The Tribune

By Rev. Angela Palacious

Am I walking with Jesus? This is an important question to ponder. If your answer is yes, it pre-supposes a life that has been dedicated to obedience to God’s word and to the prayerful consideration of what is required. When faced with decisions, we need to ensure that it is indeed God who is ordering our steps and not we who are plotting our own course. Considering your approach to people in your daily encounters, would you say that God orders your steps most of the time? What about your finances? What about your ministry in the church?

It is in the company of Jesus Christ that we discover where true joy is to be found, and it is in the presence of God that our own inner beauty shines forth. It is by learning to appreciate the mind of Christ that we come to understand the ways of God.

When you read holy scripture, you are walking with God and ordering your steps according to specific or general guidelines for individual maturity and communal prosperity. A broad understanding of how faithful people conducted themselves in the past, along with the ongoing revelation of God’s unfolding plan, provides an indication of the way to please. It has to be lived on a daily basis by each person as a stirring adventure of mystical moments and mysterious motives.

If you spend time in quiet prayer and study, listening for the slightest whisper from the heart of God resonating within your own, you will perceive that which at first appears to be imperceptible. A gentle prod, a slight uneasiness, a nagging doubt, an oppressive heaviness, a vivid dream, a clear message are some of the ways in which Christians speak of receiving a word from the God.

Let our walk with God and the subsequent ordering of our steps be done in a spirit of grateful joy and humble hope, because it is God (the great Jehovah, the creator of all things, the provider of all needs) inviting us to be personally involved in a lifelong love relationship. It is God’s aon Jesus Christ, who opened for us the pathway to “walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and fear no evil” (Ps. 23: 4), and whose spirit helps us to “walk in the light ” (1John 1:7).

The only other authority over us, if we allow it, is Satan. If God is not ordering our steps then guess who it must be! We are admonished to “walk circumspectly for the days are evil,” (Eph. 5:15) and is just as true today as it was two thousand years ago.

It is important to take stock where your steps are taking you, and in whose company you choose to walk each day. The disciples on the Road to Emmaus were blessed to find that they inadvertently were walking with Jesus. Let us be very careful how we walk.