When I was in Germany recently, I listened to a lady give a children’s devotional during the Sunday worship service regarding her learning how to ride a bicycle. As she was talking, a thought came to me that I’d entertained sometime ago regarding the Christian walk. It goes like this:

The Christian life is like a bicycle. When we first begin to ride it, we need training wheels to help us balance. In the same way, young Christians need rules and regulations to learn the walk. However, as we progress the training wheels must be taken off the bike for us to really learn to balance and to ride wherever the path takes us. You can’t go mountain biking with training wheels on, nor can you ride fast. They tend to keep you off balance.

In the same way strict rules and regulations weaken our walk. “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” (Gal. 5:1 — NASB) There must come a time when we as believers shed the man-made rules and ride out into that scary, exhilarating, balanced freedom that Christ has given us.

Please note that the removal of these guiding regulations does not give us freedom to do whatever we choose. As a bicycle must be ridden correctly to be effective, so the Christian walk must be followed in a balanced righteousness that flows from the freedom Christ has granted us.