Footsteps

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Pastor Rickey D. Dixon 0:00

God this morning, so glad for all of you to join with our Sunday podcast this Sunday morning. We thank God this is the Holy City Spirit of Truth Ministries and also our bearing witness to the truth podcast, your host, pastor, and teacher, Ricky D. Dixon. We're so glad to have another opportunity to come before you to bring to you the word of God that our lives, all of our lives, will be blessed by it. Let's get into the word of God this morning because I want to really say something to bless someone's life during this podcast hour. Those of us whom the Lord has been blessed to become parents, parents, we have also been blessed to see our children grow and develop over the many years. But one of the proudest moments as a parent has to be when we finally see our babies make their first footsteps and the beginning of them learning how to stand and walk. We help them and guide them and we hold them up by the hands and show them which way to go, allowing them to take each step slowly and carefully until they build up within themselves the confidence to make each step on their own. But even then, we are watching them closely and guiding them in the way that they should walk and directing their steps. My brothers and my sisters in the Lord this morning, God is our Father. Hallelujah. And Jesus is our Savior and elder brother. They are very concerned with us making the right steps. And they are very concerned with us walking in the ways towards holiness and righteousness in our life here while we're here on this earth. When we are born again in Christ and become new creatures in Him, we also are become newborn spiritual infants in the Lord. We are babies once again, but spiritually, because we have been born again through Christ Jesus. God is our Heavenly Father. Jesus is the first fruit, the Bible says he's the first fruit of many brethren. And it's through him we have become the children of God. And it is through him that we need to learn how to walk again and make the same footsteps he made while we are here on this earth. In this morning's message, my thought this morning will be simply footsteps. Now, for some of us to develop spiritually, there are some things we must do that our growth and our godly development is not restricted or hindered in any way. And I'm gonna let Brother Peter help us this morning in his error. In the book of 1 Peter, chapter 2, 1 Peter chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, Peter says this, hallelujah, hallelujah. Wherefore, laying aside, gotta get rid of it, laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speaking. Oh, that's got to go, y'all. It's got to go. In verse 2, he tells us why. Because as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby. You cannot grow, we cannot grow on the sincere milk of God's word if all this other stuff is mixed in our lives, which is gonna serve for no other purpose but to hinder us from growing and developing in God through Christ Jesus. And we will never be able to follow in his footsteps. As newborn spiritual babies, we must develop and grow in the grace of the Father. We now must be taught how to walk all over again, but in a spiritual way. But this time we must learn how to walk in the steps of Jesus, in godliness, in obedience, following in his footsteps, these steps of which we are required to take must be walked in accordance with his word. If we attempt to go it alone and try to make these steps in life on our own while we are living by our own ways and following our own words and not the words of God, we will never develop spiritually, which means we will never learn how to walk spiritually. Spiritually crippled is spiritually undeveloped, and it's too many spiritual cripples because we're not walking in the steps of Christ Jesus. See, the word of God is a sincere milk. That means it's real. That's the this is the realest milk you ever drink because it's spiritual and it comes from God's word. The word of God is a sincere milk, it is a real milk we need to develop properly. It is the word of God, hallelujah, hallelujah, which is required for our spiritual development in Christ that we may be able to grow and walk in the footsteps of Jesus. If we do not learn how to walk in him on our spiritual legs and feet, how can we ever follow him if we haven't learned how to walk in him? Come on now. Come on. How can we follow him if we have not learned through his word how to even stand on our legs and our feet? See the evil, see this evil, worldly, these evil worldly ingredients like malice, guile, hypocrisy, fornication, evil speaking, envies, lying, living like the world, and the such like anything such like that, are all the things we must lay aside. That's what Peter's trying to tell us. Got to lay all this aside. If you don't drink this hymn, this hymn, spiritual milk of the word of God, these things got to be laid aside, mean you got to get rid of them. They got to go out of your life. You must lay them aside. Right now, if we are to follow the Lord's footsteps, we gotta let that stuff go, y'all. And and for some of us, we