Walking Backward

I love the video for David Cook's recent single "Come Back to Me". From 98% of the video he is walking backward and all of the peripheral action is also moving backward. The only thing moving forward is the music and his mouth. I love videos that make you ask, "How did they do that?" Not the cheesy CGI stuff, but good solid creativity. Watching him walk back through time to his destination, which ultimate is the beginning, got me thinking about a few spiritual things.

I was meeting with a guy the other day and in the context of the conversation I said, "You know, a lot of people try to walk backward to Jesus." What I have noticed is that in our desire to follow Jesus, we often invest our energy more into what we are walking away FROM rather than who we are walking TO.

Many of us who grew up in church we were handed two lists. The do not's and the do's. There was a bunch of stuff we were not supposed to do and then there was a bunch of stuff we were to do. The idea being that compliance to the lists would lead us to godliness and happiness. I think that these lists were made with the best of intentions by parents, children's pastors and youth pastor's who sincere desire was to save us from sin, pain and consequences. The products of these lists typically were not passionate followers of Jesus but religious young people full of either pride or guilt. If you followed the lists then YOU did well. If you failed to follow the lists, then YOU failed.

The truth about the lists is that they are only as effective as the individuals will power.

When I watch Jesus in scripture he had a way of not giving lists to follow, but radically turning people upside down and changing their very hearts. I am so self centered. The lists I make are so self serving. When I follow the list well I get to feeling so good about myself.

Is this really the goal? Me feeling good about myself?

Or is Jesus wanting to so shift my heart and change my very motivations so that I am no longer driven by a list but driven by a deep, Jesus centered realignment of passion and motivation.

For many years I walked backward toward Jesus.

I was so set on the do and do not list that I was actually spending more time focused on the things I wanted to leave behind than the person I was desiring to know. Have you ever tried to run backward? It's a mess! I would read Paul's words saying "Run in such a way as to get the prize!" I thought I was running but I had no idea that I was not designed to run backward. Finally, as an adult, this passage from Hebrews 12 means more to me than ever, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus...". Everything shifted for me when I decided that Jesus would TRULY be Lord in my life. It is as if I have been running backward my whole life to have him reach out, turn me around and set me loose to run toward him, facing forward for the first time. Everything changed.

I still trip.

I am not perfect and know I never will be. So when I trip, I try to recover and stay on my feet. But if I should fall..fortunately I am falling in the right direction. No more walking backward for me. My eyes are fixed on Jesus.

I was made to run forward and I love it!