in doing the work He has given you today, your decision will be perfectly clear when the time comes. Leave the littlest matters in His hands as well.
Over and over in the small matters of daily life, I have been nudged to trust Him. Carelessly, I may have lost a favorite pen. When I discover that it’s missing, I want to stop all my work, turn everything upside down, and empty every wastebasket in the house to search for an item that, strictly speaking, I don’t need right now because I have my computer running and I am not writing anything by hand. The Lord reminds me, “Forget about the lost pen. Finish the job you are doing right now.” Amazingly, when I finish my task at the computer, the Lord brings to my mind the one place I wouldn’t have looked on my own, and the lost pen is found.
Obedience School
As we learn to proceed trustingly through the petty matters of our daily lives, obedience in the big things becomes instinctive and the cultivation of an obedient attentiveness to the Master becomes a way of life. In due time, we can be counted among the “mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (Heb. 5:14, NIV). God calls us sons. A son is far different from a servant. A servant has very little liberty to exercise his own preferences. He is employed for a specific task and he is told exactly how and when to perform it. A son is not trained for a job, but for a life.
Obedience to God comes to us more instinctively if we have been blessed with parents and loving caretakers who could set us on that path early in life. My parents were honest and orderly and they expected their six children to grow to be the same way. They believed that a child should be asked to do something one time only. Failure to respond was the equivalent of disobedience. My mother used a hairbrush to spank us sometimes, but most of the time she used a flexible switch. Because she started disciplining us when we were very young, she hardly ever had to use the switch on most of us; her firm words were enough. However, we have stories about my brother Dave, who was the most mischievous child in the family. One time, Mother put him in his room to sit in a chair for a certain length of time, and when the time was up, she returned to check on him. The door was still closed and she had not heard anybody leave the room, but Dave was nowhere to be found. Lo and behold, he was sitting on the appointed chair, but he had moved the chair to the porch roof, which was under the window of his room. Another time, she told Dave, “If you don’t straighten up, I have my stick handy, and I’m going to use it.” Dave’s response: “I’ve got my legs handy, and I’m going to use them!”
Over the years, because of my speaking engagements, my husband and I have been invited to a good many church suppers. It has been an eye-opening experience, to say the least, as we have been subjected to the spectacle of “kids first”—rushing the buffet table like gangbusters, cleaning up the desserts and potato chips, rollicking wildly around the church basement making a din while the grown-ups shrug and say, “Kids will be kids, you know.” We do know of a large church in New Jersey with a lot of families of remarkably well-behaved children. They do not provide children’s church and the children sit with their parents throughout the service, which includes a one-hour sermon. No climbing over the backs of the pews or running down the aisles to the bathroom or scribbling on the bulletin. It is a testimony to early discipline. The result? Peace for everyone, including the children.
Benefits of Obedience
Peace is only one of the benefits of walking obediently with Jesus. In broader terms, the best reward of obedience is the privilege of living in company with God. Obedient love establishes and maintains an unshakable unity. We mere mortals are able to know Him.
Obedience also makes us able to walk without fear. When Paul was sailing as a prisoner to Italy and was about to be wrecked in the Mediterranean Sea, everyone on board was terror-stricken. The soldiers and captain were sure they were doomed and some tried to escape overboard. But Paul, in obedience to God’s message through an angel, encouraged them to eat some bread and stay with the ship. All were saved.
Obedience can assuage grief. My Great-Aunt Alice served as a hostess in a rest house in Virginia during World War I. She had never before worked for a living, but after her husband one day dropped dead at the bank where he worked, she had to find a way to support herself. So she opened her home to soldiers and sailors, many of whom were terribly homesick, some of them just back from the front with permanent disabilities. Her own grief and her uncertainties about the future were made manageable by plunging into a round of duties for the sake of others.
