The very best Driving Instructor the world has ever known is patient. So patient. And He has a sense of humor. He has to, to hang around with me.
So, He decided to have me write that "learning to drive" illustration, then afterwards show me what it meant.
What does it mean to get into God's stride? It means to let go of your own stride and surrender to His. Do you do this by spiritually bungee-jumping, saying, "Here I go, diving off a cliff -- He will catch me"? Well, not exactly. There are times when He will ask every true disciple to do some things resembling this. To walk in the dark and trust Him to be the only light. In a sense, this is what we must learn to do all the time, because only Jesus knows the way. He is the Way.
An enormous amount of the Christian life is less like bungee-jumping and more like an endurance race. The Christian life is day after day of mostly very ordinary activities, with mostly very ordinary people. By this I don't mean they will all look and sound like us. I mean they will all have fragile hearts and deep needs, as we do. Some of them may be from a background we find perplexing or even frightening. Some of them may find us perplexing. If they find us frightening, there's something wrong, since we are here not to judge, but to let Christ get in close enough to draw them to His heart.
What is stepping into the stride of God? It's stepping into worship and obedience of Christ, and it's stepping into His heart for people. It's letting Him lead us in intercessory prayer. No agenda, just follow Him there.
It's letting Him lead us to people, so that He may lead people to Himself. To be real with people, so that they will see that we have a real God. Not a religious God, but a God who cares about the messy stuff.
Learning to step into God's stride is learning to drive backwards. Lose yourself in Christ, lose yourself in His love for people.
Whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.