I Want to Follow

“Lead me in Your truth and teach me…” — Psalm 25:5

The sequence is significant.

First, lead me. Cause me to walk in a direction. Be close enough to follow. There is a clear implication of relationship. Earlier, David prays, “Make me know Your ways, O LORD…” (Psalm 25:4). His priority is not information, but companionship. Not instruction first, but intimacy.

David longs to walk with God—to live in fellowship along the journey. It is in the following, in the shared path, that David’s heart found union with God’s. Nearness is what he desires most, and we see that longing echoed again and again throughout the Book of Psalms.

This walking and following are acts of faith. The path is rarely clear beyond the next step—and sometimes even that step is hidden. There are seasons when God calls us simply to move forward, to trust Him enough to walk without certainty. And time and again, He reveals Himself in that next step. Faith grows. Intimacy deepens. Discernment sharpens. We learn to recognize His voice.

It is this process that tills the soil of our spirits and prepares fertile ground for God’s seeds of truth. Only then are we truly ready to be taught. We begin to see things in His law that we had missed before. Our understanding of His ways—and of ourselves—expands. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, our responses begin to change.

Our lives start to mirror the life of Jesus. We notice fruit—the fruit of the Spirit—not because we worked harder to produce it, but because it is the natural result of transformation happening within us.

When the sequence is reversed, the results are very different. Knowledge without nearness tends to inflate rather than transform. We trust understanding to do the work that only relationship can accomplish. The result is often frustration, conceit, and unfruitfulness.

God calls us to relationship first.

“Lead me in Your truth and teach me,
for You are the God of my salvation;
for You I wait all the day.” — Psalm 25:5

A Closing Prayer

Father,
Lead me before You teach me.
Draw me close enough to follow You step by step.
Form my heart through walking with You,
and let Your truth take root in me in its proper time.
I want to know You. Amen.

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