Deuteronomy 26:17
“You have today declared the LORD to be your God, and that you would walk in His ways and keep His statutes, His commandments and His ordinances, and listen to His voice.”
I like the phrase, “walk in His ways”. To do that we must be familiar with Him. The end of Acts 4:13 gives the pharisee’s observation about the disciples: they had “recognized that they had been with Jesus.” It’s true. They had been with Him for three years. They had known Him and attempted to be like Him.
When we come to Christ, we are to do the same thing. The problem is that the new Christian isn’t familiar with Him. So when this one attempts to do as Jesus did, he draws on what He thinks Jesus would do. He may or may not be right.
We go through some unlearning when we come to Christ. We have misconceptions about Him. My early mistake was to serve Him out of guilt. I did many things because I thought I should, not because I wanted to. 2 Corinthians 9:7 hit me like an earthquake: “Each one should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not out of regret or compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver.” This taught me that God doesn’t do things from a “should” motive, but from a “want to”. That was one of His ways that He wanted me to adopt. It’s taken time.
Another area of learning for me was perfectionism. This was trying to better myself, so as to be acceptable. I would look at myself to verify nothing came up that needed fixing. I would also look at my circumstances to see if service need doing. This was a close cousin to the “should” mindset of the previous paragraph. I had to learn that God looked at me in an accepting manner. That was also monumental. He looks at me (us) warmly. This was another way that I needed to adopt. The ramifications are that I am to look at others with acceptance.
Lord, thanks for showing us Your ways. Help us to walk in them.