Discipleship learned on the lawnmower

I remember when I was a kid, how my dad was very careful to teach my brother and myself how to mow the yard the right way. When you made the first few laps around the house, you had to throw the grass to the inside to keep it off the foundation of the house. When we came to a corner, you had to ride past the corner and make a big loop to the outside ( so as to leave the corners perfectly squared). Perhaps the most important thing was to make straight lines in the beginning, and to keep them that way. So what was the trick to make the initial lines straight? You’d begin in a corner, look across the yard as far as you were going to mow and found an object. That’s right, you find an object on the other side of the yard and drive straight to it, and never ever take your eyes off of it.

In our Christian walk, it’s important to walk in a straight path. Proverbs 4: 27 speaks to this when it says, “Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you. Ponder the path of your feet, And let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or the left, remove your foot from evil.” Just like when you’re mowing the yard, it’s most important to have an object to go straight to. Jesus Christ is the object of our faith, desire, and expectation.

To have faith in something, means you have trust in it. Our faith has to be in Christ. Peter’s faith was in Christ when he climbed out onto the raging sea. In regards to the paralytic man, “when Jesus saw their faith, he said arise take up thy bed and walk.” The faith of the men who carried the paralytic was rewarded. Their faith wasn’t in themselves, it was in Jesus.

The object of the believer’s faith for righteousness is also Christ. In Philippians 3: 8- 9, the Apostle Paul said, “and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but garbage, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” There’s nothing righteous in us, apart from Christ.

Christ is also the object of the believer’s expectation of Heaven. Our hope is that we will share in His resurrection from the dead. Just as Jesus was resurrected, so will our loved ones who are asleep in Him. Without the resurrection power we have in Jesus, we would share the same sorrowful end as all the other religions.

So what do we need to do? We need to move forward in life, despite our circumstances, our situations, and failures; keeping our eyes on Jesus , the object of our faith, desire, and expectation. Be Blessed.