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Mining the Sacred Page

Monthly Archives: November 2016

Following Jesus

29 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by Mark Da Vee in Discipleship

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“You enlarge my steps under me, and my feet have not slipped.”

Psalm 18:36

Notice the Psalmist, King David, is talking to the Lord about what God is doing for him; God is “enlarging his steps.” His focus is on what God is doing for him, not on what he is doing for God. So what did David mean by the statement, “enlarge my steps”? It can mean that as he grows spiritually, as he gains experience following the Lord, his steps, his stride, becomes larger. When we start out following Jesus, we take small steps. We start attending church, reading our Bible, praying. As we continue to follow Jesus our faith grows; we take larger and larger steps of faith: we get more and more involved in serving others, in making disciples.

I can remember when I first became a Christian at age 17, I started to carry a little pocket New Testament to school. I could keep it concealed. As my faith grew, so did the size of the Bible I carried around. By my senior year I was carrying a full-sized New American Standard Bible, which I could not conceal–everyone in school knew I carried a Bible around with me! At first, I was afraid of people finding out that I was a Christian; as the Lord made my footsteps firm, my perspective changed, and I was no longer afraid.

This passage conveys the idea of a continual, expanding motion. David, the follower of YHWH (Jesus), is travelling; he is moving, he is following God. Notice that he is above his circumstances; his steps, his path, is “under him.”

“…my feet have not slipped.” David is aware of the possibility of slipping; in fact, I think he is aware of the weakness of his feet (lit. his “ankles”).

This one verse of Scripture really gets to the heart of what is scary about following Jesus: If I give my life to Jesus, where will He lead me?

We have a natural desire to control our lives and our circumstances. We don’t want to give that up. But for the most part, it is a false sense of control. We know deep down inside that we are not fully in control of our lives, and we strive to find some place where we can feel secure, and in control. Jesus tells us the solution which is echoed in the verse above:

“If anyone wishes to come after (follow) Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.” Luke 9:23-24

Jesus confirms for us in this passage that the key to having true spiritual life, is to give control of our lives to Him; to “lose our life” and gain “His life”. If we do that, He will take us on a journey in which He will enlarge our steps, and make our footsteps firm!

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