Keeping to the Path

Photo of Dangerous Journey Illustrated by Alan Perry

When the Lord has been active and powerfully using me for his Kingdom, I've noticed that I have a tendency of falling into one of two traps.

One of the traps is to believe that God is working in my life because I'm so good. I must have done something right because God is answering so many of my prayers and using me in so many ways. I believe I am the cause of the great things God is doing.

The other trap is quite the opposite. It is when my mistakes and sins rear their ugly faces in my mind's eye and for me to believe that because of these mistakes, I should stop praying, stop serving, stop actively telling others about what God is teaching me. I believe that I must first do something about all these screw-ups before I'm worthy to be a part of God's work. 

These two traps remind me of the dangers Christian faces on his way to the Celestial City in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. When Christian is traveling through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, he must walk along a very narrow pathway. On one side of the path is a marshland where many a good men have tried to walk but found no footing there. On the other side is a bottomless pit where wafts of black smoke billow from the very fires of hell.

Photo taken from Dangerous Journey illustrated by Alan Perry

Do you see the correlation? 

The swampy marshlands are the sinking grounds where we try to walk upon our own goodness instead of on Christ's. And the bottomless pit, which leads to hell, is where we fall when we believe we have to pay for our own sins, we have to clean ourselves up instead of Christ cleaning us up.

I have found myself slipping and tripping into these two traps repeatedly while God is answering my prayers and working through me to tell others about him. In fact, it happens so often, the mind wants to go there so easily, that I've become convinced that it's not me keeping me here on this road to the Celestial City. It's not me maintaining my own faith. God is doing that too. He's the one binding my wandering heart to him. All I do, is cry to him for help each time I slip off this path.

More on the journey: Pilgrim's Progress