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June 2 – Walking the Path · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:03
  Welcome back to the Daily Ripples podcast.
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  I'm Pastor Mike, and I have on our show with us again today, Pastor Larry, a good friend
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  of mine, thankful that he's back with us, and he'll be with us today and tomorrow as
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  well.
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  But we're going to jump right in with our devotional, our Daily Ripples for June the
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  2nd, which is titled Walking the Path.
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  And I'm going to invite Larry to read it if he has it pulled up.
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  Yeah, absolutely.
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  So June 2nd, Walking the Path of the Stone is this.
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  Growth is not theoretical.
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  It requires movement.
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  A path only becomes real when I begin to walk it.
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  And ripple number one is the practical application.
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  Today, I will focus on taking the next step in front of me.
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  I do not need to see the whole journey.
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  I need to act on what I know is right.
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  Progress is built one step at a time.
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  And ripple number two, the spiritual aspect,
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  Jesus calls us to follow, not just to understand.
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  And as I walk in His way, the Holy Spirit guides my steps and steadies my footing.
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  The Father reveals more as I move forward in trust.
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  Over time, the path becomes clearer and I grow stronger with each step.
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  Well, thank you.
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  As you were reading that today, I was honing in on the spiritual application of this specifically,
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  the part that says the Father reveals more as I move forward in trust.
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  I think about that because as we're stepping out in faith, as we're following the guidance
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  of the Holy Spirit in wherever He's leading us, whether that's to work with somebody else
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  in recovery or whether that's just to share our own experiences of faith with somebody in
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  the church. But when we're moving forward, there's always that fear that comes from the unknown,
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  right? I mean, because often the Holy Spirit is leading us into places that we have not visited
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  before. And I was thinking about that phenomenon, and I was looking in the prophet Isaiah, you know,
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  in the Old Testament, in chapter 30, in verse 21, he writes, you know, whether you turn to the right
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  or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it.
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  So in other words, following the guidance of God, but the voice that he was hearing was behind him,
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  not ahead of him. Because if we could see, you know, God going before us, I think it'd be much
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  easier for us to follow because we're being, you know, led, and we are led, you know, from within.
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  But when it comes to being called into service, you know, for others, often it's a prompt, you know,
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  from that still small voice, you know, it's a urging of, well, you know, they need help and
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  maybe you're the one that needs to help them, even though there are many times when I don't
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  feel equipped, you know, to be that held. But I was thinking about that this time in particular,
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  about that phenomenon of God kind of guiding us from behind us, you know, kind of, and that
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  matches up with a lot of times our experiences that lead to our trust in God or in our higher power,
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  Because we can often see, you know, God at work in our lives as we look back, you know, as we look upon our past and we see what God has carried us through, then that starts to build the trust and reliance on God.
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  But if we stop listening to where God is leading us forward, then it becomes a cute story to reflect on and not a source of faith and strength.
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  But that's where I initially went or thought of, you know, with today's entry.
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  Yeah. When you were saying that, a wonderful memory came up that sort of illustrates that. My friend Aaron Dennis has a son that's two years old, and my wife and I are blessed that Aaron and his wife, Alexa, have invited us into their family. And I don't mean to brag, but his children love me as much as my grandchildren do.
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  Yeah, right. But the two-year-old was just learning to walk not that long ago.
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  Yeah. And, and, you know, one of the things you do is you put your hands out and you say, come to me. And that rarely gets a step in your direction. Right. It might get a desire on the person on the child is there. But what they really appreciate is when you hold two fingers out and they wrap one hand around each finger and you stand behind them.
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  And as they take a step, you move forward with them, and they gain confidence in those steps, knowing that you're right there with them and right there behind them.
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  That was just an image that just popped into my head in thinking about that.
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  Wow. Yeah, that's a beautiful analogy as well.
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  That could be a whole sermon probably developed out of that.
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  And the trust of children.
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  you know, when you're behind them, they don't have that fear of falling as much because they know
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  that you're right there and that if they fall, you're going to catch them. And, you know,
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  to continue that analogy, I mean, God works the same way, you know, times in my life when I was
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  falling, you know, either through my own actions or through life circumstances, you know, I never
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  fell so far that, you know, God wasn't there to pick me up. You know, even whenever I fell
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  completely off the wagon of faith, you know, whenever I was a young man and, you know, decided
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  to, you know, abandon the faith and kind of lived in that kind of atheist viewpoint for, you know,
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  16 or 17 years, you know. I certainly didn't think that God was with me because I wasn't even trying
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  to have any faith or reliance upon Him at all anyway. But looking back, I can see where God was
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  watching over and protecting me that whole time, you know. He was right there, you know, behind me,
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  And even if I wasn't trying to hold his hand, he still had his hands on my shoulders, you know, kind of trying to steady my path and lead me to the place where I could use my experiences to be where I am now, which is, you know, as a pastor in the church and as someone in the rooms of recovery, trying to help other people, you know, work through the steps and connect with sponsors and, you know, get well and find recovery, kind of being that same kind of guide.
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  You know, we often use the analogy, especially as pastors of a shepherd, you know, that leads us.
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  But sometimes, you know, the shepherd is guiding from behind.
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  Sometimes the shepherd is calling.
