Even If i Walk Alone

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

commitment

What’s Your Motivation?

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Our world is filled with self-help books, books on how to get rich, how to lose weight, and how to have everything you “deserve”. Getting rich is a good thing as long as we do it with the motivation of giving it all away in the service of Jesus. Losing weight is a worthwhile goal, so long as we recognize we can better serve Christ if we are healthy. Trying to better your self is noble, provided you do so with the aim of becoming more like Jesus and drawing others to Him. It’s all a question of our motivation. Why do we do the things that we do? Are we seeking power and prestige or servitude and humility? Is our hope to bring recognition and honor to our self or to Jesus Christ?

Motivation is a tricky thing, and we can easily deceive ourselves. It’s easy to begin with one motivation only to see it slowly morph over time into something entirely different. We see this in politics all the time: an idealistic young person runs for office in hopes of making positive changes in their world. After some time in office they seem to forget why they are there and instead begin to seek more and more personal power. What changed? They are still doing the same job, but they are doing it with an entirely different motivation from when they began. What we do is often not nearly as important as why we do it.

The same rule applies to following Jesus. It’s really not so much what we do; it’s why we are doing it. It’s not about who we become in the eyes of the world, but who we become in Christ. God sees our heart and our motivation. He knows exactly who we are. We must constantly be asking ourselves, “Why am I doing the things I am doing?” It is important that we purposefully do all that we do for His honor and to lead others to know Him. Whatever else we achieve in life is meaningless when compared to leading one lost soul to Christ.

Motivation is what gets us out of bed in the morning (or not). When we are living a life fully focused on Jesus, getting up is easy. We have a clear purpose and mission. It’s really hard to be lazy or depressed when you know each day brings the opportunity to serve God. Who are we to have been given such a high privilege? I shake my head when I hear people say that we “deserve a nice house” or that we “deserve to be happy”. That’s not at all Biblical. What we deserve is to go to hell and spend eternity separated from Christ. That is the reality, according to Scripture, of what we deserve. From that knowledge it becomes even more breath taking to realize that, as followers of Jesus, we not only get to spend eternity with Him, but right now we have the opportunity to collaborate with Him in this exercise we call life.

Having the opportunity to serve my Lord is more than enough motivation for me. I want to live as He lived and die like He died, having finished the race with the knowledge that I did all I could for the Kingdom of God. Love God, love people; this is the perfect motivation.

What motivates you each day? Are you driven by a healthy fear and reverence for all that Christ has done for you? Do you realize that you have been delivered from that which you truly deserved and instead are being given what no one apart from Jesus Himself actually deserved? Don’t chase after “things” that will fade away in this life, money and fame and prestige. These may motivate for awhile but they will always leave you hungry for more. Only the pure motivation of serving Jesus brings lasting joy and peace. Get motivated for His sake and begin to help building His kingdom here on earth.

Desperation

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Recently I posed the question, “How desperate are you”? I feel there was more that needed to be said on this topic, so I hope you will indulge me as we dig a little deeper into this concept. Webster’s defines desperation as a “loss of hope and surrender to despair”, with despair being characterized as “the loss of all hope or confidence”. Applying the concept of desperation to our spiritual life then means we have come to the place where we have no hope or confidence in ourselves; we are without recourse on our own, and in dire need of rescue.

Since we have no hope in and of ourselves, we must find it elsewhere. Jesus offers the greatest hope of all. He promises rest, peace and eternal life spent in communion with Him. I don’t know about you, but I could use just a small portion of that in my life right now! If we would follow Him, this is our destiny. Though we are faced with great trials and heartaches, remaining focused on Jesus gives us the hope that our troubles will someday be absolved by His healing. Faith in God allows us to see a future that is infinitely better than our present. He gives us something for which to strive. The Holiness of Jesus Christ is the light at the end of our tunnel. We must come to realize that there is no hope without Jesus, but with Him we have the ultimate promise of a satisfied and glorious life.

Just as we have no hope outside of Jesus, neither do we have any confidence except in Him. Only the Son of God is reliable without exception; only He will be there for us without fail. We rise up against trials only to be knocked down, but He has conquered them all. Even death proved to be no match for Christ. There is nothing He does not have the power to defeat. Your temptations, illnesses and addictions pose no challenge to His love and power. We are helpless to defeat sin on our own and we are unable to achieve anything of eternal worth unless He is working through us. Despite our bluster and pretense, our substance is ridiculously small. We are weak and fragile beings, often just one obstacle away from throwing in the towel. The only one who will never let is down is Jesus Christ. He is the calm in any storm and the power in every adversity. If we rely on ourselves, we will die in our failure; but if we put our faith in Jesus, we can know that He will be our strength and our life.

