When you leave this room, children, what are you going to walk on? On the cobblestones in the street? On gravel? On brick? On the concrete sidewalk? Oh, no. Look at your shoes. Yes, you know now. You are going to walk on leather. <\/p>\n
It will make no difference to you what is under the leather, will it? Sharp pebbles may be there, or bits of glass, or a speck of mud, but none of these things will trouble you, because you are not walking on them, but on\u2014? Yes, on leather.<\/p>\n
You can understand, now, the wise proverb that the far-away Persians repeat, \u201cTo him who wears a shoe the whole earth is covered with leather.\u201d Up hill, down dale, in rough places or smooth, everywhere the smooth, stout leather is under our feet, and so all places are made smooth and safe by it.<\/p>\n
Now have you ever thought what shoes you must put on if you want to walk in God\u2019s ways? The Bible, that tells everything, tells this also. If you will hunt up Ephesians 6:15 you will find out. \u201cYour feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.\u201d So that instead of leather, when we walk with God, our feet must be covered with peace. How can that be?<\/p>\n
You meet some one and speak pleasantly, yet get nothing but a frown in reply. If you want to walk with God and wear shoes made of peace, you must go on your way with a cheerful smile, and a little prayer for the poor and unhappy child that can only frown, and cannot laugh.<\/p>\n
You want to go skating, and instead your mother asks you to go on an errand for her. If you want to walk with God and wear shoes made of peace, you must kiss your mother and bound off on the errand, and go skating afterwards, if mother is willing.<\/p>\n
There is a poor child with cheap and ugly clothes. Your schoolmates may make fun of her, just because she is poor, and refuse to play or walk with her. Never mind. If you want to walk with God, and wear beautiful shoes made of peace, you will walk and play with this poor child of God\u2019s, and make her more happy.<\/p>\n
Do you see something of what is meant by being shod with the gospel of peace? It means to be kind and loving and helpful everywhere our feet carry us, just as Christ, everywhere he went, was kind and loving and helpful.<\/p>\n
And you will remember that we found out that putting on shoes made of leather really covered the whole earth with leather for us. So putting on these wonderful shoes made of peace will cover the whole world with peace for us. It will make no difference to us how many sharp words and hard tasks and ugly frowns we meet. If we are \u201cshod with the preparation of the gospel of peace,\u201d our walk will be peaceful, no matter what we are walking on. Try it.<\/p>\n
And I have left to the last the very strangest thing about the whole matter. Suppose you were walking along this street in front of the church, wearing your best shoes. And suppose you were to turn off on a side street. What would you think if your shoes were suddenly to disappear, and leave you to walk on the sharp stones without any leather to protect you?<\/p>\n
That would be strange indeed, but that is exactly what happens to these wonderful shoes made of peace. They cannot be worn except on God\u2019s ways. Just as sure as we turn off on some side street where God does not want us to go, the beautiful shoes of peace drop from our feet and disappear, and we go limping and hobbling along, in great pain, though we sometimes pretend that we are enjoying it.<\/p>\n
How can we ever get the beautiful shoes back again, do you ask? It\u2019s the easiest thing in the world. All we have to do is to go back to God\u2019s way, and the shoes will fly back to our torn and weary feet, and everything will be pleasant and peaceful again.<\/p>\n
Now, children, the next time you are cross, or disobedient, or unhappy, or angry,\u2014look at your feet!<\/i><\/p>\n
You will see at once that the beautiful shoes of peace have slipped off, and I would advise you to hurry back to God\u2019s ways again. Will you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When you leave this room, children, what are you going to walk on? On the cobblestones in the street? On gravel? On brick? On the concrete sidewalk? Oh, no. Look at your shoes. Yes, you know now. You are going to walk on leather. It will make no difference to you what is under the … Continue reading “SHOES\u2014A TALK ILLUSTRATED BY THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}