Scripture’s Answer to Our Waywardness and Wandering

Delight and Devotion to the Father Waywardness and wandering. Since the day Adam wandered from God’s word and will and way in the garden of Eden, eating from the forbidden tree, we have been a race prone to wander. Wandering reflects waywardness; it is a manifestation of our human condition in Adam. As such, it is another way of describing our sinful tendencies. We wander instead of worshiping because we are wayward. We leave the God we claim to love and instead cleave to the sin we claim to hate. Even as the godly offspring of the woman, we are not immune from this waywardness: Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.1 Scripture’s answer to our waywardness and wandering is not, in the first place, to work our way out of it. It does involve work. It involves watchfulness and wariness (1 Cor. 16:13; 1 Pet. 5:8); it involves sobriety and sanctification (1 Thess. 4:3; Heb. 12:14; 1 Pet. 4:7); it involves working out one’s salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12–13). But that work first begins with returning to the one who worked it out for us—Jesus Christ, the righteous pilgrim and faithful worshiper. Hebrews 4:15 tells us, “For we do not have a high pries...