Today, let's think about faith that functions at a walk. The Scripture is Isaiah 40, beginning in verse 28: READ
Isaiah 40 is one of the most fantastic chapters in God's Word. Read Isaiah 40 every day for thirty days, and it will change your life. Isaiah has almost been singing what it means in this world to have our God as our Creator. He is the one who made and controls the world and the one who loves us and beams that love at us so that we may know there is at work within us His power and love. He closes with a climax and says, "God will never grow weary. God is not one whose mind will ever stop functioning. He is the one who will always be there for us.
He will give us strength. Even the youths shall grow weary, and the young people shall utterly fail. But they that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar like eagles, run like Olympians unwearied, and will walk and not faint."
If we were writing that we would have ended that differently. We know this is God's Word, so it's written right, but aren't we tempted to say, "Isaiah, you didn't write it right. You need to talk to John Grisham, or Michael Crighton and learn how to write." You don't take a big climax to a chapter about the power, love, grace and majesty of God and slow that down to a walk. You don't come to a climax where you have people plodding along day by day." That's not the way we would have written it.
One of the Laws in Life
Yet, there is a law of life we need to learn, a law we need to know. On the exit doors of most athletic locker rooms, there's usually a motto right above the door, like "Do whatever it takes" or "Through these portals pass men who are going to get hurt." There's always a motto up there, and some teams have this tradition of touching the motto as they go out the door. Notre Dame does that.
One fellow said they had a motto in the locker room of his high school. The problem was no one ever explained what it meant. The motto went something like this: "This is the law of the gridiron, as old and true as the skies. The one who obeys it will prosper. The one who doesn't will die." The problem with that motto is, it never tells you what the law of the gridiron is. It would have been helpful to my high school team if we could have known what that law of the gridiron was, because many was the time when we went out on the field and died.
But it's true. There is a law of life. It is as old and true as the skies. The one who obeys it will prosper. The one who does not will die. That law of life is this: Life is lived mostly at a walk. So while we might say to Isaiah, "Talk to us about the flying high and soaring in these times when our faith is called to do that. Talk to us about running hard in life's race but don't slow it down to a walk. Don't talk to us about walking and not growing weary," Yet, most of life is lived at a walk.
Life is won or lost at a walk, isn't it? That's where it's really won or lost.
You see an honor student in school and say, "Boy, she's smart," but she didn't just show up in class one day and make a good grade. All through the years, there have been times of study, discipline, work, and learning. The walking hours are what made the difference.
You meet someone who's done well in business. You read about the grand opening or grand deal, but behind that are years of learning, study, sacrifice, and deferred gratification until it could all be put together at this time when everything was ready to blossom and grow. It was the walking hours that made the difference.
What about people who excel physically, say the basketball player with great skill and stamina or the ballerina whose body seems to be under such fantastic control? We see what they do and say, "That's wonderful," but we realize that behind that are days and days and days of hard conditioning and work.
I heard about a basketball player who sank a thirty-five foot shot. He said as he was running back down the court, he heard a fan say, "You lucky stiff." He said, "I wonder what he would have thought if he had seen me sink that shot seventy-five times the night before in practice."
Life is lived at a walk. It's the walking hours that make the difference. It's what you do during the daily routine that makes the difference.
What about the real you ... your soul, the Bible calls it ... the real you that's never going to stop living, the real you that's going to live forever, either in hell or in heaven? How is that soul won or lost? It is won or lost mostly at a walk.
A man, whose thoughts outlived his notoriety for saying the words, said "Life is not lost in dying. Life is lost day by dragging day, moment by moment in all our thousand small and uncaring ways." Life is lost like that.
One of the greatest mistakes of life is to think that matters of faith and matters of trusting God are for the crisis hours only. It's thinking that religion is for the unusual ... when things are unusually bad or unusually good, when the heart within us beats for better or for worse ... and thinking that our faith is something that we keep in a very special box to get out for special times like the best silver or the china. God says, "No, you need this to be a daily matter. You need to live your life at a walk because that's how life is lived, that's how life is won or lost. That's the way life is."
How to Live By the Law
It follows then that if life is lived at a walk, then we need to think about excelling in many ways, day by day. Not only the musician, athlete, student, or businessman works hard. What about this challenging thing of being a parent? In this drug-pushing, glass-tinkling, sex-saturated, greedy, grasping world, what a challenge it is to rear solid people. There are times when parents do have to soar high because there's illness or tragedy in a child's life. There are times when parents do have to run hard to bet past some tragic thing. However, for the most part, the battle is won or lost at a walk.
Now child-rearing is not an exact science. That's an understatement, isn't it? It's not a matter of cause and effect. In the Bible, it seems that some of the very best parents had some of the worst children, like Samson. Or some of the very worst parents, like Saul, had one of the best children, like Jonathan. But mostly, a child is very specially blessed by the parents who live life at a walk for their sake, who are there moment by moment ... loving, modeling, and caring.
It's there that life is won or lost. It's there they learn to live, for life is learned to live at a walk.
Young people, you don't have to make the mistakes of your parents. It's not guaranteed that you'll have the qualities of your parents, but you learn to live your life yourself at a walk. The best parenting job is done daily as we learn to live at a walk.
Life Is Lived And Lost at a Walk
If life is lived at a walk, then life is lost at a walk. We preachers have the habit of painting in vivid, bright, and ugly colors the wages of sin as though it's one quick act, it's done, and it's over ... one act of adultery, and a family is shattered; one drinking binge, a wreck is caused, and lives are taken;
one act of violence where a gun is pointed, and a trigger is pulled, and life ends essentially for both the one at whom the gun is aimed, as well as the one holding the gun. We paint sins like that.
