Where Are Your Feet Pointed?

“He leads me in paths of righteousness
    for his name's sake.”—Psalm 119:105

It is said that “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

But before that, we need to ask—Am I even pointed in the right direction? Wouldn’t it be a tragedy if, after all your steps, you ended up in the wrong place?

All too often, our destination is not far enough. We stop short of the goal. Sometimes we think we’re going in the right direction, but when we look at it, we’ve not actually gone far enough.

Worse, we think we’re going in the right direction, but the orientation is a slight degree off. We think we’re doing the right thing but our internal feet are pointed on a self-centered pursuit or motivation, perhaps just a hair off course. At first blush, it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but the difference increases over time until we find that all those little steps drop us off a thousand miles off track at the end.

God only has one end for us: shaping us into the likeness of Christ. He is the image of the invisible God, but He is also the firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:15). It is this image that He is directing our steps—that we might be conformed to this image (Rom. 8:29).

At the moment of salvation, God reorients our feet. Where sin has led us off course, He has rescued us from our path towards death. We are no longer destined for hell!

But interestingly, He doesn’t take us to heaven immediately. Rather, He walks with us through the green pastures and valleys of life. As sheep, we are prone to stray, but it is only as we walk with Him that we reach the ultimate destination.

This is our sanctification, one step, or as 2 Cor. 3:18 calls it, one degree, at a time. He guides us, but we also must submit and let Him course correct, lest we go astray. And this begins simply by making sure our feet are pointed in His direction—not our own, not in the general direction, but on track with a desire to reflect Christ more and more accurately in our life.

Where are your feet pointed?

Pointing My Feet

Lest I make this sound too simplistic, let me share a little of my own journey.

Like you, I was born with my feet pointed in the opposite direction from God’s destination.

My destination? Self-exaltation. My steps were oriented around making myself feel better or look good.

So every step I took, every grade I earned, every service I performed was to please people and earn their praise so I would feel good about myself. Conversely, I hated feeling stupid and inept, so I would do all I could to avoid failure by driving myself to perfectionism in my work.

That was my MO.

The result was that I did get what I wanted—sort of. I felt good about myself. I felt special.

But only for a moment.

After that moment passed, however, I was back at square one again. Posturing. Working. Proving.

It never ended.

I can truly say it is only by the grace of God that He has turned my feet. Though the steps I was taking seemed to get me somewhere, they never fully satisfied. I always wondered if I was good enough.

God’s Word, not surprisingly, has an answer to that question—an unequivocal answer No! You’re not good enough. I’m not good enough. None of us are. We will always fall short of perfection, no matter how hard we try (Rom. 3:23).

But it doesn’t just tell us the problem. Out of His kindness and mercy, He gave me a way out—salvation from my wretched end, my fruitless ways, through faith in Christ alone.

When I accepted His gracious offer, He picked me up, turned me around and pointed my feet towards the path that would lead me to Christ—and to true life.

That’s the first step. Have you taken it?

Baby Steps

As a baby’s first steps are slow and tentative, so were mine. After all, I am learning to walk all over again.

Because He had turned my feet, I found myself wanting, longing for, dreaming about more than just a good life here on earth. I discovered a desire to please God. If my old ways aren’t going to bring life, how will following God make a difference?

As a step of faith (because I really didn’t know what else to do), I accepted a friend’s invitation to consider going on a summer missions trip. It was right after I finished my junior year in college.

Up until that point, I had never even considered myself as a missionary. But after that summer, it was all I wanted to be.

This one step influenced many other steps afterwards. I grew to love the people there so much that I returned to the same country two more summers.

On my last trip, I met my future husband. I went on to get more formalized Bible training. We got married shortly afterwards and began planning our future steps in ministry together.

What I learned is that sometimes, we need to just take those faltering baby steps. That too is faith. We put ourselves out there, even if we’re not sure.

I will never know 100% if I’m going in the right direction, but if my heart is fixed on pleasing Him as I live in faith, I can walk forward in peace.

Are your feet pointed in the right direction? If so, what is your next step of faith?

Walking Courageously

Fast forward almost 30 years. God has still been faithfully guiding our steps as a family.

Since our marriage, my husband and I have walked with the Lord into campus ministry, homeschooling, adoption, and most recently, a job transition as we started our new non-profit ministry.

When we took these steps, they seemed scary. No one else we knew was going that way. But it seemed like God was leading us that way.

But even when we feel like we’re walking alone, when we walk with God, we are never alone. He is not only with us, He is within us by His Spirit.

And though the road ahead may seem foggy and unclear, I have found that with each step forward, the way became more clear.

Some roads, like our adoption, was dark for a long time. There were times when I wondered if we took the wrong road altogether. And even after I was sure that it was the right one, I wondered if the light would ever shine again or if this path would always be dark.

But we trusted that with our feet pointed in the right direction—towards the end goal of becoming more like Christ and furthering His kingdom—He would see to the results. My eyes must not be on the road, but on my Savior who awaits me at the end (Heb. 12:2).

Running the Race

So here we are today, at the end of March 2023. The road goes ever on and on, as Bilbo Baggins would say in The Hobbit. Every step taken leads to the next and the next and the next.

Every day, I need to abide in the Vine, to ensure that my feet stay pointed in the direction, walking in His ways. That is the only way to get to the final destination of becoming like Christ, the greatest of fruit. This hope in the Lord is what helps me to keep running and not grow weary, to walk and not be faint (Is. 40:31).

As long as I am here on earth, sometimes I will stray off the path. My feet will point off in directions away from Christ—sometimes veering backwards, sometimes heading slightly off trajectory. Thankfully, our patient Father is still faithful to me, even in these moments.

Interestingly, He uses these moments of sin and suffering to help me take further steps. There were times when I wondered if my seeming failure with our adoption disqualified me for future service. I was ashamed of my hypocrisy, my hard-heartedness, my lack of faith.

But it is also through this that the Lord has brought me here today. He used it to reshape my own heart by calling me back to HIm with the same Gospel that first saved me. He deepened my relationship with HIm in ways I would never experience unless I was in the depths of despair.

I would not have started writing if it weren’t for these hard times. In fact, it is the very struggle of life with God that gives me something to write.

I do not have things all together. Far from it. I am on the journey with you—and will be until I take my last breath.

But until then, God has given me work to do. And that is to write, share, encourage, exhort, and challenge.

With that said, God willing, I will make a slight change in how I post. Instead of randomly posting whatever comes to mind, I plan to focus each month on a particular topic, passage of Scripture, idea.

If you want to take steps of faith towards Christ, then I hope you’ll stick with me.

You can be a college student, a young adult getting started in her career, a newlywed, a mother with a household of kids, a homeschooling parent, an empty nester. It doesn’t really matter. If you love Christ and are commitment to using your life to build His kingdom, you are most welcome.

I pray that this new format will help us, you and me both, to point our feet towards Christ as we walk this journey. He awaits us at the end! Let’s walk together in it!