“I have taught you in the way of wisdom; I have led you in right paths. When you walk, your steps will not be hindered, and when you run, you will not stumble.” (Proverbs 4:11-12)
My wife and I walk together almost every day at the local high school track down the street from where we live. For the most part, I walk after work, but every now and then, my schedule allows me to get in an early morning walk. There’s something different about the early morning crowd I see at the track. They walk slower than the evening crowd. Why?
The obvious answer is that the morning crowd is older and just can’t maintain the faster pace set by the younger walkers who frequent the track after work during the evening hours. And while age probably is a factor, there is at least one other distinction that also helps to explain why their pace is slower.
Many of the morning walkers are retired and just don’t have the demands on their time that the younger walkers have. The truth is the reason they walk slower may have more to do with time than age. In short, maybe their lifestyle has more to do with their pace than their age does.
The same thing could be said about our Christian walk because the lifestyle choices we make have everything to do with the pace we are able to maintain on our journey of becoming more like Jesus.
There’s an old Chinese proverb that says a long journey begins with the first step. The same is true about sanctification, which is nothing more than a big word that explains our everyday walk with Jesus. That first step in the journey, salvation, is unarguably the most important, but we haven’t arrived when we get saved. So while salvation guarantees us a ticket into heaven, we still have a good bit to learn about being a Christian.
There’s not a day in my life when I don’t stop and think about my relationship with the Lord. To be quite honest with you, I’m not where I think I need to be, but I realize that the choices I make each day can either draw me closer to God or distance me from him.
I try not to measure my progress by what I notice in the lives of other Christians. My own mistakes are hard enough to swallow. But I’ve got admit that I do find comfort when I hear other Christians, who are lot farther down the road than I am, confess that poor choices have slowed their progress, too.
The Apostle Paul was one of the greatest Christians who ever lived. Yet even he once commented in a letter to Christians living in Rome that he could not believe some of the things he did. “I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15)
John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace, also struggled with his Christian walk, but pointed out that direction was just as important as pace. “I am not what I might be, I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I wish to be, I am not what I hope to be,” he once said. “But thank God I am not what I once was, and I can say with the great apostle, ‘By the grace of God I am what I am’.”
Newton makes another point that we all lose sight of. We don’t live under law. We live under grace. Jesus death on the Cross was, and is, the final atonement for our sins. There’s nothing we can do to add to the finished work on the Cross.
So you see, while the choices we make in life will affect our relationship with Jesus, that doesn’t mean we can’t win when we stumble. If we’re headed in the right direction, God will make sure the light always shines on our path. The important thing is keep at it every day, which is what Paul meant when he said, “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” (Hebrews 12:1)
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