Hey
Dana
Rev. Scott Stevenson and I were recently having
a discussion when this question came up, “What does it really mean to w a l k with Jesus?” I know that’s an odd question for two people
who have been saved for a combined total of, perhaps, over 80 plus years but I believe, if many Christians were openly
honest, they may well be wrestling with the same question. For example, in 1913 Charles A. Miles’ wrote the hymn In The
Garden:
I come to the
garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses,
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.
While the dew is still on the roses,
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.
Refrain:
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.
So I finally asked the Reverend the
“So What?” question. “Why do I even need to walk
with Jesus daily? What real difference does it make?” I asked. For example, I
have my wife. I have my Christian friends and associations. I have my
neighbors. There are the people I work with. I see them. I talk to them. I argue with them sometimes. I eat with
them. I touch them. We can have fun
together. With one of them I can have sex.
Then one of us mentioned Mary
Stevenson’s (no relation to the reverend) well known, and oft quoted poem, Footprints. She wrote the poem after she
had a dream. In the dream, Stevenson envisions her life as walking on the beach
with Jesus. At some point she looks back and periodically sees only one set of
footprints in the sand, not two. She thought Jesus had deserted her at those
times. But no, He (Jesus) says during
those times of only one set of prints, He is carrying her. What does that mean?
I asked Pastor Stevenson how do we
(regular Janes or Joes-in-the-pews Christians) make real and not a cliché, walking
with Jesus. He mentioned, I presume
because it is Easter week, the Cross, the Resurrection, and the Holy Spirit. He
believes we have missed the power and the punch that we could have if we really
grasped just these three things, and how that would make a difference in our walk with Jesus. That is, Jesus walks with us in a way that we cannot walk with
others. Think of the road to Emmaus. They were walking with each other but they
needed Jesus to walk them all the way home.
So, it seems we went around the
topic but I never got what I considered a definitive answer to my question,
what does it mean to walk with Jesus?
Yours
for the Harvest
John
************************************
Dana answered on Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 1:07 PM
Hi John,
Interesting question, and also one with no
clear cut answer. It’s very
subjective. One could say that one’s
entire Christian pilgrimage is their walk with Christ. The hard part about it is that the walk is
often based on hindsight. We can tell where we’ve been when we had no idea
where we were going.
To
me, I’m not so sure we walk with Jesus, but am more inclined to think that we
walk behind, or follow Jesus. He leads
us to places, many of which we don’t know or know why we ended up there until
we’re able to look back on them, and see where we have been led.
Once, when we first began the Blog, you
quoted a passage from the book of Esther in chapter 4, verse 14B, “And who knows whether you
have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
And among us, who knows, if Jesus has ever
walked us into a situation just to meet one particular person, who we may not
even realize we were there to meet until we get to Heaven?
That really doesn’t answer the question,
but perhaps a point is beginning to develop.
Too many would include reading the Bible, prayer and Christian
fellowship as important elements in walking with Jesus. Indeed they are important elements of the
Christian life, no doubt. But do we stop
there? Is participation in all three of
those elements covering all our bases, so to speak? For many, I believe it might. Doing all three somehow releases us from
guilt when the preacher fusses at us for not reading the Bible enough, or
missing the Wednesday night service. They are activities that are at the top of
our Christian checklist, and as long as we can check them off daily or weekly,
then somehow we remain members of the Kingdom in good standing.
Again, I am not decrying Bible study,
prayer, or Church participation—they are vital to the Christian life. But does our obligation end there? While I may not be able to write a
dissertation on what the “walk” might actually be, I do have a strong gut
feeling it involves more.
Walking with Jesus involves trust. Yes, we trust Him for salvation, but do we
have life-long, continuing trust that He actually knows what He is doing as He
leads us through life? That is
especially pertinent to both contemplate and resolve when His leading is to
some place uncomfortable, or even to a place or situation that we might see as
downright awful.
Do we trust enough to keep walking with
Him when the road is perilous and fraught with “dangers, toils and snares…?” What if walking with Jesus leads to a hospital
bed, or the unemployment office? Will we
walk with Him there? What about jail? We could ask Rev. Hyeon Soo Lim, a Korean born
Canadian pastor who has been imprisoned in North Korea for life. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyeon_Soo_Lim What might he have to say about walking with
Jesus?
That is not to infer that walking with
Jesus is always going to lead to jail, hardship or death. Clearly many dedicated Christians do not have
to go down those roads. But do we at
least allow that following Jesus “might” lead us to places outside of our
comfort zone?
Along with trust, I believe walking with
Jesus involves obedience. OK, we’ve got
a stable job, and family, love our local church, and life is good. We’re walking with Jesus, and He decides to
start walking in the direction of Africa or Afghanistan, or North Korea. Do we keep walking? It’s a question worth pondering. We’d all like to think we’d be willing and compliant,
but would we? If we desire to walk with
our Lord and King, are we as equally desirous to be humbly obedient to His
every request? What if walking with Him
requires us to forgive someone whose actions against us are, for all intents
and purposes, in the eyes of the world, unforgiveable?
Along with the big three (Bible reading,
Prayer, and Christian Fellowship—which are sometimes difficult enough on their
own) what about radical obedience and explicit trust as being essential parts
of our walk? Perhaps there are other
dimensions of our walk with Christ, which I haven’t considered as of yet. Between the big three, and trust, and
obedience, I seem to already have an adult portion.
++++++++++++++++++++
John
added on Wed,
Apr 19, 2017 at 10:07 PM
Hey
Dana
Since we last corresponded, my
friend Rev. Stevenson, from whom this idea got its start, added a bit more.
He said, in answer to the question
of “So what?” to sum up, what difference does
it make whether we walk with others or Jesus? We cannot (even if we wanted to) walk with each other. Only Jesus can
walk with us all the way home. Without Jesus we are “stuck” with our feet
frozen in place. He, only half jokingly likes to refer to it as being
stuck-in-the-muck.
What Rev. Stevenson thinks is important
to do is to show the stark contrast. That is, you walk with Jesus, or you don’t
walk at all. So, we need Jesus if we want to go anyplace.
He went on to say, we need Jesus to
walk with us—to God.
We need Jesus to walk with us—to
deal with our sins.
We need Jesus to walk with us—to
each other.
And we even need Jesus to walk with
us—toward ourselves.
Stevenson concluded his thoughts on
this with something from the theologian John Calvin. Calvin says because we are
united with Christ—I am where Jesus is and Jesus is where I am.
We’ve written a lot about this
walking with Jesus. In some ways I’m still not sure my question was answered as
I had been hoping for; however, while I’m not a Calvin fan, that may be the
best answer of all—because we are united with Christ—I am where Jesus is and
Jesus is where I am.
The
Lord bless you. Yours for the Harvest
John
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