For anyone who has ever worked with kids, you know that Follow the Leader can be a great game. Not only does it motivate kids to get to the desired destination, but by encouraging them to imitate the moves of the leader, you’re able to adjust their behavior as well. It gets the children focused, it provides them a goal, and the leader can direct the steps of those tiny feet. They walk after the leader, mimicking them, and in so doing they began to conform to the leader’s desires. By giving the kiddos someone to emulate, we demonstrate not only where we want them to go, but how we want them to go about getting there.
In the Christian walk, following our Leader works much the same way. I fear sometimes that we are so focused on the road that we are trotting that we forget that God also cares about who He is forming us to be. In other words, following God means more than just walking the path He has planned. It means that our behaviors, our attitudes, our character should increasingly look like those of our Leader. We should walk in His footsteps, true, but we should also walk in the same way that He did. Our desired destination is the same, we want to be where He is, and we should share a desire to increasingly look like Him when we get there.
A song by Chris Tomlin illustrates this well. The chorus states:
Where You go, I’ll go; Where you stay, I’ll stay;
When you move, I’ll move, I will follow You.
Who You love, I’ll love. Who You serve, I’ll serve,
In this life I lose, I will follow You.
God not only wants us to rely on Him for our staying and our going, but He wants our moves – our way of being and loving – to look like His. May we increasingly count on Christ to guide our steps, to direct our feet, and may we follow not only where He goes, but may our conduct increasingly emulate that of our Leader’s.