Learning To Walk
by Stan Smith
by Stan Smith
In the recent Christmas season, I meditated not only on the birth of Jesus but also on His boyhood. I have always felt that the few verses of scripture that talk about Jesus' first days and years are highly instructive because, in a sense, we live the story all over again when we ask Christ to come into our hearts.The Bible gives only a few glimpses of Jesus' boyhood, but by the time He was thirty years old, He had "learned obedience by the things He had suffered." This obedience launched Him into the gifts of the Spirit as He did what He saw the Father doing and spoke what Father spoke. The Bible pictures of His growing up may be able to teach us how to learn the same obedience Jesus learned.
Matthew tells us Jesus spent His formative years not in Judea but in Egypt. Psychologists say these first few years are all-important in personality development. From the start, Jesus came to know Himself as a stranger in a strange land.
These thoughts took me to Hosea 11, the prophecy that foretold that Jesus would be called out of Egypt. And there I noticed something else I had never thought about: at some point, Jesus learned to walk.
I picture the usual process: times of trying to balance the weight of His body on His rubbery legs; the excitement when He took His first steps; the delight of being sent from Joseph's loving arms across the room to Mary's cooing, "Come on! You can do it!"
But Hosea 11:3 adds something to the picture. "I taught Ephraim to walk," God said, "taking them by their arms." As tenderly as the most loving parents teach their child to walk, the Father taught Jesus to walk in the Spirit. And He wants to teach us, taking us by our arms and helping us with our first steps.
Hosea 11 has several layers of meaning. Verses 1-7 contrast God's faithfulness with Israel's unfaithfulness. God loved Israel and called them out of Egypt; they worshiped Baal and idols. God taught them to walk; they didn't realize God was present to heal them. God tugged at them with cords of love, broke yokes from their necks, and fed them; they were determined to backslide and refused to repent.
Then Jesus brought something new to Israel's history: He realized as a child that He was called to be about His Father's business, and He unswervingly set about to do it. He experienced the same favor Israel had tasted, but where they had abused grace, He used it properly.
As I prayed about the scripture, I sensed God telling me this: The same Father wants to teach us to walk in the things of the Spirit today. If we respond in our own strength, we will fail as Israel failed. If we let Christ in us respond, we will learn the same obedience He learned. We will see and hear as He saw and heard, and this will release the works of Jesus in our lives.
For a baby, learning to walk is a key to self-sufficiency. But the paradox of walking in the Spirit is this: we learn to be self-sufficient and yet dependent on God at the same time.
In the four gospels, Jesus didn't use the language of Hosea 11 to describe His walk. Often He spoke of light and darkness:
Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him. (John 11:9-10)
Like anyone else who knows how to walk, Jesus knew better than to try to find His way in pitch darkness. Unless the Father gave Him light, He waited.
His words in John 11 fell in the middle of a waiting time when He had gotten word that Lazarus was sick. Jesus had healed many people, and it might have been tempting to try to do the same for Lazarus. As He prayed about it, for some reason heaven was silent. Jesus waited, in spite of the gravity of the need and the urging of His disciples. He watched for a word or a nudge or some kind of light from the Father, for "without Him I can do nothing."
When light came, Jesus knew He was to go to Bethany and raise Lazarus from the dead.
People misunderstand how Jesus walked. He wasn't self-sufficient with His healing gift. He had to wait to see what the Father was doing; then, and only then, He could call Lazarus back from death.
As we learn to walk in the Spirit, the prophecy in Hosea 11 identifies several constants. Whatever our maturity level, God loves us and calls us. He teaches us. He draws us with cords of love. He breaks yokes from our necks and feeds us. These actions take place in a variety of ways as we grow, and we never outgrow them. Look at them one by one.
God loves us. The closing verses of Romans 8 tell us nothing can separate us from God's love. Sometimes He's tender, sometimes He's stern, but always He loves.
God calls us. The key word here is not "go" but "come." Before God sends us out, He calls us to come to Him. He trains us to commune with Him. Sometimes He speaks; sometimes just being with Him transforms us.
God teaches us. He awakens our spiritual understanding. He trains us to look beyond His works and to see His ways. He fine-tunes our sensitivity not only to His Spirit but also to the people around us. He doesn't just give us commandments to carry out with rote obedience; He imparts wisdom and good judgment so we will handle His assignments with finesse.
God draws us with cords of love.
His words in John 11 fell in the middle of a waiting time when He had gotten word that Lazarus was sick. Jesus had healed many people, and it might have been tempting to try to do the same for Lazarus. As He prayed about it, for some reason heaven was silent. Jesus waited, in spite of the gravity of the need and the urging of His disciples. He watched for a word or a nudge or some kind of light from the Father, for "without Him I can do nothing."
When light came, Jesus knew He was to go to Bethany and raise Lazarus from the dead.
People misunderstand how Jesus walked. He wasn't self-sufficient with His healing gift. He had to wait to see what the Father was doing; then, and only then, He could call Lazarus back from death.
