Walk It or Talk It? Which is your favorite path?
Ever heard the phrase “Walk the Walk” or “Don’t Talk the Talk, if you can’t Walk the Walk”?
My question is a simple one: Are you are person who walks the walk, do you just talk a good game? Many of us in years past were characterized as “posers”. We were accused of pretending to be someone we couldn’t maintain for very long.
That made me mad. I wasn’t trying to be a phony or a hypocrite. Ooops, I used that word. Hypocrite. At age forty-four I had to come to grips with the truth that I was working so hard to maintain a life-style and reputation and relationships that I had become exhausted trying to deserve and keep.
I truly wanted to be “that guy” who could do great things and maintain great relationships performing for God and others so they would value and respect me…so they’d love me or at least like me. Then I discovered in my early forties why I was exhausted and feeling like a failure.
Though starting from childhood as a shy, backward kind of a boy, I was pushed by peers and authorities into the public eye much further than my fears ever allowed me to dream. So I was more of a walk the walk guy before “talking the talk” ever showed up on my radar. I lived a pretty good life in small town Kentucky, made good grades, kept out of trouble most of time, kept my bad behavior under the radar, and had a decent reputation at school and church. The problem was that I knew me well enough to know that reputation wasn’t entirely accurate..
I got into pornography early and was almost consumed by it by my mid-teens. At about age 15, I came to believe that God had sent His Son Jesus to pay the debt my sin had accumulated between me and God the Father. I placed my faith in what Jesus did at the cross, believing He died, was buried, and three days later rose from the grave. That, my friend, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News. Well, it is good news to know that I was no longer destined for hell but headed for heaven.
What I didn’t know was how to walk the walk of this new life. I started changing little by little, but was hampered in my relationships from left-over guilt and patterns of pornography. I tried so hard in my own feeble ways to make changes, but they didn’t last. Then one day in a college dorm room, I had another clear, powerful encounter with God. He changed me by showing me how to fight and win. It was awesome. I learned about the weapons I could use as a follower of Christ to help defeat temptations and overcome them.
Now I was much more able to not only talk the talk but more often I could walk the walk of living with a mind submitted to God’s way instead of being filled with the poison of images I had no right or business seeing. God began to renew my mind in ways I could actually notice.
That victory was a big one in a long line or victories (big and small), and in my forties another milestone was reached. Having come to a difficult spot in our marriage, I cried out to God in prayer for help. He brought a new resource into my life with which I came to understand that the love of God was much wider, longer, higher, and deeper than I had experienced up to this point. His love was visible not only in Jesus’ payment of my sin debt by His death on the cross but also in the power to live abundantly He showed by His resurrection from the dead.
Because He lives and loves. I can live and love. He is the treasure inside my life. The writer of 2 Corinthians 4:7 (the Apostle Paul) states: “we have this treasure in earthen vessels (jars of clay)”. You and I are the jars of clay, and Jesus is our treasure. Well, Jesus lives in us by Holy Spirit. He gives us the Spirit of God as earnest of the inheritance that is ours to come.
Point being: Knowing that we are loved because of His nature not in response to our behavior freed me to love Him back and love others whether they love me in return or not. That is freedom, my friend. That is power. That is being empowered to walk the walk keeping in step with talking the talk. We can now love and receive love and speak of God’s love for us, and our life shows we believe it. We don’t do this perfectly, of course; but we do get better at it with practice.
I so enjoy getting to be one person (God’s dearly loved child0 whether I am alone or in a crowd, whether I am with family or strangers, with the up and in or the down and out.