Even If i Walk Alone

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

Bible study

Choosing Divine Love

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One of my favorite Bible verses is 1 John 2:15. It is a beautiful verse with a sobering warning. Put simply, we cannot say we love God if we love the things of this world. Every day, this verse is at the forefront of my mind. It is the lens through which I see the world. To my regret, I still fail far too often to heed the warning. I have yet to learn to keep from loving the things of this world.

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One upside of how evil this world is becoming is that it is becoming far more difficult to love anything about it! Still, the battle goes on every day in the life of every follower of Jesus. There is no excuse for embracing the things of this world for those of us who claim Jesus as Lord. The choice could not be more clear: we either love Jesus or we love the things of this world.

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Study Scripture

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When we study scripture, we should always ask, “What is this passage revealing to me about God?” The Bible is God’s Word to us. It is His revelation of Himself. If you want to know God, study scripture. If you want to hear the Lord speak, read what He is saying in His Word. God reveals all we need to know about Him within the pages of His Word.

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The Bible is a sacred book, a book to be cherished above everything else in our lives. Jesus is the Word of God in the flesh (John 1:1-4; John 1:14). He is the bread of life. If we want to live fully, then we must consume His bread (John 6:35; John 6:48-55). We must delight in His Word. We study scripture to know God and to learn how to live our lives as He intends us to live them.

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Comfort Zone

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When faced with stressful and overwhelming circumstances, we all tend to pull back and retreat into what is most familiar to us. If what is most familiar and comfortable to us is sin, then we will find ourselves indulging in sinful behaviors every time our world feels like it is collapsing around us. Thus, when we most need God (as if we aren’t in constant need!), we are rebelling against Him. It’s not a good plan.

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A far better plan is to instill healthy spiritual disciplines that will cause us to retreat into habits like prayer and Bible reading when our life begins tilting upside down. Solomon wrote, “As shameful conduct is pleasure for a fool, so wisdom is for a man of understanding” (Proverbs 10:23). We need to be so obsessed with God and His Word that He becomes our comfort zone.

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No Substitute

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With all the turmoil in the world, it can be difficult to know how to respond. Do you speak out or hold your tongue? Should you join the crowd or stand with the resistance? When it comes to figuring out how you should live and which direction to go, there is no substitute for God’s Word. We do not place enough emphasis on the study of God’s Word today.

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So many preachers are busy delivering self-help sermons and trying to read themselves into the Bible that we’ve lost the basic need and discipline of reading and studying the Scriptures. Bible reading is not a tired and dusty practice. It is as essential as oxygen in the life of every believer.

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Prepared for Persecution

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My heart broke when I read about a recent occurrence in North Korea. That country is second only to Afghanistan in being the most dangerous place for Christians to live (see Open Doors’ “World Watch List”). Government officials raided a secret church meeting of believers. Everyone in attendance was arrested and then summarily executed.

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Without warning and without having had the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones, these dear brothers and sisters were removed from the face of the earth. From the moment they gave their lives to Christ, they knew they were living on borrowed time. They knew the risk of meeting together. They prepared for persecution the best they could and found Jesus worth the cost. But the story gets worse.

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