Today’s devotional and today’s Bible reading coincide as though they were written by the same author at the same time. Of course, as I write this I’m reminded that even though the words are written by man, the inspiration to write them didn’t come from man, but God Himself. The message of today is about maturing in our walk with God.

In Celebrate Recovery we often talk about relapse, stumbling, falling down–those times when we step back into a moment of a habit we are breaking, a worry we were not going to give into, etc. Often times we think we are back at square one and we are starting all over again. This is not the case. Growing in our walk with God doesn’t take away our flesh. It does however, give us an alternative to submitting to our flesh when it is selfishly leading us in a path of destruction. We may step into an old habit but we don’t stay there. We get ourselves up, brush ourselves off, confess our wrong/s and move forward from there. It may feel like we are starting over again, but if we are committed to following Christ’s lead in our lives, He will turn our stumble into a lesson we can learn from.

Maturing in our walk with God not only helps us to grow in our walk with Christ, it uses our walk as a tool giving hope and insight for others. I shake my head in wonderment at the way God works. What a wonderful God we get to serve! How I love Him!