Coattails and Footsteps (Matthew Corbitt)

We have heard it many times in our lives. “When you trust in men, you get what men can do, but when you trust in God, you get what God can do.” We often apply this to our finances and “the wisdom of this world”, but lets consider a broader application.

We have a habit, as humans, to deify men. Whether it be an athlete, musician or pastor, (there are no good idols) we have a tendency to be idolatrous. The same glory we heap on the sport star, we will heap on the men and women who serve God and consider it as good and just. (Respect and worship are two different things.) We begin to tie our faith to mortal men instead of the only wise God.

Humans are powerless and finite, God is infinite. So many times we build our hopes and dreams upon men and when men make mistakes, our faith is shaken or perhaps even destroyed. (Build your house on the sand, and it will fall) We elevate humans above what God had created us to be, a finite being with a free will. We forget that even the greatest of men and women among us are simply human, capable of failure and sin. We forget that we ourselves are capable of failure and sin.

As the people of God we must learn to tie our faith to God and His Word and not to the men and women around us. (Never tie your faith to the circumstances or the people around you.) We must fully understand that as humans, we are going to make mistakes and we are going to fail, but this gives us no right to attempt to alter the Word of God because of our own failures. There is a right and there is a wrong. It matters not what I think about what God has said, the only thing that matters is my obedience. (There is mercy for when we fail, and if we will repent, we will surely find it.)
 

We must fully know that even the greatest among us mess up, and we must attach our hope to something eternal, something more than the world of men.

As Apostolic people we must believe whole heartedly in holiness and separation and in mercy and grace. We must learn that even though we fail, we have zero authority to inject sound doctrine with our whims and desires of wanting to fit in with the world. (We left that lifestyle behind when we chose to follow Christ.)

We are called to be perfect, fully mature, fully sold out. We are not to compromise, we are not to put our trust in one another, for we are all sinners, saved by the mercy of God.

Follow those whom the Lord has set over you, rather follow the God they serve. Learn their ways, consider the end of their faith (Hebrews 13:7), but make sure you are pursuing the God that they are chasing after, and not the man or woman. God uses men, just as God used Moses' rod and the serpent in the wilderness, but when we begin to worship that which was used by God instead of God Himself, we set ourselves up for failure.

Learn the ways of those set over you, examine their paths, watch their footsteps, and never forget that it is Jesus we worship, and Him alone.