Scripture: Matthew 6:31–33; Galatians 5:16, 25; 1 Peter 3:18
What Your Step Count Can Teach You About Faith
Quick show of hands—how many of you have ever counted your steps? Ever owned a Fitbit or a smart watch, or just tracked it on a health app on your phone? It feels like it’s all the latest rage. The old pedometers some of you might remember have evolved with technology, and everyone seems to be counting their steps these days. If you’ve ever done that, you might know the magical number of steps that every human should take, according to the experts. Yeah, 10,000 steps. But it’s actually not true. Do you know where the 10,000-step rule came from? A really, really smart Japanese marketer. Way back in the 1960s, a Japanese company was trying to release its pedometer. The Japanese character for 10,000 looks a bit like a person walking. So the company built a theory that 10,000 steps are what you need—and 10,000 just happened to be the name of their company. It caught on, and people started thinking, “Oh, I need to hit 10,000 steps to be the healthiest physically, emotionally, intellectually.”
If my research is right, it turns out scientists say that getting between 7,000 and 8,000 steps is so good for your body and your brain. In a culture where the average person gets 5,000 steps as we sit down for work, sit down at home, and scroll on our phones, most of us don’t work the farm anymore—we sit in front of a screen. Whether it’s 10,000, 8,000, or 7,000, what we’ve learned over the years is that your steps matter. The God who created you didn’t create you to sit and stare—he created you to walk and to step. If you want to live your healthiest life, if you want your body to function like it should and your brain to fire like it’s intended to, it’s important to count and be aware of your steps.
Now, I find that interesting because when you open the Bible, you’ll quickly find out that one of the most common ways to talk—not about your physical life, but your spiritual life—is a “walk with God.” I didn’t know this: way before the word Christian or Christianity was ever mentioned in the Bible, way before terms like discipleship or the spiritual disciplines were brought up, the earliest descriptions of people connected to the true God weren’t talked about as faith or Christianity—they were talked about as a walk. With the story of Adam and Eve, God was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid instead of walking with their God. A few pages later, a guy named Enoch, the Bible says, “walked faithfully with his God.” A page later, there’s a guy named Noah who built a big boat, and it says, “Noah walked faithfully with God.” Then the Lord appeared to Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully.”
In the Old Testament, the most common way to talk about a really good spiritual connection with God was a walk. When God’s people, the people of Israel, went astray, the prophets asked, “What does God really want from you?” And the answer was, “He wants you to walk humbly with your God.” Then Jesus shows up, claiming to be God, walking on two legs. He sees a guy named Matthew, and he sees Mary, and Peter, and James, and John, and he says, “Follow me”—which I think is just a two-word way of saying, “Walk with God.” In the Old Testament and the New, back in those days and even today, what God cares about so much is how you walk.
I asked myself, why would that be? Out of all the metaphors God could’ve chosen, why would he want you to think about walking when you think about your connection with Jesus? I’d never thought about that before. But today I want to give you my answer. I’ve learned there are three connections between walking and walking with God that are maybe the most important questions you could ask yourself in your spiritual life. So that’s what I want to teach you today. What is a walk with God? It’s three big things.
1. A Walk with God Requires a Direction
If you’re taking notes, grab a pen and write this down: walking in general, or walking with God, requires a direction. That’s the first big idea. When you get to the end of your driveway to take a walk, you turn and pick a direction. It doesn’t matter if you’re going this way or that way—that’s what walking requires. A walk is just a direction.
That makes so much sense spiritually, because God cares about our direction—the path we take, the road we’re on spiritually. Every day you get up, and there are all these choices you can make. If you’re going to walk with God, it means you choose the direction that God is going. You choose the things of faith, the commands God has given, and the promises he has made. So here’s a big question for your Sunday: what direction is your life going in? What’s the destination that determines your direction?
Do you know what most young Americans say the goal of their life is when asked? “I want to be rich. I want to be famous. I want to be an influencer. I want my TikTok channel to blow up. I want a job that pays the bills, I want to travel, experience the world.” Those things might work for a bit. But find someone who is rich or famous and ask them if they’ve arrived at the peak of joy, peace, and satisfaction. The direction your life is going in is so, so important.
