The Walk: Five Essential Practices of the Christian Life

By Adam Hamilton

How do we walk with Christ—daily follow him, grow in him, and faithfully serve him?
In the Gospels, Jesus modeled for us the Christian spiritual life. The apostles taught it in their writings. And the Church has, through the last 2,000 years, sought to pursue this Christian spiritual life.

In The Walk, Adam Hamilton focuses on five essential spiritual practices that are rooted in Jesus’ own walk with God and taught throughout the New Testament. Each of these practices is intended as part of our daily walk with Christ while also being an essential part of growing together in the church.


In each chapter, Hamilton explores one of these practices, its New Testament foundation, and what it looks like to pursue this practice daily in our personal life and together in the life of the church. Deepen your walk with Christ as we explore the five essential practices of worship, study, serving, giving, and bearing witness to our faith.


Additional components for a six-week adult study include a comprehensive Leader Guide and a DVD featuring the engaging teachings of author and pastor Adam Hamilton. Also available are resources for children and youth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: Dec 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781501891199

Adam Hamilton

Adam Hamilton is the founding pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. Started in 1990 with four people, the church has grown to become the largest United Methodist Church in the United States with over 18,000 members. The church is well known for connecting with agnostics, skeptics, and spiritual seekers. In 2012, it was recognized as the most influential mainline church in America, and Hamilton was asked by the White House to deliver the sermon at the Obama inaugural prayer service. Hamilton, whose theological training includes an undergraduate degree from Oral Roberts University and a graduate degree from Southern Methodist University where he was honored for his work in social ethics, is the author of nineteen books. He has been married to his wife, LaVon, for thirty-one years and has two adult daughters.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

WALKING WITH GOD

During that day’s cool evening breeze, they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden; and the man and his wife hid themselves from the LORD God in the middle of the garden’s trees. The LORD God called to the man and said to him, Where are you?

Genesis 3:8-9

A year before his untimely death in a car accident in 2003, Mike Yaconelli wrote a book called, Messy Spirituality: God’s Annoying Love for Imperfect People. The book deeply resonated with me. Yaconelli was honest and frank about his own journey with Christ, and how after more than forty years of being a Christian, his faith was still . . . messy. And not only his. He told story after story about people, both those in the Bible and people he had personally known, who found grace through Jesus despite the messiness of their lives.

I wrote this book to be a simple guide for the Christian life written for ordinary people whose faith is sometimes messy. It is written for those who wish to follow Jesus, to experience more of God in their lives, and to grow to become the people God wants them to be. It’s based upon four decades of reading, study, practice, and striving to live the Christian life, by a person whose faith is sometimes still messy. In it we’ll consider five simple practices that Jesus’ followers have always pursued as they sought to walk with him. Jesus himself modeled these practices for us. These five are not an exhaustive list of spiritual disciplines. There are an infinite number of ways we might grow in our walk with God. But these five are foundational, and I would say, essential for most of us. If you make these practices a part of the daily rhythm of your life, you’ll find that they will play a key role in helping you grow in your faith and, in turn, that they will become an expression and fruit of your increasing faith.

In Matthew 4, Jesus walked along the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee. He came to Simon Peter and Andrew and gave them this simple invitation: Come, follow me. A few steps later he called James and John to do the same. Sometime later he saw a tax collector named Matthew and said to him, Follow me. These followers became known as disciples—ones who follow, learn from, and emulate their master. And to follow in Greek is akoloutheo, which means to accompany on a journey or to walk with someone down a road.

It is this idea of walking with Jesus that we will lean most heavily upon in this book. It is a simple way of thinking about our Christian life. We are followers of Jesus. We are seeking to learn from him, to emulate him, to go where he wants us to go, to do what he wants us to do, and to walk on the journey of life with him.

Walking with God

The image of walking with God or God walking with us is found throughout the Bible as a metaphor for the life of faith. As the biblical story begins, God is described as walking in the garden of Eden, searching for his children as they hid from him. To be sure, this is an anthropomorphism—ascribing human attributes to God—yet the imagery is beautiful and compelling: God walks in our midst, searches for us, and beckons us to walk with him.

When my daughters were small, we would take walks together and they would hold my hand. I loved these walks. Now I’ve got a five-year-old granddaughter who likes to take my hand and walk with me. There is something about holding her little hand as we walk together that captures how I see my relationship with God.

I picture God loving me as I love my granddaughter, and reaching out his hand toward me, waiting for me to place my hand in his. There is safety and peace and joy in walking with my hand in his hand. This is what Thomas Dorsey wrote of in his much-loved gospel hymn, Precious Lord, Take My Hand.

Walking is often used in Scripture as a way of speaking about our life with God. God asked Abram and Sarai to load up their things and walk with God to the Promised Land. This one act of faith and obedience led to Abraham’s and Sarah’s greatest adventures and richest blessings. At age ninety-nine, God spoke to Abram once again saying, "I am El Shaddai. Walk with me" (Genesis 17:1, emphasis added here and in the following examples).