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  You know, the shepherd is not always going before us.
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  Often, you know, as we've been talking about, that guidance kind of comes from behind, kind of as that steady hand.
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  And kind of, you know, shifting gears a little bit, you know, it also says that, you know, as we go forward,
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  The Father reveals more, you know, as we trust Him and move forward.
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  What have you learned about, you know, God that you couldn't have learned without actually
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  following the guidance of where the Spirit was leading you?
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  I learned this lesson early on when I was answering the call to ministry.
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  And I took a crooked path to the pulpit, and I was 46 or 47 years old before I even
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  imagine that God was asking me to do something different and to serve and love people from the
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  perspective of a pastor. And there were a lot of things I needed to do. Go back and finish my college
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  degree at 47 and then go to graduate school after that. And I was, you know, at that point,
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  maybe seven years recovered and just a couple of years into a real job. And I'm still paying off
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  debts, you know, from my past life. You know, I didn't have the funds to do that. And my pastor
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  at the time, this wonderful woman, Reverend Martha Wagley, who I still consider to be my pastor,
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  she said, you don't need to see all that. You just need to see the next point of light.
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  I imagine the light that we're standing in, and when I imagined it, I imagined being in a tunnel.
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  It was dark.
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  When I was imagining what she was saying to me, I can see the light around my feet,
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  and that's a very comfortable place to be if you're standing in the dark.
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  And the next point of light, it might be a bright head beam.
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  It might just be a pin light.
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  It might just be a hint at not only what direction to go, but also it's time to move.
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  It's time to take that next step.
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  And I want to see ahead.
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  I want to know what's around the bend, up the curb, over the hill, so that I can be in control of it and I can be playing it.
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  Right?
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  Yeah.
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  But it all goes back to trust, like you were talking about with a toddler, learn to walk.
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  It all goes back to trust and trust.
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  And sometimes I have to trust that that next point of light is going to come.
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  I mean, I've sat in that pool of light that's been very comfortable until it's gotten uncomfortable.
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  And I'm ready.
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  I feel ready for something else, but I'm not getting that sense from God that it's time for me to move on to something else.
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  So sometimes it's waiting for me on that direction, on that point of light to move to.
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  Yeah.
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  When you were sharing about that in particular, and especially because, probably because you
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  were talking about our mutual friend Aaron Dennis earlier, it made me think about seeing
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  that next step ahead of you when you're not certain of the full, you know, picture moving
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  forward.
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  I had a similar experience when at around 40 years old, I started seminary, you know, to
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  the change, you know, mid-career, same situation. My past is as a certified, you know, public
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  accountant, bookkeeper, auditor, things of that nature. Well, you know, after I was called in the
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  ministry and after I talked to, you know, my pastor at HeartSong, you know, Steve Stone, and after I
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  talked to the district and got, you know, classified as certified candidate, what have you, I knew that
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  one of the next things that I needed to do was seminary, but I didn't have a clue how to go about
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  that. And I remember that it was the summer of 2016, and I saw an advertisement or something
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  about the enrollment deadline for the fall semester at Memphis Theological Seminary. And I felt the
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  urging of the Holy Spirit, and I thought, well, it's probably too late, because it was either the
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  day of the deadline or something like that. I was like, it's probably too late, but let me go ahead,
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  and I feel like I need to apply. And sure enough, my application was accepted and I had a lot of,
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  you know, nerves about incurring, you know, student loan debt because I never had to do that for
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  undergraduate, you know, college or anything like that. And, but, you know, and then seeing the next
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  pinprick of light, I was a couple of months into my attendance there, you know, after I'd enrolled
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  and got the student loan thing worked out and I started attending. And a couple of months in,
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  the financial aid office called me up and they said, hey, there's a available scholarship out
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  there for Methodist candidates that would cover half of your tuition for the entirety of your,
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  you know, stay at MTS. And so that was just the next, you know, pinpoint a light affirmation that,
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  you know, I was on the right track. And I need those lessons. I needed them then,
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  and I still need those lessons even today because those lessons, those experiences that,
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  you know, looking back as I continue to walk the path ahead are what, you know, reaffirms my,
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  you know, faith day after day. Yeah. Yeah. Um, there was a song that came to mind. Oh,
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  sorry. The Aaron Dennis connection I was getting to is that he was a fellow student that that's
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  where we met was at MTS. So that made me think of when I first enrolled there. Uh, and I just
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  Smithjaw, I graduated in December of 2016.
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  Oh, wow, yeah.
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  I finished my classwork.
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  Yeah.
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  But we were talking about lessons and learning those lessons.
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  There's a song that I was listening to on my way here called I Am by a group called SatSang.
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  But there's a line in that song that says,
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  the more lessons rain down, the more blessings I see.
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  And I think that's the, I guess that's the math of that movement, right?
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  Coming to a place of understanding where I am and then hearing that nudge to move into the blessings that are in the next step.
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  Absolutely.
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  Well, I think that's a good place for us to stop on this episode for today.
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  And Larry, if you would, close us out with our prayer for June 2nd.
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  All right.
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  Let's pray.
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  Father, guide my steps today.
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  Through your Spirit, give me the courage to walk forward in faith
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  and follow the path set before me through your Son.
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  Amen.
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  Amen.
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  Amen.