Even If i Walk Alone

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

What do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

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When you are young, people often ask you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Our answers were always filled with the exuberant and innocent dreams of youth. My earliest recollection of answering that question was that I wanted to be Spiderman. That didn’t pan out and I still haven’t had any encounters with a radioactive spider, so like many passing fancies of youth, it’s probably time to let that dream go.

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But the question of “What do you want to be when you grow up” is a good one for all would-be disciples of Jesus. And it can only have one answer: “I want to be just like Jesus.” While my childhood dream of being Spiderman had no basis on reality, the aim of living like Jesus is both an attainable and worthwhile pursuit.

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The Church of Jesus

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While waiting for a church service to begin, I overheard a conversation happening in the rows behind me. There was a group of students from a nearby Christian college that was visiting the service I was attending. The person sitting next to them struck up a conversation inquiring about the group. One individual said they were all studying to be pastors, and as part of their coursework, they were visiting nearby churches every week to meet the congregants and take notes on what they liked and didn’t like.

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As the conversation continued, the pastor-in-training asked someone else nearby what had drawn them to the church when they began attending there. This engaged others around as well, and the responses were all similar: the messages, the preacher, and the atmosphere were the prevailing themes. What made me very sad was the one word I did not hear mentioned: Jesus.

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Fight Back

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As countries around the world face great upheaval, we must remember the weapons of our warfare look nothing like those of the world (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). Where I live, righteous indignation often results in violence begetting violence. Christians are angry and want to fight back against the forces coming against them. It’s understandable and natural. But it is natural only in the context of the old self we put away when we gave our lives to Jesus (Ephesians 4:22-23).

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Our new nature looks like Jesus (Ephesians 4:24), so we now must fight back in the way He modeled for us. We fight back by immersing ourselves in the Word of God, praying for our enemies, and loving everyone as ourselves. It all seems counter-intuitive, but this is what Jesus taught us to do.

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Let Us Pray

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I am convicted we who are followers of Jesus are not spending enough time in prayer. We wring our hands about the state of the world and continued attacks on Christianity while neglecting to do the one thing we can do to change it all: pray. Too many of our prayers have become rote and boring. We pray before our meals, before shutting down at night, and perhaps even first thing in the morning.

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But how many of those prayers are for other people, our country, our leaders, persecuted brothers and sisters, or for the lost around the globe? Our prayers are too selfish, too mechanical, and too safe. We need to open our hearts and pour out our cries before the Lord. Let us pray prayers that will move the heart of God rather than bring us more comfort and success.

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Uncomfortable Truths

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We all encounter uncomfortable truths in our life. Some we can do little about on our own. Others are personal and we bear the full responsibility for them. As followers of Jesus, one of those uncomfortable truths is we’re not as much like Jesus as we’d like to be because we don’t want to be.

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We choose whether we will follow God’s ways or our own. It’s easier for us to blame the devil or the culture for the way we live. But the uncomfortable truth is we are as close to God as we want to be. Our lives look like that of Jesus only as much as we choose to align ourselves with Him.

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