I loved going to summer camp when I was a kid. Growing up in Idaho, camping was something that I looked forward to each year, whether it was with my family or going away with my friends to church camp. When I was in junior high, Hellen Woody Designer T-Shirts were becoming the "in thing" for all the kids in youth group. The summer before my eighth grade year, I bought a shirt that I eventually wore into the ground, forcing my mother to throw it away. I felt empowered wearing it, and it gave me a sense of being someone on the front lines of evangelism. I wore that shirt with such pride and can even remember walking around camp with my chest out a little--because surely everyone I walked by had to have been impressed by my choice of apparel. You’re probably wondering what was so special about this shirt. Well, the front of it had the words "Don’t Talk The Talk" with the back saying, "If You Can't Walk The Walk." In the piety of my junior high mind, I felt like I was sending one of two very clear messages to everyone who saw me wearing it. First of all, it was telling people that they needed to get with the program and step up to the plate for once. Secondly, I felt I was telling them that this was not an issue for me since I was taking it upon myself to tell them what they needed to do. The sad truth is that this is how a lot of Christians act and feel even as adults. How often do we get puffed up in our own pride and take on the role of "head finger-pointer" in the church? We feel it is our duty to make sure that the errors of other people are clearly pointed out so that they might fix the problem. Some of us, who haven't renewed our minds with God's Word yet, love to point out to other Christians how they shouldn't talk the talk if they're not going to walk the walk. The real question that I want to look at this week revolves around this word "walk." What does it really mean to walk the walk? If I were to ask every one of you what that phrase means, there would probably be some commonalities to our answers, but all in all, we would have a very diverse list of rules or ideas of what "walking the walk" entails. There are several references in Scripture to those who appropriately walked the walk and equally there are many references to those who did not. We read very early on in the book of Genesis about people like Enoch who the Bible says walked with God and then was no more. (By the way, he is one of only two people who were taken to heaven without experiencing death.) The list could go on with people like Moses, David, the disciples, Paul and many others. The Scripture also talks about men who did not walk with God such as Jehu, Jonah, Ahab and many other kings of Israel and Judah. So if we were to take all the data we could from Scripture and history and boil what walking with God might mean, I think that we could sum it up in one word--obedience. But before you start thinking that I am proving the stereotypical mold of religion being about following a bunch of rules and thinking that I am some sort of legalist, think about this. If walking with God simply meant following rules, we could program a computer to walk with God (and be moral). Obedience is about relationship and about following after God. Sometimes it means that we have to live in the reality of 2 Cor. 5:7 and we have to walk by faith and not by sight. We trust in the God who is leading us. Additionally, we follow Him because He loves us and He sent His Son, Jesus Christ that we might have relationship with Him and ultimately spend eternity with Him. Walking with God is not an easy task. Talking about God is very easy. It is easy to act like you have it all together and that you are "living" in Christ, but choosing to actually put the act aside and live it out in real life is much more difficult. Walking with God and walking in obedience takes courage, discipline and humility. We have to put aside our pride and realize that it is not about us. This can be one of the hardest things do and takes a lot of courage on our part. As with any discipline, it will take effort and hard work on our part. The choice is ours whether we are obedient or not. We have to be disciplined in our decision-making process and often we have to have humility when making our decisions. Jesus boils obedience down to two commandments in Matthew 22:38-40; Love God and Love others. We don’t even make the shortlist. I would encourage us to begin walking the walk, living in obedience, and to put aside the life of talk that we’ve have been living, in which the world revolves around us. I want to finish up by saying that talking the talk is not bad if our lives reflect that we walk the walk. If we are living in such a way that others see Christ in us and see that there is a depth to what we are saying, then we truly are living out the great commission. If you feel that you have maybe been doing a lot of talking, but your life does not line up with your words, I would encourage you to read Psalm 143:8 and make it your prayer this week. Having a teachable spirit is a tremendous first step toward a life of obedience. Final Thought: This week make Psalm 143:8 your prayer. I would encourage you to sincerely pray this each morning. In order to love God and walk with God, we must live a life of loving obedience to Him and His commandments. A life in which we are looking for opportunities to live a life that is not just talk but one in which we are following God and moving more and more into the light. (Read Mosquitoes and Cockroaches.)