Even If i Walk Alone

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

2 Peter

Eternal or Temporal

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Every day it becomes more urgent to devote our lives to God and to prove our love for Him by the way we live. We don’t work to prove our love to God, but we live in obedience to His commands as proof of our love for God (John 14:15). If we love Him, our lives will reflect that fact and will not look like the lives of those who oppose God.

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Everything we experience in life will have either an eternal or temporal value. Jesus teaches we should focus on the eternal things that do not rust, rot, or decay (Matthew 6:19-21). Meanwhile, we live our lives seeking and consuming the temporal things that never last and leave us feeling emptier than we felt before indulging in them.

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We Must Obey

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As we continue to examine if we truly love God (see “Do We Love Him” and “We Must Keep His Commands”), let’s first lay a little theological groundwork. We know all scripture is God-breathed and inspired by His Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20-21). This means every word, and therefore every instruction, in the Bible, is a command of Christ. He is the Word of God in the flesh (John 1:1-3).

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Every time the scripture instructs us, we must obey. That is what it means to love Christ (John 14:15; 1 John 5:2-4). The book of James teaches us those who would live lives acceptable to God will keep themselves unstained by the world (James 1:27). Therefore, if we love Jesus, we will keep ourselves away from the temptations and habits of our culture. Let’s look at some practical implications this has for the way we live.

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Nothing is Sacred

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The lack of a sense of reverence and awe in our churches and our lives has been weighing heavily on me in recent days. I touched on this briefly in my last post (see “A Devoted Life”). There is something else troubling me about the way we “do” church in our modern culture. Believers today rarely see prayer as being a sacred approach to the throne of God.

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Almost every church I have attended in the past thirty-five years uses prayer as a transition vehicle from one part of the service to the next. It’s the time when the worship team ascends or exits the platform or simply signals the end of the greeting and the beginning of the service. Prayer has become a vehicle instead of being understood as the great privilege and gift that it is. Even in our church gatherings, it appears nothing is sacred.

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A Life Worthy of the Gospel

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Throughout the New Testament, we are exhorted to live a life worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. To be certain, this is the goal of every believer. When we meet our Master, we want to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:23). Like Paul, we want to say, “We have fought the good fight and finished the race” (2 Timothy 4:7).

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But for many of us, it’s an elusive goal. We know we want it but aren’t too sure how to get there. What does it mean to live a life worthy of the gospel? Fortunately, God’s Word is very clear on what this looks like. It gives us a blueprint for how to conduct ourselves in the here and now, so we need not be ashamed when we meet Christ.

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Sound Doctrine

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Sound doctrine is hard to come by these days. The largest churches and loudest voices are espousing a different gospel than the only true gospel found in the scriptures. A “new revelation” is the frequent and heretical term often used to excuse false teaching or make God’s Word more palatable for the masses. Remember, the masses will never accept Jesus.

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It was the masses who rejected Him in His time on earth, and they continue to reject Him today. Jesus said, “How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). While Christ wills for all to be saved (2 Peter 3:9), the reality is that relatively few will accept His offer of salvation.

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