Even If i Walk Alone

Instructing and encouraging you to live your life as a disciple of Jesus

Archives for December 2021

A New Plan

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For years, the last couple of weeks of the year were a flurry of activity for me. This was goal-setting time, a time to reflect on what I accomplished over the past year and make plans for what I would aspire to do in the year to come. I had one-year plans, three-year plans, five-year plans, and ten-year plans. I laid out everything neatly and precisely. While my goals would evolve, I always had a roadmap for my life.

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I was leaving as little to chance as possible. “The man who fails to plan plans to fail”, or so the saying goes. But, to quote another famous saying, “Man plans, God laughs.” Except I’m not sure God was laughing at all the plans I was making. I think shaking His head might be more accurate.

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The Bondage of Little Things

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A. W. Tozer once prayed, “Save and deliver us, we pray Thee, from the bondage of little things.” What a wise prayer. It is often not the big things that keep us from God, but the thousand little things. In the same prayer, Pastor Tozer confessed we can break one, two, even ten of the little habits and comforts keeping us from surrendering to the Lordship of Christ,

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but we are powerless to break the thousand little things that twist together and bind us. When we let little things that are not of God accumulate in our life, we find they become strong chains restricting us and keeping us from complete surrender to our King.

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The Mary Test

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In a recent message looking at the birth story of Jesus, my pastor posed an interesting question: “Could you pass the Mary test?” When the angel of the Lord appeared to Mary, most scholars think she was between twelve and fifteen years of age. Even in the current era of moral decline, that’s very early for a young woman to consider being pregnant.

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Can you imagine the fear she must have felt at the prospect of being a mother when she was barely in her teens? I don’t think Mary was naïve. I believe at that moment she fully understood the weight of what was being asked of her. And yet, look at the beautiful response of Mary in Luke 1:38. She said, “I am the Lord’s slave. May it be done to me according to your word.”

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Days of Trouble

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What are we to make of this world today? Political unrest, divisiveness, viruses, and no one seems overly happy. What side should we take? What is our duty as Christians? Our duty is the same as it always has been. We are to seek God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33). James told us to keep ourselves unentangled with the world (James 1:27). The Apostle John told us we must not love the things of this world (I John 2:15).

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I think one reason we feel such stress and frustration today is that we had gotten overly comfortable with the world. Now that the world is changing, we’re upset because our focus has been on the world instead of Jesus. He never changes. If we had kept our focus on Him, much of what is occurring in the world today would not phase us.

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Steadiness

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Life, and all of history, is cyclical. We’ve all heard the phrase, “history repeats itself”, and those who have lived or studied long enough know it to be true. We see it on a more personal level in our individual histories. Everyone goes through periods in our careers where we enjoy what we do and the people with whom we work. Then the company gets sold or a few of your favorite people leave, and everything changes.

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After some time, you begin enjoying your work again, either at that company or by moving on. Our satisfaction in our work and personal life always ebbs and flows. God created a cyclical universe. The one thing not cyclical is God Himself. He is the epitome of steadiness, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8).

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