As we learn to walk in the Spirit, the prophecy in Hosea 11 identifies several constants. Whatever our maturity level, God loves us and calls us. He teaches us. He draws us with cords of love. He breaks yokes from our necks and feeds us. These actions take place in a variety of ways as we grow, and we never outgrow them. Look at them one by one.
God loves us. The closing verses of Romans 8 tell us nothing can separate us from God's love. Sometimes He's tender, sometimes He's stern, but always He loves.
God calls us. The key word here is not "go" but "come." Before God sends us out, He calls us to come to Him. He trains us to commune with Him. Sometimes He speaks; sometimes just being with Him transforms us.
God teaches us. He awakens our spiritual understanding. He trains us to look beyond His works and to see His ways. He fine-tunes our sensitivity not only to His Spirit but also to the people around us. He doesn't just give us commandments to carry out with rote obedience; He imparts wisdom and good judgment so we will handle His assignments with finesse.
God draws us with cords of love.
He attracts us into the beauty of His holiness, into fresh empowering, into new intimacies in His glory. He leads us into obedience based less on duty than on love.
God breaks yokes from our necks. Sometimes they are the yokes we foolishly bring upon ourselves. Sometimes they are yokes we have inherited from our families, our people-groups, or the mindset of the church. Whatever the cause of our bondages, increased maturity means increased freedom.
God feeds us. Just as Jesus lived by every word that proceeds from the Father's mouth, we learn to do the same. God may speak a commandment, then our obedience feeds us. He may speak a promise; our believing and confessing feed us. He may speak an endearment; it feeds us to draw closer and let God love us.
God is doing a new thing. In a conference for mission-aries, I heard one man put it this way: "I'd rather be an infant in the new thing God is doing than an expert in the old."
It's time to reach up, grasping the hands of our Father, and taking steps we have never taken before. We don't need to learn what we already know, but we're going to have to learn to walk in new ways if we want a part in the new things God is doing. Focus on what the Father is doing as He teaches you:
1) Come to Him, and keep coming. He is calling you, and drawing you with cords of love. Spend time in prayer, in worship, in soaking. Don't just speak to God; watch and listen.
2) Let Him keep setting you free. Jesus said that if you continue in His word, you will know the truth, and truth will make you free. He will show you things that will break yokes off your neck. The freer you become, the more freedom you will bring to others.
3) Let Him love you. The apostle John learned this; he called himself the disciple Jesus loved. He wasn't claiming to be Jesus' special favorite; instead, he made it clear that Jesus loves us all. But I John 4:10 says, "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." John had discovered that his greatest apostolic accomplishments had been to receive God's love and all that Jesus gave us when He went to the cross.
Even if you have walked with God for decades, you haven't lived long enough to explore all He gave you in His Son. There are new steps to take, new gifts to explore, and graces that are as new to you as your first steps were when you came to Christ.
God the Father wants to teach you to walk. Christ in you wants to learn. And every time you see a parent, reaching down as a baby reaches up to grasp each hand and take its first tentative steps, you are seeing how tenderly God wants to train you to move in the things of the Spirit. He hasn't reserved them for just for apostles and prophets. He wants to train you.
God breaks yokes from our necks. Sometimes they are the yokes we foolishly bring upon ourselves. Sometimes they are yokes we have inherited from our families, our people-groups, or the mindset of the church. Whatever the cause of our bondages, increased maturity means increased freedom.
God feeds us. Just as Jesus lived by every word that proceeds from the Father's mouth, we learn to do the same. God may speak a commandment, then our obedience feeds us. He may speak a promise; our believing and confessing feed us. He may speak an endearment; it feeds us to draw closer and let God love us.
God is doing a new thing. In a conference for mission-aries, I heard one man put it this way: "I'd rather be an infant in the new thing God is doing than an expert in the old."
It's time to reach up, grasping the hands of our Father, and taking steps we have never taken before. We don't need to learn what we already know, but we're going to have to learn to walk in new ways if we want a part in the new things God is doing. Focus on what the Father is doing as He teaches you:
1) Come to Him, and keep coming. He is calling you, and drawing you with cords of love. Spend time in prayer, in worship, in soaking. Don't just speak to God; watch and listen.
2) Let Him keep setting you free. Jesus said that if you continue in His word, you will know the truth, and truth will make you free. He will show you things that will break yokes off your neck. The freer you become, the more freedom you will bring to others.
3) Let Him love you. The apostle John learned this; he called himself the disciple Jesus loved. He wasn't claiming to be Jesus' special favorite; instead, he made it clear that Jesus loves us all. But I John 4:10 says, "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." John had discovered that his greatest apostolic accomplishments had been to receive God's love and all that Jesus gave us when He went to the cross.
Even if you have walked with God for decades, you haven't lived long enough to explore all He gave you in His Son. There are new steps to take, new gifts to explore, and graces that are as new to you as your first steps were when you came to Christ.
God the Father wants to teach you to walk. Christ in you wants to learn. And every time you see a parent, reaching down as a baby reaches up to grasp each hand and take its first tentative steps, you are seeing how tenderly God wants to train you to move in the things of the Spirit. He hasn't reserved them for just for apostles and prophets. He wants to train you.
© 2008, GospelSmith
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