Moses gave these instructions to Israel: "You must walk the precise path that the LORD your God indicates for you so that you will live, and so that things will go well for you (Deuteronomy 5:33). Later, Moses noted, The LORD will establish you as his own, a holy nation, just as he swore to you, if you keep the LORD your God’s commandments and walk in his ways" (Deuteronomy 28:9).

The psalmist cries out, "Teach me your way, LORD, so that I can walk in your truth (Psalm 86:11). Israel’s prophets called God’s people to walk by the LORD’s light (Isaiah 2:5). Micah famously called God’s people to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8).

This image of walking with God is found throughout the New Testament too. The Gospels’ portrayal of Jesus calling his disciples to follow and to walk with him is a powerful metaphor for the Christian life. As we’ve seen, to be a Christian is to answer Jesus’ call to follow; in the words of an old hymn, it is to walk with him and talk with him along life’s narrow way. As we follow him we "walk in the light (1 John 1:7 NRSV) Paul tells the Romans that they can walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). He also commands the Corinthians to walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7 NRSV) In the Bible’s closing book, Jesus tells the Church at Sardis that those who remain faithful will walk with me clothed in white" (Revelation 3:4). And when the City of God finally comes on earth, when Paradise is restored, God once again walks on earth with his people, and the nations walk in the light of the Lamb of God (Revelation 21:22-24).

The Christian spiritual life is a life of walking with Christ in our everyday life.

Out of Shape

A couple of years ago, LaVon and I were visiting our daughter Rebecca in New York. She wanted to go hiking in the Catskill Mountains. Upon arriving we took off on a hike to one of her favorite spots. Not ten minutes into the hike I had to sit down. I was winded and didn’t feel I could catch my breath. I was not having a heart attack, I was just terribly out of shape.

Over a thirty-five-year period I had watched my weight slowly increase and my physical health slowly decline. At eighteen, I weighed 175 pounds. The week after Christmas, 2017, I stepped on the scale and I was at 208 pounds—up six pounds just from the year before. In addition, my annual physical revealed that my cholesterol was high. My triglycerides were high. A heart scan revealed plaque in my arteries. I hadn’t exercised regularly since college.

I wanted to be able to keep up with my daughter when she wanted to hike. I was determined that I would get in shape. My wife told me about a seven-minute workout app for my phone. I thought, Surely I can work out seven minutes a day. So I started with seven minutes. That gradually increased to fourteen minutes, then longer still. I began eating better too. Over the next year I lost much of the weight I’d spent thirty-five years putting on. My resting heart rate dropped, my blood work returned to normal levels, and I felt better. The last time I walked with my twenty-nine-year-old daughter, I needed to slow down a bit for her.

Spiritual health is not dissimilar to our physical health. Without spiritual exercises or practices, we will find it difficult to keep up as Christ calls us to follow. We become spiritually lethargic and out of shape. We stray from God’s path. Temptation is harder to resist. We don’t evidence the fruit of the Spirit. We may exhibit less patience, kindness, mercy, and love. God may seem more distant, and our faith more perfunctory. We worry more as we trust God less. Our thoughts revolve more around ourselves. Our values and priorities shift away from the things God values and prioritizes for us.

Even the earliest Christians struggled with this. In Revelation 2:4-5, Jesus speaks to the Christians at Ephesus, a church founded by Paul and, according to tradition, later shepherded by the apostle John: I have this against you, Jesus says. You have let go of the love you had at first. So remember the high point from which you have fallen. Change your hearts and lives and do the things you did at first (Revelation 2:4-5).

In this little book we’ll explore five essential spiritual practices—I think of them like the exercises in my seven-minute workout app: worship and prayer, study, serving, giving, and sharing. For each we’ll consider simple ways to get started as well as some concrete goals (I’ll invite you to use your hands and fingers as reminders of each practice and the goals). As my physical health increased using the short workout on my phone, I extended my workouts and increased my goals. The same will happen with your pursuit of these spiritual exercises. Here’s what I can promise: when pursued daily, these practices will increase your spiritual health, deepen your faith, make you more aware of God’s presence, and help you live the Christian life.

With this in mind, let’s explore the five essential practices.

CHAPTER 1

WORSHIP AND PRAYER

WORSHIP AND PRAYER

A LIVING HALLELUJAH

O come, let us sing to the LORD;

let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;

let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!

For the LORD is a great God,

and a great King above all gods.

In his hand are the depths of the earth;

the heights of the mountains are his also.

The sea is his, for he made it,

and the dry land, which his hands have formed.

O come, let us worship and bow down,

let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!

For he is our God,

and we are the people of his pasture,

and the sheep of his hand.

(Psalm 95:1-7, NRSV)

I mentioned my granddaughter in the introduction. She turned five this spring. That’s a big birthday and, with her parents’ permission, her Mimi and I decided to buy her a swing set for her birthday. We shopped and shopped, looking for one that would grow with her, yet one that would not break the bank. The one we ultimately bought has a couple of swings and steps leading to a small tower from which she can slide down the slide. Under the tower is a picnic table. As we bought it, we pictured her sitting at that table as a teenager, reading or doing her homework. Above that spot, we decided to write these words in permanent marker: Dear Stella, this swing set is a small expression of our love for you. We hope you have many great adventures playing here. Love, Mimi and Papa.