are yet have not completely stopped kicking and bucking against what the flesh wants and what we want, in contrary to what God wants and what Jesus wants, which is why a lot of us still have problems letting go. We have problems submitting. We have problems making up on our minds that this is the life we know we got to live this life, but we ain't quite sure that we ready 100% to live it, 100% to walk it. And this is gonna prove totally hindrance to our making it to the kingdom of God. Because ain't nothing in this world, ain't nothing this world can produce, ain't nothing this world got right now, ain't nothing this world can show you that's more valuable than what God got for you. Because I keep telling folks all the time, this stuff we trying to hold on to is all gonna pass away. How can you hold on to something that's gonna pass away anyway? Why can you how can you give your heart over to something that's gonna pass away anyway? Mixing these sinful additives in with the sincere milk of God's word will stop the growth and the spiritual development of God's children. And we will never develop the strength we will need in order to learn how to stand. Hallelujah! Hallelujah, hallelujah, and to walk toward him. We will never grow to make our first steps because we are refusing to live righteously before him, desiring the sincere milk of his word. We cannot continue to reject God's word and think we can live like we want to live and how we want to live without his word being our guide, without his word being our source of strength. Many of us will come to understand this morning, I hope you do, why it is and why it has been that in our lives it appears that we have not been growing any stronger in the Lord than we have so far. It is because we have not learned how to walk in his steps, hallelujah, hallelujah, and we have just simply refused to follow him, following everything else. We don't have a problem with it, but when it comes to following Jesus, we got problems with it. Let me let Peter tell you something else. In the book of 1 Peter, stay in 1 Peter chapter 2, stay in that same chapter, but go down to verse 21. 1 Peter 2, 21. Peter says this, and we all need to get this, get this in your head and get this in your spirit. If you're gonna follow Jesus now, get this in your head. He said, For even here unto were you called. God, this is what you done called. God has called us to live this kind of life. How you gonna fight against a life God done called you to live? We were called to live this hymn. We was called to live holy, we was called to live righteous, we was called to follow Jesus' footsteps. He said, For even hereunto were you called, because Christ also suffered for you. You know why that's why he called you? Because he suffered for you, now he calling you to suffer for him. But see, we don't want to hear Jesus calling us to suffer for him. Oh, but we should glad he heard the call of God for him to suffer for us. For even here unto were you called, because Christ also suffered for us, but in his suffering, this is what people said, leaving us an example. And his why, even while he was suffering, he was leaving us an example. Do y'all see that? Even while he was suffering for us, this is what the book said. He left us an example. What you leave with Jesus, that ye should follow his steps. Come on now. That's a book. Like you can have a problem with all you want to, but I'm giving you the word, I'm giving you the truth, leaving us an example, so when we grab a hold to him and see the example that he left us, we're gonna see that the example he left for us was that we should, that we should not think about it, should follow himself, follow him. Now he done this while he was suffering to make sure that we got it. Can we, in all honesty, say that we have followed daily the example that Christ has left for us to follow? Daily. Can we say we've done that daily? No, we're gonna be honest, we're gonna tell the truth. Can we admit to ourselves that we have fallen a little short of this requirement? Yes, Lord. Forgive us, of which we have been instructed to do, yes, Lord, but we're gonna get it right. We're gonna get it right. Jesus walked in the path of holiness and righteousness before God, and so are we required to do so as well. God has set a path of righteousness before us through Christ Jesus, and we must find ourselves walking on this path each and every day that the Lord allows us to live. Come on now. We, talking about all of us, we must with a godly purpose learn to discipline ourselves. And that's the one thing people don't like to do. They discipline, oh, we're disciplined and tell correct everybody else. But the one thing we must focus on, y'all, is to learn how to discipline ourselves in not veering off to the left and not veering off to the right of this path that Christ done left for us as an example and make straight paths for our own feet. Well, let me let Paul tell you. In the book of Hebrew, chapter 12, Hebrew, chapter 12. I got two verses for you. Hebrews chapter 12, verses 12 and 13. Two verses. Paul says this, Hebrews 12 and 12. He says, Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, get