That’s what Jesus spoke about 2,000 years ago in Matthew 6. He said not to worry about what we’ll eat, drink, or wear, because the people who don’t know the true God run after all those things—but our heavenly Father knows we need them. Instead, Jesus said to seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness. We run after fashion, new gadgets, new games, fantasy football, the World Cup—it’s all exciting for a moment. Sometimes we pour our energy, time, and money into it, but Jesus knows those things won’t help our hearts in the end. If you’re going to walk in some direction, walk first toward God and his promises. It might not be the easiest path in life, but you will discover something profoundly beautiful and comforting—something that can get you through anything. You can find God himself.
That makes me think of my family’s recent trip to Glacier National Park. We parked at a popular hike a couple miles long, and the trail just goes up. It was late June, so not all the snow had melted, and we were trudging through it—people slipping and falling. It was tempting to turn around. But about halfway up the trail, we saw a baby mountain goat, and people were pulling out cameras like they’d seen something miraculous. We kept walking, and when my family got to the end of the trail, we reached an epic glacial lake with crisp air, bears feeding below, and a huge mountain rising above. I was so glad we didn’t give up and change our direction. We couldn’t see that view the moment we stepped out of our car, but every step brought us closer to one of the most beautiful things we’d ever seen.
That’s what it’s like to walk with God—to be a person of faith who’s seeking God, not because it’s easy, not because trusting in Jesus’ promises is simple. It’s tempting to sit down, turn around, and drive somewhere more comfortable. But Jesus said that if you walk this narrow road with him, you’ll end up with something better than a mountain—you’ll end up with your Maker, the one who made the mountain to reflect just a bit of his beauty. No one gets to heaven and wishes they’d picked a different direction. You don’t have to run after fame, beauty, fashion, or money. You can live a simple, humble life, and if you’re going in God’s direction as you follow Jesus, you are so close to the most beautiful destination you could imagine. Walk with God—pick the direction that leads to the best destination.
2. A Walk with God Requires Action
Here’s what else walking with God requires: action. If I picked the exact right direction and then just stood still, you’d say, “Pastor Mike, what are you doing?” Because you’ve got to take a step—that’s obviously implied in walking. That’s how the Bible talks about the Christian faith too. Galatians 5 says, “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh… Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
It makes me think of the fast walkers in my wife’s family. My mother-in-law is in her 70s and still one of the fastest walkers you’ll ever meet. She raised my wife to walk fast too, and now we’ve trained our own daughters the same way—to believe in Jesus and walk quickly. We push our kids hard, not because we want to sabotage them or make them suffer, but because we know that if they can move fast, they can see things other people can’t.
This is exactly what the Holy Spirit does. There’s something that’s going to happen to you today, and he’s going to take a big step, and you might feel like your legs can’t keep up. But he’s not going to slow down, because he wants what’s best for you. Someone’s going to annoy you before this week is done, and you’ll be tempted to sit down and stew, but the Holy Spirit’s going to take a couple big steps toward patience, kindness, and love. Some of you have tender consciences, and you’ll want to sit and punish yourself over something you did or said. The Spirit says, “No, no, no—this is a faith about forgiveness and salvation, not self-punishment, because someone was already punished for your sins in your place.”
Maybe you’re with friends and people are having one drink too many, and the Spirit takes a big step toward sobriety and self-control. Maybe someone from your past has hurt you, and the world would say you have every reason to tear them down—but the Spirit says, “I don’t want you bound by that bitterness. I want you to take a step and forgive that person, in Jesus’ name.” It’s step after step after step. The Christian life isn’t just about the direction of heaven, where one day we’ll arrive—it’s about the daily choices God knows are best for our soul.
So here’s your homework: when you sense a moment of temptation, picture the Holy Spirit a few steps in front of you, looking back and saying, “Come on—this is a better place to be.” Don’t let the enemy convince you that sitting down in a sinful habit will be good for you in the end. It might be easier, but it isn’t good for you. Lead us not into temptation, we pray; deliver us from evil; help us keep in step with your Spirit.
