Walk a mile in my shoes

Have you ever tried to comfort or encourage someone and, maybe because you said the wrong thing at the wrong time, they responded “Walk a mile in my shoes…”?

It’s another way of saying you couldn’t possibly understand their situation, their anger, their pain, their shame, their (fill in the blank)… And they’re right. No one, no matter how similar your experiences, has walked in someone else’s “shoes.”

For some reason, I started thinking about this while driving to work one morning this week. And the thought came…Jesus has walked a mile in my shoes.

In fact, He’s walked out my entire life. He knows everything I will ever encounter or experience.  He knows all the joys and all the pains, all the successes and all the failures, that will make up my life. He’s the only person who has ever walked and will ever walk in my shoes.

But not only did He walk in my shoes, he exchanged my worn out, battered and torn ones for His victorious ones. So now I walk in His. And the best part is because He’s walked in my shoes, I can trust He knows exactly what I need.

 Hebrews 4:15-16

¹⁵ For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. ¹⁶ Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

 

Shoes and Salvation

Yesterday, I decided to bite the bullet and brave the crowds to go shopping for some much-needed winter items for the weekend. There was a lot of traffic and the stores were packed with people buying last-minute gifts for Christmas. While I waited anxiously in line to be checked out and released from the pre-Christmas chaos, I started to do a little “people watching” as they call it.

As I bounced my eyes from person to person, I started to feel a familiar burden. Did most, some or any of these people know the Lord Jesus Christ? I thought to myself, why am I not walking the store and parking lot presenting this very question to anyone who will listen?

At the next store, a young lady struck up a conversation with me about “going natural”, making a reference to my hairstyle. We talked about her upcoming wedding and some of the challenges she was going through with her soon-to-be in-laws, because she is of a different race. As we chatted for a few minutes, I heard the Holy Spirit whisper, “Ask her if she knows the Lord Jesus Christ.” I thought, okay, that’s a little bold. I decided that my lead question would be to ask her if she was being married in a church. That way, I could ease into my inquiry about her salvation. Well, it turned out that she and her fiance’ were both Christians. But it bothered me that I could not be more bold about this opportunity for evangelism.

I don’t believe that as Christians, we cross paths with people everyday to just chit-chat all the time. We’ve been commissioned by the Lord to share the Gospel with the world. It may not happen the same way every time, but I believe we should always be willing and ready.

I asked the Lord to give me a burden for souls, and He has done it. Now I ask that He helps me to see the soul of a person that is crying out for salvation, and gives me a Holy Spirit boldness to share the message of the cross, even while shopping for shoes.

Matthew 28:19-20

19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.