However, the fact is that the trigger was pulled because over many years, there was a build-up of resentments, gathering of anger, putting together of frustration, shoving out love, and bringing in anger and resentment until the heart explodes. That life was day by dragging day at a walk.
You read about someone on a drinking binge and killing someone with their automobile while they are drunk or in some other way, and you realize that didn't just happen that night. It happened when an innocent drink was taken years ago, and then it became more and more persistent, more and more necessary, and very much a part of life. When the compulsion had taken over, then the whole thing blew up. Then we realize, once again, the truth of the fact that of ten people who take a drink, one of them the drink is going to take.
Adultery doesn't just happen in one flash of temptation, and a man or woman falls into that kind of infamy. It happens when you begin to invite thoughts into your head that should be kept out. It begins when you indulge yourself in entertainment that titillates for awhile. After awhile, it more than titillates.
The pictures are more than compelling. They become a compulsion until you get to the place where the thing that your mind has been thinking becomes reality. Then the tragedy happens.
The fact is, life is lived at a walk and lost at a walk. Life is not lost by dying. Life is lost day by day, moment by moment, in all our thousand small, uncaring ways. Here a little and there a little, we invite the resentments. Here a little and there a little, we pamper our senses, let them run wild, and follow them. They seem like little things. The twine that they wrap around us is almost like a spider's web. We say, "It has no grip on me. It has no hold or part of taking charge of my life." Soon, we wind up like Gulliver who considered himself a powerful giant but completely out of control, completely bound and caught up.
Isaiah, you're right. We do need God for those times when we have to fly and when we have to run, but we need Him very, very much for when we walk. We need Him because life is lived at a walk. We need Him because life is lost at a walk. The road to hell is not driving off a steep cliff and a crash in a canyon below.
The road to hell is so gradual you don't even know you're on it until it's too late. Life is lost at a walk.
Also, life wears us out. That's one of the principles he's saying here. Life wears us out. He said, "Even the youths shall be weary, and the young people shall stumble and fall." It makes us tired and weary.
I heard a story back when young men were drafted in the armed services. It may not match your military experiences, but it's a true story, whether it happened or not. Well, it has truth in it. This young man had been in the Army a little over a week.
He wrote home and said, "Folks, I've just been here a week. I'm already in trouble, and I don't even know what I did. You can't imagine what this basic training has been like. They've been getting us up at 5:30 every morning beating on cans, blowing whistles, rattling our beds, and jerking us up. Then they make us do calisthenics for a long time. Then we work all day long, and after a late night, we go to a late bed. Then it seems like in fifteen minutes, they're blowing the whistles and getting us up again at 5:30."
He continued, "They just de-personalize us terribly. I don't have a name anymore. I am No. 143. I answer roll call to No. 143. Every time they want me to respond to something they say, 'No. 143,' and I'm supposed to answer. I kept thinking, if I can just make it till Sunday, I can sleep on Sunday. If I can just make it till Sunday, I thought, I'll be able to rest. But on Sunday, they didn't come in and get us up at 5:30, they came in and got us up at 5:00 and marched us five miles to church.
We never go to church. I didn't know what they did in church. We were sitting there, and a man got up with a book and said, 'No. 143, Art Thou Weary, Art Thou Languid?' So I stood up and said, 'I sure am, mister. And you're the first one who's been kind enough to ask about it since I've been here.'"
Well, life wears us down. Even the youths faint and grow weary and the young people stumble and fall in a world like this. God says, "I know that, and I have a word for you. They who place their hope in Me will renew their faith. They will soar like eagles when they need to. They will run like an Olympian unwearied when they must. And they will walk and not get bored and tired in this kind of world."
Hope
"They that hope in Me," says the Lord. What a beautiful word. It's a word that means confidence in the personality of God, that God can do everything He says He can ... not only that He wants to do it but that He can do it.
Confidence
You can have confidence that if you place your trust in Jesus Christ, you're going to be saved. You can have confidence that God will walk with you every step in this life. Arm in arm, you'll walk through anything you have to face.
You can have confidence that God will give you the power you need, and He will trade His strength for yours.
That's what renew means when it says "renew your strength." He said, "I'll trade My strength for your strength." The apostle Paul has a line in one of his letters in which he said, "I labored among you in His strength."
Another climatic ending, 1 Corinthians 15 ends by saying that whatever you do in the Lord is not done in vain. It means everything you do for God is going to count.
That's another thing about God's hope. The KJV and others translate it: "They that wait upon the Lord..." It's a beautiful word: "...wait upon the Lord." It's not sitting down, being lazy, and doing nothing. It's like being a waiter.
A waiter is busy. A waiter is serving. He says, "Those who are busy serving the Lord will always find the strength to do that, and what they do is going to be blessed by God." He guarantees that."
Jesus went where the people were, for He loved people. One day, He stood beside a busy road at sundown by Capernaum by the Sea of Galilee because people came up and down that road who had worked hard in fields all day, and they were headed home. Also, coming down that road were people who would work long and hard fishing in the boats all night, and they were on their way to their boats.
Jesus saw them and their weariness. They were tired. They weren't tired from their work. They were tired from their life. They were frustrated and hurt, bothered by a life without direction, strength, or purpose. They were tired of life, and He just saw those people coming and going.
He was moved by them and their pain, hurt, and weariness, just like He is by us.
So He said to them, "Come unto Me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and you'll learn that it's easy. Yoke up for life's pull with Me, and you'll find the burden to be far less great. It'll be lighter. It'll be easier because I love you. Yoke up with Me. Walk with Me. We'll face life's pull together, and it'll be easier."