3. A Walk with God Means You Are Never Walking Alone
Walking with God, pick God’s direction, take some Holy Spirit action—which brings us to the last thing I want to share with you today. It’s maybe the most obvious thing I never thought about. Walking with God implies… God. You can walk in general without God, but if you’re walking with God, as the Bible frequently says, that means you are with God. The Bible doesn’t talk about walking toward God, as if he were the reward at the end of some big marathon—it talks about walking with God. This forgiving, strong, wonderful Savior isn’t just waiting until you do all the work. He is with you—to help you, strengthen you, pick you up, and carry you.
I think of a family vacation to Yellowstone. We pushed hard on a morning hike, grabbed lunch, and set out for another epic spot near a hidden waterfall. About a quarter mile in, my youngest daughter hit the wall—her legs were dragging, and she asked how much farther we had to go. So I got down on one knee, wrapped my arms around her, and said, “Hop on.” She jumped on my back, and I started to count the steps I was taking as I carried her. I carried her for a step, then ten, then a hundred—then, because I’m a competitive guy, I kept going. I carried her well over a thousand steps before I finally set her down. My body was wrecked for days, but she was so happy and so grateful, and we made it to the most amazing lunch under that beautiful waterfall. She couldn’t do it by her own strength. Thankfully, she had someone who loved her enough to carry her.
That’s what Jesus does for us, just infinitely more. It wrecked his body too, but he walked with us in order to carry us. You may remember that old Christian poem about a single set of footprints in the sand—that’s because we walk with a God who carries us. We’re just not strong enough or good enough to make it to God on our own. Jesus is the one who picks us up and carries us all the way to a cross, where he makes us good enough for God. Peter writes it this way: “Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” If you see this life as a walk to God, you might despair. But if you see it as a walk with God—the God who strengthens you step by step and picks you up when you fall, who carries you not just a thousand steps but all the way to the gates of heaven—then, just like my daughter, joy rises in your heart.
The older I get, the more grateful I am to be a Christian. So many belief systems offer only a standard you can never keep up with: be good, try harder, fix it yourself. Christianity is the only faith that says there is a God so full of love and strength that he picks us up when we mess up and carries us on his shoulders, even when it costs him everything. That’s why I love the simple phrase, from the front of the Bible to the back, that you and I get to walk with God.
There’s a well-known song in which the artist raps about being afraid to talk to God because of his wrongs, afraid to reconnect because it’s been so long since he and God have spoken. If that describes you too, here’s the good news: you don’t have to be afraid. None of us have to be afraid to talk to God, despite our sins and our failures. No matter how long it’s been, we don’t just walk toward him—we walk with him. That’s why Christianity is the greatest message the world has ever known, and why walking with God is maybe the best summary of it.
So, my brothers and sisters, sons and daughters who are carried on the shoulders of Jesus—let’s walk.
Dear God, I’m so grateful that you carry me. If I got up today and thought that the only way to heaven was by being good, everything good I would do would be done for the wrong reason—for myself. And every time I did something that wasn’t good, I would doubt I’d ever make it to you. So thank you for the unconditional love, the amazing love we call mercy and grace. Thank you that we are saved as a gift that comes from you through your Son, Jesus Christ. There may be people right here, right now, God, who’ve never heard that. They thought they had to climb their way up to you or be better than average—that’s not true. It’s all Jesus, and I pray that we would put all our trust in him today.
But God, even though our steps don’t save us, they do matter. We count our steps and pay attention to them, because the way we treat people, the way we run to your promises, our patience and kindness and forgiveness, make a huge difference for the years you give us on this earth. So may all of us be guided and led by your Holy Spirit. When the road feels narrow and uphill, when we want to quit and turn around, help us remember that following you is always the best choice for our future.
I pray especially for the young people here today, God. It’s so tempting to think that getting rich or reaching some goal will finally satisfy our hearts. May they know, may they truly believe, that it won’t work—that there is a secret to being content, and his name is Jesus. If we seek him first, his kingdom and his righteousness, we will find what so few people ever do. Thank you, God, for being by our side. Thank you for being Emmanuel, the God who is with us, who invites us to walk with God. And it’s in Jesus’ beautiful name we pray, and all God’s people said, amen.