your knees, see, feeble knees can't walk right. You gotta get your knees right, get your legs right, lift up the hand to hang down and the feeble knee. Why are you talking to us like that, Paul? Verse 13, and make straight paths for your feet. Y'all see the word? I want y'all to see this word now, because it's plain. See, what we don't one thing a lot of us don't realize is that when we stand before the judgment of God, this the word of God that we know we done heard, which is gonna be a witness against us that we have heard it. Now, whether you did it or not, the word is gonna be a witness against you. Let me tell you something about the word. It don't lie. Now you can't say you ain't never heard the truth of how you supposed to be walking. You can't say that you ain't heard how you're supposed to fall in the footsteps of Jesus. It's gonna be a witness against us. We got to get this thing right, y'all. This is serious business. Verse 13, and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way, but let it rather be healed. See, if you want to keep on acting like you ain't got no spiritual legs and act like you're lame towards God and you don't know all of you need to know, keep acting lame if you want to. Keep acting like you you spiritually lame, can't walk, I can't make no footsteps. And the Lord know my heart. I'm I he know I tried. Keep on. You're gonna be taken out the way. But what you should be doing is praying, Lord, heal my spiritual legs, heal my feet, that I will be able to have the strength to make straight paths for my feet. See, now I'm fully aware. See, I've been in this thing a long time. I'm fully aware that there are some of you who hear what I'm saying, and also understand the words that I'm saying. But many have no clue as to how to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. We hear the word, but do we actually know how? This is what we shall learn this morning. If you have ears to hear the word of God, many of us have been deceived. I'm gonna tell y'all something now. Many of us have been deceived into thinking that we can walk and live each day as we see fit and as we deem necessary for our own personal and private agendas. Many of us believe that. We've been deceived. Come on, I'm gonna tell you something now. See, this ungodly spirit that's causing people, mankind to think like this, it's an ungodly spirit and it's a worldly mindset. And it's called, listen to me, legalism. When you get time to research that word, legalism, but I'm gonna tell you about it now. Listen to me right now. The spirit of legalism has the world thinking and believing that a person can earn God's acceptance, his approval, and salvation through the acts of just doing good deeds, through moral performances. You just did the right thing. And just by talking, a good talk about the Bible and the word of God, you meet somebody in the grocery store because y'all quoted a few scriptures to each other, but ain't living nothing. Be not deceived. We must know the truth, and the truth is we must walk in the footsteps of Jesus while you're doing all that talking and all that putting on. See, it is through Jesus that we must make straight paths for our feet. Legalism applies emphasis on how you portray yourself more noticeably in an outwardly behavior, just so you look like you save on that side, rather than an inward changing of the heart by faith in God. So, hallelujah! But how hallelujah! But those who think in this way, I'm telling you something, I'm telling you to your face, they are wrong, they are blind, and they are in a state and a place of dark ignorance. God's word teaches us that we were hereunto called to suffer and to walk and follow in the steps of Jesus. Solomon says in the book of Proverbs, Proverbs chapter 14, Proverbs chapter 14, verse 2, he says this he that walketh in his uprightness feareth the Lord. I want you to get that. When you are doing all you know to walk right before God, you have a fear and a reveren. I'm talking about a reverential fear of God. Too many people's problems today is that they have lost their reverential fear of God. Don't fear God. People don't fear God. He that walketh in his uprightness, you trying your best to walk right every day. That means Solomon said that's a person that fears the Lord. He said, But he that is perverse, don't do what you want to do, that perverse lifestyle. He that is perverse in his ways despises him. That means if you're living how you want to live, you're showing God that you despise him and not fear him. We need to get it, we need to understand what I'm telling you this morning. It's so easy for us to walk around here in blind ignorance and not knowing that we're living a life that's against God, the very one that got you breathing right now. Say it again, Solomon. He that walketh in his uprightness feareth the Lord. But he that is perverse in his ways despises him. I don't want to, I don't want my life to ever even resemble me despising God as much as God done done for me. I can't despise him. I will fear him with a holy fear, a reverential fear, because he is gone and there's nobody higher than him. He is the most high, the holy