Beside

'We run on up ahead, we lag behind you'

               That's a chorus lyric from Point of Grace's 1998 worship song 'Steady On'. It's one of the many songs that my sister and I were raised on in the back seat of our family's Chevrolet Blazer. I'll still recall learning to sing on those lyrics... though some wish I never had. Unlike the dashboard, I don't have an On/Off button!

               Even as a hard-hitting soprano, that one lyric from that one song always stuck in my head. Literally, are they running ahead of God or lagging behind Him? They can't do both! The oxymoron bugged me, even before I knew that such a word existed. 

               Twenty years later, the song still plays in our house. And yes, the lyric still jumps out at me. The meaning of the song has be come clear to me, making me consider Paul's word in Philippians 3...

'Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived 

at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus 

took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. 

But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 

I press on toward the goal to win the prize 

for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.' (verse 12-14) 

Even so, I couldn't help seeing that pesky lyric in a different perspective. Many pastors phrase the Christian life as our walk with God. I take that literally- SHOCKER!- since God has no worries about the paths our lives are taking here on earth. Being Christian doesn't make this walk any easier on our part though; because we tend to make the classic mistakes.

1) We run ahead- we get impatient and try to make things happen before their time; a new job, a marriage, responsibility, you fill in the blank. We put our lives on a rush order... and what happens? It ends up costing us, whether physically, emotionally, finically... or all three. And we're left wishing that we had listened, waited.

2) We lag behind - we chose not to be motivated or to 'light the fire' underneath us. We don't challenge ourselves to rise up above the 'average' standard. In doing so, we miss out on the opportunities where we would have reached our full potential. The moments that God had planned just for you.

The only pace we need to be going at is the one that places us shoulder-to-shoulder with God. That's why it's called our walk WITH Him. We turn where He turns, slow down when He does. And when He gives us that encouraging nod, we sprint forward, neck and neck... and grinning all the way!