I learned orienteering in the Army. It takes a wilderness, a map, and a compass. My brother Dave gave me a superb compass after he picked up on my interest. So the compass and a Bible are both set out in my living room as directional treasures. The Bible gives spiritual direction. It’s the one I was reading when I first met Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.
To say more. The Bible is a light in a world dark with blinding ambitions. God uses it to share his heart with those in need. It’s his self-disclosure that offers sound aims, values, and ends. It’s what we need to walk with him in eternal life. Most of all, he tells us that he cares for us.
So, walking with God is a way of life and love. He made us with a purpose, and his love invites us to receive it. Our human forefather, Adam, picked a separate path of spiritual autonomy and, with that, eternal separation from God. It’s the Serpent’s pathway of death. The Bible message is that Jesus, God’s Son, offers a way back to life. As in orienteering, we’re in a wilderness, with the Bible as a map, and the Spirit as the compass who gives sense to the Bible.
God gives his Spirit to those who want Truth. To those people attuned to his words; like sheep who recognize the voice of their shepherd. The connection starts with a first meeting. People come to know him by actually meeting him. This is much greater than simply knowing things about him. A starting point is prayer. As in, “God, I’d like to know you.” He takes it from there. Years ago I did that, and a clear thought came back to me: “So, try reading the Bible!” My living room Bible was where the action started for me: where I first met Jesus.
This isn’t new. Centuries ago a noted African scholar, Augustine, struggled with his sexual addiction. He begged God for rescue and got the same message. “Take up and read.” So he picked up his Bible and there he met God. Augustine read in Romans, and his full story is available as his book-length prayer, Confessions. I started in the gospel of Matthew. Full Bible readings followed, and in this sort of extended reading God’s personality becomes obvious.
In my last Spreading Goodness entry I wrote about the Bible as “the truth.” Starting with Christ’s striking claim, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” [John 14:6]. In this post I’m obviously asking what Jesus meant by “the way.”
“Way” speaks of direction. Of a path leading to a destination. Joshua in the Old Testament is a Bible example. “Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success” [Joshua 1:7-8].
This Law summed up the ways Moses received from God. God’s plans both in his creating and sustaining human life—the “ways of life.” God’s instructions, as we read, are both broad and particular. So that Joshua wasn’t to “turn from it to the right hand or to the left…” They were firm directions for life given as a set of relational life priorities. As in loving God; and loving others as we long to be loved. Paul wrote of this in Galatians 5:25, “… let us also keep in step with the Spirit” as a continuing life process. In practical terms, this is to “pray always” as we ask, “Lord, is this something that fits my life with you?” Whether “this” involves money we spend, thoughts we entertain, and actions we take. As in a marriage, walking with Jesus is an all-of-life experience.
How particular is this experience? It covers all bases. Old priorities are discarded, as in Jeremiah 9:23 where three core human identities or “boasts” are challenged: wisdom, power, or wealth. The goal of each boast for independent souls is personal success and security. As ways to gain stature. Wisdom comes through education. Power by our physical abilities or determined personality. And wealth is about reshaping circumstances through money.
In the next verse [24] Jeremiah offered three divine values as new core identities: “… but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”
Each of these is relationship-based or other-centered, while the former trio are self-concerned. The first of the latter set, “steadfast love,” is a translation of the Hebrew “chesed.” If we look for the Greek equivalent, we find “agape” that sets up the twin commands to “love God” and “love neighbor”—what Jesus set out as the two ultimate aims for a life with him.
John offered another set of false identities: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” [1 Jn 2:15-17].
Once again, we have a set of options that we can call “loves” or “deep desires.” And in Romans 1:24-25 God is blunt in telling us, through Paul, not to love the creation in place of our Creator!
The logic here is obvious—we have full access to a sound spiritual compass! We are meant to live unending lives, so we need to follow new paths that take us there. And with this, the death of our bodies is just a transition to what follows. Those of us who have God as our eternal companion are assured of all we long for: for meaning, purpose, and everlasting joy.
So there is only one “way” to go. We start with repentance—daily discarding any distractions or “idols”—and now live in the way of God’s divine love revealed in Jesus. We pray “always” with a believer’s new devotion, “not my will, but thy will be done.” This brings the joy of gaining the most satisfying and assuring sense of direction we could ever hope for.
