Friends — Walking!
Marriage is a way of learning to participate in a deeper relationship…than any other. It is learning to walk together in selfless harmony and becoming truly one. Early in our marriage, we moved seven times to different locations.
Each time, we moved many pieces of furniture together. We each lifted the furniture in tandem, and that is when the tandem stopped abruptly. When we moved the furniture, I zigged and my husband zagged. I soon learned that the only way to make progress would be to follow his lead.
As I write these words, my husband is in a memory care facility, and I visit him often. Our day-to-day separation has been the most painful experience I have ever endured. Memories surface and I remember…the talks and walks we enjoyed together through our marriage of almost 65 years.
Our walk with God parallels our earthly love-walk in many ways. I gave my heart to Jesus seventy-nine years ago. Through all the busyness of my life with four children, teaching, my faith shifted from hot to cold often.
While enjoying the sunset of our life together, I noticed that my husband drifted away from me in an increasing haze of dementia. Our world turned upside down with a move to another state and all that entails. What a blessing when our four children came from other states to help us make the move as well as our former church family.
Oh, how I remember living in a period of newness after the move and then I praised God for shaking my world. When my Dad died in 1979, I shifted my joy in my Father to my Father God in Heaven.
I walk with God over mountains and valleys. The walk includes mountains of faith and trust to climb and valleys, rich with His word, for The Lord is my Shepherd.
A.W. Tozer said the goal for a Christian is a state of unbroken worship can only be possible when we walk with God.
I read about the many footsteps our Jesus walked during his life and the meaning behind them. He walked to the temple with his parents, in the wilderness and was tempted, with the disciples, on the water, to the top of the mountain to teach and feed the people, to the upper room with his disciples, to Herod’s to be condemned, scourged, crowned with thorns, and carrying the cross to Golgotha to be crucified. His steps led Him to suffer greatly – why? He suffered because He loves us and chose us to be His. Is there any doubt that loving and walking with Him is the least we can do? Our joy is to follow faithfully in His footsteps of love.
When we walk with a friend, we talk, laugh, listen and share our hearts. All our attention is on this friend. You are in harmony and enjoy the God-Created beauty all around you and feel that sweet peace. Walking with God is similar. This is an intimate heart-relationship with God through His Son. We find that we delight and want more and more of God. God is not in a box to be opened once a week, but His friendship is an every day, every moment friendship.
Only Your love, Has captured my heart, I hear You calling…Come, come, come. So I will run, Forever I will run, Unto You, oh God! (Rodriguez-Gungor)
These moments of searching scriptures and putting my faith into words comforts and strengthens my heart day by day. My constant prayer partners strengthen me. I don’t know about tomorrow, but I know Who holds my hand.
God loves to walk with us. He first walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. Enoch delighted in walking with God. God underlined the pleasure He finds in a relationship with man when He took Enoch up to heaven. When we walk with God we find He opens the Scriptures to the Spirit of wisdom and reveals the light of the glory of God. God wants to walk with us and work through us. (Bob Sorge).
To Walk with God brings many scriptures and purposes for living His Way. It is not a secret how and when to walk with God. He tells us clearly.
You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. Matthew 7:13
Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him. Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people. Philippians 2:12-13-15 (Verses 1-12 are the ‘how’s’)
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. Galatians 5:22-24.
Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning, for I am trusting you. Show me where to walk, for I give myself to you. Psalm143:8
Make me walk along the path of your commands, for that is where my happiness is found. Psalm 119:35
For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God. Romans 5:10-11
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