“The Journey”
Everybody has one. Life is one long journey, with many short ones in between. Sometimes while we are going through a short one it may not be seen as a part of the long one, but it is. Sometimes we affect someone else’s journey and sometimes others affect ours. I affect their small journey and they affect mine, each becomes a small part of each other’s long journey. Some small journeys we don’t want to remember and some we do.
Journeys are like a road map, they are traceable. Whether we remember them all, or not, they still affect the next journey. One builds upon another. Sort of like when my wife cooks breakfast. She cooks bacon, puts it on a plate, cooks the grits puts it on a plate, cooks the eggs, etc. and then all the pieces become breakfast. One thing builds on another until it’s complete. End of breakfast short journey? No, because it went into the body and produced health to do many more things.
We love to remember the good journeys, but don’t want to remember the bad ones. God says all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. Some bad journeys happened before we even knew we were being called to His purpose. We don’t have to dwell on the bad ones, but we don’t need to think that they don’t matter in the whole scheme of the journey, because they do. I used to love eating lots of salt, until I ate too much one day and made myself sick on it, I never want to overdo that again. That was just a small journey that made a big difference in my future. Some of us had, and still do have some really disgusting ways and habits. When we really get disgusted with our habits and began to hate them, they leave. So if we know some folks with some of these, can we please let them travel their own short journey to completion without our condemnation? The journey is hard enough without our interjection. We all travel some bad ones at times. There was an old song I used to sing even before I heard His calling, the title was “The Good Things Outweigh the Bad” and they really do. If it was the other way around, this would not be a happy place.
In my life, Jesus came when I thought my life journey was over. Rebellious people like me had to come to the end and hate myself and what I had become before that journey could be over. Then I began a great journey that I could see assemble before my very eyes. God is in big journeys and little ones. They all fit together to form a lifelong journey, the only one we will ever have. Willing people shorten the bad journeys but the rebellious prolong them. All small journeys come to completion eventually.
We all live in a fallen world with the prince of the power of the air (Satan) spewing out instructions of how we should live continually, along with help from people of like mind. Sometimes we can step into a bad journey by accident, but we learn and can be better off afterwards. Life has many journeys of many different kinds, good and bad, but they will all be turned for good in the end. Some of the worst journeys I have been on I didn’t ask for, but I learned the most from them. Sometimes things that hurt the worst, we learn the most from. A few years ago I had a serious operation. It was a hard time, but God speaks the loudest through the worse times. I would not trade that journey for anything. Nothing could ever compare to what came out of that journey.
We are all on that journey together. Good soldiers prepare at peacetime, but learn experience and wisdom during war. All journeys come and all build us up, good or bad. The greatest example of a journey was when Jesus came to the earth to deliver us from an eternal bad journey. His death and resurrection was a bad hard journey working for good.
Our conscience can be like a supernatural alarm at times. It’s almost like a window into heaven. There is no sin or disgusting habits there. We reside here, but our home is there. The perfect life is there. We are being prepared here to go there. When we do or say something that is not normal in Heaven, an alarm goes off in our conscience. The living way in Heaven is God’s way. The normal Christian life is, to become like God. Becoming like God in His way is what we are doing while we are on the earth. The conscience organ is in all humans, Christian or non-Christian, is designed to point all mankind to Him and His way.
Now back to the journey. All humans have journeys. We have to respond to those that we see and experience. If we see our non-Christian neighbor on a bad journey, what should our response be? First we pray and ask God if we are part of the solution or is someone else. Some journeys we can be the help at the end and some we had better stay out of. Only God knows the end of this man’s journey and how it should conclude. This calls for wisdom. I know, we hurt for them, he does to, but it must end His way.
Now, in the Christian realm, we think that all Christians should be perfect at new birth, as if there are no journeys. Do you have any? Ok, just checking, then we will go on. When another Christian has a problem that you notice, he probably knows it too. He knows it more than you do. He also has a window into Heaven that nags his conscience continually until it is recognized for what it is. So, as we had this same problem in the past, I think we can look over his, until its completion, can’t we? We are all on this great journey and we each have our own. The scripture says, “Let thy kingdom come thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. His Church is his body in the earth, with Him as the head. He is making it perfect, one small journey at a time. This is the normal Christian life.
We hear constantly, he got saved or she got saved last night. We have heard this for so many years it has sunk into our way of thinking, as if there are no journeys. We got born again at that time, our sin nature died and we don’t want to sin anymore, but we do at times. Our major sin died at that time, but we workout our salvation through journeys. We are being saved from the way we think and the way we do things each day. So stop condemning yourself and others for not being perfect. We are building a great house, one board at a time.
Ps: The world and Heaven were designed for good not evil. Evil (Satan) could not reside in Heaven so he was thrown out and now is in the earth. We were born into his way. We grew up dissatisfied and angry. We picked up a lot of bad habits along our way. Jesus came to save us from our way, to cleanse us from evil, while Satan watches helpless, to interfere. We belong to our creator God and His Son Jesus and we give our allegiance to no other. His way is to save and cleanse us, one journey at a time. To me, a journey is like a boxing match. It’s hard, but I don’t want to lose it. One match strengthens us for the next. That is Gods way.
David McClary
Avoicefromthemountain.com
