Good morning…
“Oh God, You are my God, and I will ever praise You,” sings the song in my head as I wake at 4:27 am. “And I will seek You in the morning, and I will learn to walk in Your ways. And step by step You’ll lead me, and I will follow You all of my days.”
I feel grateful that our God is a step by step kind of leader.
“I love the slow, gradual process of becoming like Christ a little bit more every day,” I responded to a tried, true subscriber in our online community. “I think we sometimes fear that God is going to push us over a cliff if we look in His direction. We fear that God will make us pack our bags and move to Africa tomorrow. We fear that our Heavenly Father will force us to sprint from zero to 150 mph on an uphill climb of faith. We fear that the LORD will demand, ‘Sell everything you love. Give it all to the poor.’ Make. Force. Demand. This voice of a hard-driving dictator is not the whisper of our one true God.”
“Instead our LORD’s patient pace with us feels more like a toddler learning to walk under the watchful care of a loving parent,” I continued. “Spiritual growth, becoming more and more like Jesus, is a gradual, interactive process of trial and error. We try. We error. We try again. God lets us hold on, catch our balance, or plop down to rest before coaxing us to try the next step fit for our wobbly feet.”
“I love toddling beside you!” I concluded my email, expressing the joy of being bonded by our daily blog as we walk step by step with our doting Daddy.
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him! (Romans 8:15-17, MSG).
I love toddling beside each of you, through the hard times, through the good times, greeting our God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?”
…Sue…
P.S. What’s next? If you feel led to touch on Step by Step You’ll Lead Me, you can enjoy the song that woke me from sleep at 4:27 am.
