Walking the territory
Get up; walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” Genesis 13.17
Before our family went to live in Kansas City, Missouri, I bought a map. Kansas City is built on the grid system, so the map was a pleasure of simplicity to look at. I drew a circle round the place where we were to live and memorized the names of the streets nearby. It was all book knowledge, but in the spirit of the song; “This Land Is Our Land” I felt like I owned Kansas City and I wasn’t there yet.
In the wonderfully hot summer of 1973 I walked those streets, and we drove them, exploring the clean friendly city and all of its treasures. Faith is like this, there is a kind of faith that people own because they have learnt it from a book, or believed what they heard in church. They call it ‘their faith’ but they haven’t really walked the streets yet. As faith develops there comes a day when, mentally, they step off the map and into the streets of faith, they walk around, exploring the sub-divisions, gazing at the view from high places. Faith has become lifestyle.
How does it happen? Usually by attending to some instruction in the guidebook and going there. A person whose faith is passive, or has been limited to a mental opinion could be said, to be still reading the map. One day he/she becomes convinced that faith requires activity, so they decide to try one activity. The result is exciting, they decide to try another activity and suddenly they are walking the streets of faith. Faith increases with use and as they act according to the requirements of faith their confidence in the goodness of God increases. They are alive to God, their life is no longer limited to the ‘now’ but assimilates the future, they no longer walk alone they are accompanied.
When I read the words of God to Abram, I understand them as spoken to me also, “Get up, and walk through the land, the length of it and the breadth of it, for I will give it unto you.” God wants to give us faith; he wants to increase our faith. He speaks to us, through scripture, telling us to take possession of the gift of faith and begin to explore it; experience its hills and valleys. As we do this a life stirs within us which we know is not the pale thing we called life before but is God living in us and through us, and we are told that the new life of God within us will continue past death, into futures we have not yet seen on any map.
John 7:17
Before our family went to live in Kansas City, Missouri, I bought a map. Kansas City is built on the grid system, so the map was a pleasure of simplicity to look at. I drew a circle round the place where we were to live and memorized the names of the streets nearby. It was all book knowledge, but in the spirit of the song; “This Land Is Our Land” I felt like I owned Kansas City and I wasn’t there yet.
In the wonderfully hot summer of 1973 I walked those streets, and we drove them, exploring the clean friendly city and all of its treasures. Faith is like this, there is a kind of faith that people own because they have learnt it from a book, or believed what they heard in church. They call it ‘their faith’ but they haven’t really walked the streets yet. As faith develops there comes a day when, mentally, they step off the map and into the streets of faith, they walk around, exploring the sub-divisions, gazing at the view from high places. Faith has become lifestyle.
How does it happen? Usually by attending to some instruction in the guidebook and going there. A person whose faith is passive, or has been limited to a mental opinion could be said, to be still reading the map. One day he/she becomes convinced that faith requires activity, so they decide to try one activity. The result is exciting, they decide to try another activity and suddenly they are walking the streets of faith. Faith increases with use and as they act according to the requirements of faith their confidence in the goodness of God increases. They are alive to God, their life is no longer limited to the ‘now’ but assimilates the future, they no longer walk alone they are accompanied.
When I read the words of God to Abram, I understand them as spoken to me also, “Get up, and walk through the land, the length of it and the breadth of it, for I will give it unto you.” God wants to give us faith; he wants to increase our faith. He speaks to us, through scripture, telling us to take possession of the gift of faith and begin to explore it; experience its hills and valleys. As we do this a life stirs within us which we know is not the pale thing we called life before but is God living in us and through us, and we are told that the new life of God within us will continue past death, into futures we have not yet seen on any map.
John 7:17
posted by Jessie Coates at 12:03 PM
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