Even If i Walk Alone

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

Be Holy

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Never underestimate the wisdom of those who came before us. Today’s messaging is slick, and the messengers are even slicker, but most of what passes for wisdom these days is fluff and void of any scriptural moorings. There is great value to be gleaned from those voices from the past. Consider this from the writings of J. C. Ryle:

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“Sin never announces itself to us with its full intentions. It never says, ‘I am your deadly enemy and I want to ruin you forever in Hell’. It shows its pleasure but hides its pain; shows its sparkle, but hides its death.” None of us is immune from sin’s deception. To survive, we must heed the Lord’s command to be holy, just as He is holy (1 Peter 1:15-16).

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Serve the Lord

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The single focus of our lives must be to serve the Lord. We know this is God’s will for everyone because the greatest commandment given by God is to love the Lord with all your heart, strength, mind, and soul (Mark 12:28-31; Deuteronomy 6:5). Everything we do for Him is an act of worship to Him. This is easy to understand but very hard for us to do on a consistent basis, every hour of every day of our lives.

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We get tired, frustrated, discouraged, and if we’re honest with ourselves, we get selfish. Our selfish desires are the greatest impediment to living a life that is wholly devoted to Christ. Paul encourages us in this way: “Do not lack diligence; be fervent in spirit; serve the Lord” (Romans 12:11). This should be the mantra that drives us all.

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What You Deserve

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Are you getting what you deserve from life? It’s easy to see life as being unfair and from a human perspective, that’s true. When I was young, my mother even told me that life is not fair, so never expect it to be so. If life isn’t fair, then how can you get what you deserve? That question drives many to operate outside the law, or at least in questionable or unethical ways.

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With advertising serving an unrelenting barrage of messages encouraging us to purchase their product because we deserve it, it only feeds our obsession. But what is the reality of what any of us deserve? As with all things, we must start with the Word of God when looking for answers to any of life’s questions. When we start there, we find the only thing any of us deserves is Hell (Romans 6:23; Matthew 25:46).

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Outside Influences

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When monitoring the outside influences in your life, it’s easy to concentrate so much on things like entertainment and secular activities that we forget one of the most common avenues Satan uses to trip us up comes from within the church. When I was growing up, the list of preachers with world-wide recognition was short. It began and ended with Billy Graham. There were traveling evangelists that were well known in certain regions and countries, but on a global scale, there wasn’t a long list.

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Today, we have a phenomenon known as the celebrity pastor. These are pastors of large churches who have leveraged social media, the internet, and books to build a platform for themselves. Notice the platform they are building is amplifying their name, and that doesn’t always translate into glorifying God’s name. The result is we now have many preachers who are world famous.

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Make No Plans

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Studying the second half of the book of Romans this month, one verse keeps poking me when I read it. Romans 13:14 says, “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no plans to satisfy the fleshly desires.” It’s convicting because how often do we make plans to satisfy those very desires of the flesh the Lord admonishes us not to?

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We are always making plans to do something, go somewhere, or become someone. How many of those plans center on bringing or giving glory to God? If you’re like me, not many. We design almost all our plans to fulfill the desires of our flesh rather than to further the Kingdom of God. There are exceptions, of course, but that they are the exceptions should tell us we have a problem.

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