Ezekiel the prophet responded obediently to the loss of his beloved wife:
“Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears. Groan quietly; do not mourn for the dead. Keep your turban fastened and your sandals on your feet; do not cover the lower part of your face or eat the customary food of mourners.” . . . In the evening my wife died. The next morning I did as I had been commanded.
Ezekiel 24:16–18, NIV
For the sake of conveying an important prophetic message to the people, God asked of Ezekiel more than any human being would dare to ask, but He knew His man. Ezekiel had had plenty of practice in obedience, and it was not his habit to bridle. His obedient submission helped him handle the enormity of his loss.
Our obedience may lead us not to the fulfilment of our ideals but to very unexpected and “unspiritual” situations. I may have been wondering which house to buy or what job to take and my simple prayer, the often glibly pronounced “Thy will be done,” may carry me far into regions I never meant to approach in the hand of Humility and Sanctification. Nobody gets close to God except those who have been sanctified. All that it takes to bring me home to God is at one and the same time a part of the process of making me fit to live with Him.
Jesus’s Obedience
We are told that Jesus Himself had to learn obedience through what He suffered (Heb. 5:8, NKJV). During Jesus’s three years as an itinerant rabbi He knew what it was to be weary, hungry, and homeless. The common people heard Him gladly but the religious elite could not stand Him. He was misquoted, misjudged, misrepresented, misunderstood. The Hebrew scholars were forever laying traps for Him, challenging, quarreling, quibbling. He was praised and scorned, followed and forsaken, loved and hated, listened to and rejected, crowned and crucified. He had every reason to feel lonely in the world of men, but it was thus that He “learned” and demonstrated for us the meaning of obedience—through the things that He suffered.
Before the start of His brief public ministry, He whose hands had made the worlds learned obedience in a dusty carpenter shop. When Joseph showed Him how to use a tool, did he hold the little hands in his and say, “Like this. Hold it this way”? The boy had to learn. He did not make tables and benches by divine fiat. He made them with tools held in human hands. He had to learn the skills, learn to be thorough, dependable, prompt, faithful. If He was ever tempted to cut corners, He did not yield to the temptation. He did nothing sloppily. He worked carefully, thoroughly, dependably, promptly, faithfully. Surely He was gracious with the customers. He grew “in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52, KJV). The cheerful acceptance of humble work, the small testings of any boy’s home life were a part of His preparation for the great testings of His public years, a part of the road which led Him to the cross.
To walk with Him is to walk the Way of the Cross. If the cross we are asked to take up is not presented to us in the form of martyrdom, heroic action of some kind, dragons or labyrinths or even “ministry”—at least something that looks spiritual—are we to conclude that we have missed the Way? Not at all. Sometimes the humblest life, such as that of “Mom” Cunningham (mentioned in chapter 5) is the clearest example of obedience. The Way of the Cross is an ordinary street in an ordinary city. It is an ordinary life lived in the grace of God. There is a pot of gold, there is a king’s reward, but it comes at the end of the journey.
Heaven in Our Hands
Obedience to what we know of God’s will opens the way for more blessings than we knew existed. We find joy along a journey that at times can be taxing. Walking with Jesus proves to be, at the least, not boring.
Remember Abraham’s servant, who was dispatched to find a hometown wife for Isaac. His assignment must have seemed like a tall order. Without so much as the brush of an angel’s wing to direct him, he found the right town and decided to wait for the young women to come to draw water at the public well. Using an inventive way of ascertaining divine favor, he asked God to let the virgin who was right for his master’s son be identified by her generous willingness to serve him. His method worked. Rebekah responded instantly to his request for a drink and then took initiative on her own to water his ten camels. “Blessed be the LORD God of my master Abraham,” he said. “I, being in the way, the LORD led me” (Gen. 24:27, KJV).
That is how it is when we’re walking with Him. “Being on the way,” walking in living relationship with our Savior, our feet are directed onto the right path every time. We go the distance with Him, all the way to heaven.
Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.
Colossians 2:6–7, NASB