one. I would not despise him, I can't go against him. Do we no longer love the Lord and his ways? Have we lost our fear and reverence of him? Do we not know that if we despise him, we sin before him? That's a sin. See, in our choosing to walk according to our own ways, our ways are then speaking back to God, saying unto God that we have chosen to go against you. We have chosen to go against your word, we have chosen to go against your will because of your perverse nature to do what you want to do. That's what your ways are saying back to God. It is when we have godly fear that we will walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Let me give you something, David said in the book of Psalms. Psalms 119, the 119th chapter, verse 133. He says, He tells says on the Lord, order my steps in thy word. See, when you order when you allow yourself and your steps to be ordered in the word of God. You on the path that you should be on. You on a path of true righteousness. You on a path of true holiness. Because you're praying to the Lord all of my steps. You guide my steps. But in your word, all my steps in thy word, David said. And let not any iniquity, any sin that's out there, have dominion over me. I don't want no sin to have dominion over me, trying to stop me from walking in the footsteps of Jesus. And it won't happen like that because as every day I live, each and every day I walk this earth, I'm praying before God and say, All of my steps in your word. As long as I know I'm stepping according to your word, walking according to your word, following Jesus according to your word. I ain't gonna let none of this iniquity have no dominion over me. If anything, I'm gonna let your word have dominion over me. Saints of God, let me help you, let me say something. Do you not know that if we were determined to please the Lord, there will be no question about whether or not we will walk the path of righteousness? We ain't be no question because then we will be doing it. Because we will be on that path each and every day, and we will be on that path right now without question. I hope I done got through, but before I let you go, I hope I've got through to you. And in my attempts to awaken us to this text and understanding of God's word, I pray that we see the seriousness of our walking in the footsteps of Jesus. Because it's most definitely we need to see that it's connected to our salvation and it's connected to our eternal life. A child of God developing by the drinking of the sincere milk of God's word is a child of God who acknowledges the Lord in his ways, all his ways. These are they who are willing to make sure and to be very sure that their paths are being directed by nothing and by nobody but the Lord. Let me give you a little bit more about my psalm. Let me give you a little bit more about Solomon. Back in the book of Proverbs, chapter 3. Let me just give you a little bit of this. Proverbs chapter 3, verses 5 and 6. He said, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. Why I can't lean to my understanding? Okay, because every time we lean to our own understanding, we're gonna fall. Lean, keep leaning with your own, keep lean right now with your own understanding, and think you can direct the rest of your day. That you can take care of yourself. Keep yourself breathing, keep your blood pumping, keep yourself thinking, keep your body backing. See, leaning to your own ways, you ain't gonna make it. You can't lean to. We cannot, we were not meant to lean according to our own understanding. Because our minds get off. And everybody knows that's a true fact. We get off in our thinking. And God wants us to trust in Him with all our let him do the thinking, let Him do the guiding our footstep, and let us not be leaning to our own understanding. See, when we try to do things our way, we push God out, and we have pushed God too much out of our lives. It's why our lives is now some of our lives is upside down and some of our lives is downside up. And we can't fix it no kind of way we try. But I'm gonna tell you this, Mo, if you give it to God, He'll straighten it out for you. If you just walk according to the footsteps of Jesus, he'll fix it for you. He'll show you the way that you should go, the way your life should have been going all along. He'll show you. He says, Trust in the Lord with all thine heart. Lean not to your own under thine own understanding. Verse 6, and in all thy ways acknowledge him. See, we don't want to go to God for nothing. He said, In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy path. That path is again what you're supposed to be walking on. Since we don't know how to direct our own self on the path, why not acknowledge him who knows the way of the path? And let him direct our path. I learned something long time ago, many years ago, walking with the Lord, and many times I read this hymn. This Holy Ghost spoke to me just as clear as a bell. And when I read that point about He shall direct thy path, the a deeper nugget came to me and said, Anytime we trust God to direct our path, we can rest assured that God will always direct us in the right way. See, you asking other folks for