Walking With God Series

Walking With God

Established - Week 5:

Scripture: Several, focusing on 1 Peter 5

Welcome, everybody. We took a few weeks off from our series for the community service and to have the Paulsen’ come and bless us, but now we are jumping back in for the last few messages from this series.

We are in the fifth week of our series, Established. We've been learning together about how to be rooted and established in the love of God.

Today, I want to talk to you about walking with God. This, in my opinion, is the most powerful practice of the Christian life.

You might say, "Okay, wait a minute. You've already talked about prayer, right?

We've talked about the Bible.

We've talked about serving.

But, now, you're saying this is the most powerful practice in the Christian life."

Yes, and here's why.

Because what we're going to talk about today in the realm of walking with God is what will

keep you praying,

what will keep you in God's word,

what will keep you serving.

What will actually keep you applying what God is teaching you.

What we're going to talk about today, one of the most powerful practices in the Christian life, is rarely talked about in church. I want to talk about walking with others who will help you walk with God.

Walking with others in life is powerful.

The bible says can two or more walk together, unless they be agreed? (Amos 3:3)

A cord of two or three strands is not easily broken.

At the same time, the opposite is also true-

In life, nothing will hurt you like other people.

We all have experienced that on some level, right?

Other people can bring us hurt, or they can bring us healing if God’s power is working in them.

The same is true with us- if we just walk around aimlessly in life, our words or actions can bring harm, but if we are surrendered to God, we can instruments of great healing and growth to those around us.

This is why if you and I are going to walk with God, we've got to walk with others and we've got to learn to do that in an authentic way. That helps us practice everything else in the Christian life.

So let's dive in.

This morning we are going to emphasize this because this is a big deal. Walking with God always includes walking in humility with others.

We see this in a question that Jesus was asked by some super religious people, Paraphrasing- "Jesus, Can you take everything in scripture and just give us the greatest command?"

Jesus says, "Sure, I can. Here it is. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength." Then Jesus says, "And love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Then he says, “Of all the law and all the prophets hang on these two commandments."

In other words, all of us need to love God with everything we've got and love others with everything we've got.

If we get those two things right, we get everything right.

Jesus didn’t just teach this and walk away. Jesus showed us this truth in how he lived his life.

His life is about relationships. In the end, all that matters is God and people.

Even the cross is about God and people.

Picture a cross in your mind. It's vertical. That's about our relationship with God.

We focus so much on that part of redemption, that we forget the cross also has a horizontal focus. It's about our relationship with others. This is the Christian life: learning to receive the love, the mercy, the truth, the grace of God, and then giving that away to others.

God works HIS Spirit into us, and the fruit of the Spirit comes out of us.

If you're going to walk with God, you and I have to learn to walk in humility with others. We actually cannot walk with God without walking in humility with other people.

Now to the central scripture this morning

Let’s look at 1st Peter Chapter 5, beginning in verse 5, second part of the verse. He writes, “Clothe yourselves, all of you with—Humility toward one another.”

Let’s pause for a second. Let’s stop and consider what was written here.

He says, "Clothe yourselves, all of you with humility," but he's not talking about humility towards God.

Here he says, toward what? Toward who?

Toward one another.

Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.

This whole passage is about the other. He continues. “For God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Verse 6. “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time, he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”