Walk in the Spirit

Step by step in love — this is not a small idea. This is the whole story.

June 14, 2026 Aaron Gosser, Teaching Elder  •  Kingdom Church Troy

Movement, Not Arrival

Walking is having a moment. Have you noticed this? I saw one, I saw two. Now I see them all the time, people with these little weighted backpacks on, walking up and down our street. The latest fitness trend, it seems, is also our oldest. Walking by itself, one might argue, is monotonous, tedious, boring. But add a backpack, and you’ve suddenly supercharged the activity! Otherwise, we ain’t about that slow life; we like to go places and accomplish things — the faster the better. That’s our culture. And I would suggest, it’s a culture at odds with the Christian life. The Christian life is not a destination you arrive at. It's a walk. Our hunger for instant outcomes and fast-paced progress means we'd rather have a motorbike, a car, a rocket — anything that gets us to the finish line instantly. Eugene Peterson called discipleship "a long obedience in the same direction," and saw it as an antidote to a culture that wants everything right now. God doesn't so much produce instant outcomes as he crafts stories. He walks with people through all the messy development, weaving it together across years and decades and lifetimes. We are part of an unfolding story, not a completed one.

Bigger Than We Imagined

The gospel most of us first received went something like this: ask Jesus into your heart so you go to heaven when you die. And that's not wrong — it's beautiful even. But if that's where the story ends, it's astonishingly small. Private. Self-serving. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5 that God, in Christ, was reconciling the world to himself — not just counting trespasses against individuals, but entrusting to the church the ministry of reconciliation: bringing together what sin has pulled apart. If the gospel is the gospel, it's always going to be bringing us together, not separating us. The community formed after Pentecost in Acts 2 is the picture: they devoted themselves to teaching and fellowship, broke bread in their homes, had all things in common, and moved through their days with glad and generous hearts. That's not a program. That's the Spirit doing what only the Spirit can do.

Rooted, Growing, Together

Ephesians 3 lays in our course — not as a point of arrival, but as direction. Paul prays that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith, so that: …being rooted and grounded in love, you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. — Ephesians 3:17–19 Roots grow. Growth takes time. And notice: this comprehension happens with all the saints — never alone. The love of Christ has no edge, no boundary where it stops. Every time we think we've arrived at its limits, we discover we haven't. That's a lifelong walk, not a single moment.

Ephesians 5:1–2 "Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

Paul goes on to describe what being filled with the Spirit actually looks like: addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, giving thanks always and for everything, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:19–21). Notice the direction of all of it: outward. Nothing here is private or self-serving. The Spirit makes us creative — not so that our work lives under the bed, but so that it gets shared, offered, poured out. And submission — voluntarily laying aside your own rights to build up someone else — that's almost impossible. Which is exactly why it requires the Spirit. Love that merely makes us feel good is not the kind of love Paul is describing. The lyric to a Mumford and Sons song comes to mind: Does my love prefer the other? Or does my love just make me feel good? That's the test. That's the walk.

The Practice: This Week

Three small steps — a Monday-morning walk with the Spirit: Start with gratitude. Not as a private feeling, but as a posture that desires to overflow. Look for a way to share it with someone. Let it spill outward. Find a conflict. Look for someone whose will and yours are in tension — it probably won't be hard to find. Sit with it. Ask: could submission turn this conflict into a table where we could both sit? Conflict splits. The Spirit brings together. Could yielding be the step? Break bread. Reach out in real life. Share a meal, a coffee, a conversation with an actual person at an actual table. Not as a metaphor. Let the Spirit knit you together with someone this week.

We walk. And each step is a new possibility.