this and asking for this, and you and yourself, you may get it right, you may not. But with God, it's gonna always be the right direction and the right path every time. Which means this is why you can put your trust in him. This is why you can trust in the Lord with all your heart, because every time God's gonna be right, every time he's gonna be right. There are many enemies against us when it comes to us following in Jesus' examples of living, many again, many enemies that are against us and walking in his footsteps. A couple of those enemies are abiding right in our own heads, causing us spiritual damage in our own mind. A lot of stuff already, a lot of our enemies, y'all, is coming out of our own heads and our own minds. I might as well have told you. That's where a lot of them come from. Let me tell you about two of them. The first one, we don't like to follow nobody when it comes to our own life. The second one is we don't like to acknowledge or ask nobody nothing if it's concerned what we want to do. Because I ain't gonna let nobody tell me how to do my life and do what I want to do. We don't want to follow Jesus, and we don't want to ask him for guidance and direction before we do what it is we want to do. And I'm gonna tell you this morning, look it back over your life in hindsight and see why so much damage and so much stuff done been out of whack. And look at yourself because you the one caused it because you was trying to follow your own direction and wouldn't let the Lord guide you. Look how torque your life is or has become as a result of us not acknowledging the Lord in all our ways and trusting Him. See, falling in the footsteps of Christ, let me tell you something. It requires humility, it requires selflessness and self-denial. It requires an acceptance of the truth and trusting in the Lord. And it requires us seeing him as greater than we see ourselves. You got to see him as being greater than you, because he is. Let me let Brother Joe, let me just let Brother Job tell you one more thing. Let me let Brother Job tell you something. Let me let Brother Job say something. See, some of you just might hear and believe Job and what he has to say. In the book of Job, chapter 23, chapter 23, verses 10, 11, and 12. When you get time, you can read the whole chapter. Job chapter 23, three verses, 10, 11, and 12. Job says this, verse 10, when he was going through what he was going through. He said, but he's talking about the Lord. He said, but he knoweth the way that I take. Come on now. Come on, Job. One thing, when you walk in the footsteps of Jesus, and you know you walking righteously and in holy, you can say to anybody, like Joe had to tell his friend, he knows the way I take. Jesus knew I'm following him. God know I'm following him. Tell him, Job. He knows the way I take. When he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold. God knows when he see when you walk it right, you can walk with this kind of confidence. That know whatever you go through, you he know I'm on his right path. And he knows when he tried me, I'm gonna come through just as pure as gold. You can't come through as pure as gold if you ain't walking righteously, if you ain't walking in holiness. Verse 11. Joe tell him, he said, My foot has held his steps. Come on here, Joe. I know I'm walking in the Lord's steps. My foot have held his steps. Listen to what Joe's saying. My foot has held his steps. Can all of us say that our foot have held and stayed in the steps of Jesus? We need to be able to say that, and we need to get there. Repent and get yourself on the path of Jesus. My foot has held his steps, his way have I kept. Come on now. You can talk bolder when you know you're living like you're supposed to live. And not decline. My foot has held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined. That means I ain't never got off the I ain't never got off the path. I ain't gonna get off the path. Verse 12. He says, Neither have I gone back from the commandments of his lips. I'm keeping just what he says, and what thus says the Lord. Ain't what Jesus said? Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. This is what Job says. Neither have I gone back from his commandments of his lips. Those are the words that have come out and proceeded out of the mouth of God. He says, I have, listen at this hymn, and we need to grab this one right here. I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. Now come on now, because we like to eat. But Paul, but here Job, excuse me, here Job is saying, I esteem the words of God's mouth more than my necessary food, more than me eating food for my rebel abody. I put his word, the words that come out of his mouth, more valuable, and I esteem them more highly than my necessary food. So you don't know what we're gone when you talk like that. My brothers and sisters this morning, the Lord is concerned in how we live, and he is very much concerned with the footsteps we make in this life following him, and we as his people should be just as equally concerned in making sure that we walk right before him. God bless you, God bless you, and I pray that we stay walking in the footsteps of Jesus.