Walking in Him
“As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him” Colossians 2:6
One of the things that we most often take for granted is our ability to get around…that is until we, for some reason, are unable to. I thank the good Lord above that I have never broken a bone in my body, given my lack of coordination this is nothing short of a miracle. I have never broken my legs, but I have sprained my ankle and it proved to be more than just a little bit of a nuisance. The normal treks thatI would take on foot proved to be nearly impossible. Those trips that I thought nothing of prior to being injured were now all that I could think about.
Now here I am obviously talking about a physical walk, a physical journey, but that’s not always what our walk is. Throughout the scriptures and throughout Christianity we have many references to our walk with Christ. Our walk with God isn’t the same as what we see in Genesis where Adam and Eve physically walked with God. Instead ours is more about the entirety of our whole life. What does it mean to walk with God in all of our actions? What does it mean to walk with God in all of our thoughts, words and deeds? Deuteronomy 13:3-4 describes what it means to walk after the Lord. We see that it isn’t only with our actions that we are walking with God but it is through our thoughts, our words, our heart and soul that truly show what our walk looks like.
So right here now we have a big old list of bible verses that talk about how or where we should be walking with God. Feel free to peruse these at your leisure.
It’s quite a list. We went through it point by point and it is truly amazing at the message that God has for us in our walk in faith.
One of the ideas that was continually being presented was the idea of knowledge. We are not born with all of the knowledge, all of the wisdom that we will have in our entire lives. Can you imagine how overwhelming that would be to have somebody tell you everything that you’ll ever need to know all at once? I can very nearly guarantee that you would never be able to remember it all. If you’re anything like me you would see a butterfly flitting by and miss the vast majority of the section that told you all about what you need to do in order to stay alive. Whoopsie!
But we are told in these verses that during our walk with God we will learn all that we need to know in bits and pieces. We will learn from doing, we will learn from what others do, even from what others tell us. All of the knowledge that we obtain will lead us to even more knowledge. It is different than just being told everything because it comes with the desire to learn more. Just as in a walk of any kind we all move at our own pace. Each of us will progress in our walk with Christ at a different speed. We’ll learn different things along the way and be able to apply it to our lives in different ways.
The knowledge that we obtain leads us in many different directions. Sometimes we don’t want to hear what we’ve been told and we try to run away. We want to flee the path that we know is right and go off in our own way. We don’t want the things that we do to be observed by those around us, we don’t want to be seen at all.
A great deal of these verses talk about walking in the light. It’s a strange concept that we don’t really think about. We take light for granted. We can flick the light switch (which I need to do soon, it somehow came to be that my sunshiney office is quite dark) and suddenly you can see everything around you. What we fail to take into account is that just the same as we can see what’s around us, we can be seen much more clearly as well. Everything we do well is seen, but where we fail is also illumined. That’s the part from which we want to run away. We don’t want people to see when we fail, especially the people to whom we are ministering.
I am not a very good driver. I am impatient. I don’t always signal. I occasionally cut people off. I quite often yell at people when I don’t think they’re driving as they ought to be. I am not at my most Christ-like when I am behind the wheel of my car. For this very reason I could never put a Jesus fish on the back of my car. I am afraid that people would get the impression that all Christians drive like me. That Christians are an impatient, jerky driving bunch of people. When I am in my car, I am trying to hide my Christianity in the dark. I am focused on my own desires, and I know that when I am doing that I am not being a good representative of Christ.
Our path takes these little detours at precisely these times. The times when we try to do what is best for us rather than looking at what we know is best for those around us. When Jesus is asked what the most important commandment is he doesn’t name off one of the ten commandments or one of the Levitical laws but instead he sums it all up by saying “Love the Lord your God and love your neighbour as yourself.” It’s a powerful statement that applies to us in our walk with Christ. When we are thinking about our neighbour and his/her needs we are not putting ourselves above them. When we do that we prevent ourselves from sinning by thinking of them. We are less likely to murder someone (physically, or with our thoughts and words) if we are trying to help them. We are less likely to steal if we are trying to care for them and all that they have. If we want to protect their reputation it is less likely that we would be gossiping about them
This isn’t easy but as we go through our walk of life we realize that we aren’t 
the first to take this path, that we have a guide, Jesus who has already done all of this and who gives us the example of what we are to do. Of course even though we have this example, we have this path, we don’t always follow it. This idea became particularly evident as I was walking through the snow. Now, bear with me here, I really do have a point. The first snowfall is beautiful and blah blah blah but it is a pain in the butt to try and get anywhere. I am always grateful for those people with the big snowboots who have gone before me and have made a path that I can follow. Unfortunately there are times when I don’t think that the path that they’ve made is really the best one. I would rather they crossed over that snowdrift a little closer to my car. Or even worse than that they are one of those long legged freaks and it’s a lot more effort to make my short little legs match their stride. However, when I fail to follow the path that they made I always regret it; both me and my poor, wet feet.
This is similar to the path that Jesus has provided for us. We may argue with the way that he has gone, but when we stray from it, we really do regret it. When we fail to put that extra bit of effort into matching his stride we stumble, we fall, and once again we are left with that feeling of regret.
We are never told that our walk with Christ is going to be easy. We are told the exact opposite in fact. But as we continue in our walk we do so knowing that we’re not doing it alone. God is there with us the whole way. He’s not so far ahead of us that we can’t see where he is; he’s not so far behind us that we don’t know where we’re going. Our walk is with God. He is there with us, guiding us, protecting us and strengthening us so that when we are at our weakest he is there to encourage us and keep us going.
*Material for this bible study was inspired by the book “Living in Jesus”
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