[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

I hope you all realize that these blogs often reflect my “thinking out loud,” and don’t always represent fully formed positions that I would live and die for. Yesterday and today I’m writing about the map and the compass, and my ideas are very much a work in progress. But I’m excited at the possibilities.

Yesterday, I relayed the story of a soldier who traveled 600 miles, finding his way home using an irrelevant map. The point of the story was that a useless map accompanied by a working compass would often do the trick. My application was that our “maps” may differ (our traditions, our theology, our denominations, for example), but God may still use us to get the job done if our compass is right–that is, we’re following Jesus.

Today, I want to use the map/compass metaphor to suggest that sometimes our process of helping believers reach maturity over-emphasizes the map at the expense of the compass. There are important things to be known, for sure: for example, Jesus as God-man, loves us and died on the cross for our sins, and salvation is by grace through faith. These principles should certainly be part of everyone’s map.

But the compass is often neglected. Before the map/compass metaphor, I would have said knowledge AND skills. Are we teaching believers to have daily time with God, for example, and helping them memorize scripture and pray effectively so they will be strong (2 Timothy 2.1) and ensure their relationship with God is strong? It’s not just the map of things to know, it’s the compass of how to live.

Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” (Luke 11.1, ESV)

Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28.19, 20, MSG, emphasis mine)