To be desperate for Jesus is to realize that He is our only hope and that we can do nothing without Him. Left to our own devices, we will fail and we will die, unfulfilled and lost. If we are still holding on to the belief that we are able to do anything on our own, we believe the lie of Satan. In fact the only thing we can do in our own strength is to turn away from God. In this we see the ultimate breakdown, the failure to recognize the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Our best efforts result in total inadequacy. All we can do apart from Jesus is fail. With Him, all we can do is live and in a manner that is beyond our wildest dreams and expectations.

Search your heart. Are you truly desperate for Him? Have you come to the point where you have no hope for your life and no confidence in anything you do? This is a sacred place, because it is in the midst of this condition that we finally become ready to surrender fully to the Lordship and authority of Jesus. It is now that we may experience the totality of His love. He is desperate to share Himself with us, and we are in desperate need to receive Him. Put away your pride, your ego and your sense of self sufficiency. Be desperate, for in this there is life.

How Desperate Are You?

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It’s easy to get caught up in everything that we do throughout our day. The demands of our friends, families and jobs leave little room for us to breathe. Days blur into weeks, weeks into months and before we know it the years are passing us by. What do we have to show for our time so far? Are we accomplishing all we dreamt and becoming the person we determined ourselves to be? How are we measuring our days to determine what, if any, legacy we are leaving behind?

For me, living in America, it is easy to lose myself in my job and my career. My culture pushes me to work long hours and achieve ever greater levels of financial success. If only we dress and act the part, sooner or later we will achieve the success that society tells us we deserve. Day after day we strive to achieve greatness in our pursuit of the American dream. We are busier now than at any point in history. Our lives are spent connected to technology and awash in cell phones, emails and caffeine. At the edges, we try and fit in the other aspects of our life, yet never seem to have time for it all. On the outside of everything stands Jesus, our Lord and our King. This is the same Jesus to whom we pledged our entire lives. We said we’d follow Him anywhere, but now there simply isn’t time.

If you truly love Him, then you remember moments in your life when you were thirsty to drink of His Spirit. There were times when you simply couldn’t get enough. Your soul ached as you begged for more and more of Jesus, His holiness, and His grace. How long has it been since you felt this way? In our dogged self-reliance, when was the last time we were truly desperate for Him? When was the last time you were so desperate that you were completely undone, that you realized you could not do a single thing apart from His power? When was the last time you were undone, desperate beyond words and on your knees before the God of the universe? When was the last time you slowed down long enough to realize that this world is not about you, but rather about what you can do for Jesus? How long has it been since you put aside your own agenda to be the help for someone in need? I have found it far too easy to see people as distractions and annoyances rather than as deeply valued, wholly loved, co-citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. If we are not desperate for Him, than we are finished; we have no hope outside of Jesus Christ. Only He can save us from the wickedness of our world and of ourselves.

Nothing matters apart from Jesus; not your family, not your friends and not your job. All else, every single thing in the universe, pales in comparison to Jesus Christ. Anything but Him is useless. We cannot live without Him; we cannot show the world their need for Jesus, until we get the need in our own heart settled. We must reject everything that is not Him. He demands all that we have, so we owe every second of our lives to Him. We must recognize that we are nothing, He is everything and we need Him. He is all that we have, and He is more than enough.

This world will never change until we change ourselves. As long as we insist on leading a life that consists of what society tells us we should do, we will never be able to fully participate in the Kingdom of God here on earth. God doesn’t want our lip service; you can’t fool Him. God wants everything. We must come to the point in our lives where we no longer hold to anything but Jesus. We must drink fully of His Spirit, all the while realizing that we could never drink enough. It’s time to get serious about our faith and put away the things of this world. We are a peculiar people, so why try to be normal? Surrender everything to Him; let it all go. Empty yourself of every thought except for Jesus. Stop striving for success in this world and work for the Kingdom to come. Pray and realize how much you need God; cry out to Him.

Are you living for the praise of man or the praise of God? Everything you so desperately seek on this earth may be yours temporarily, but in the end it will all be taken from you. Only one thing matters now and in the future: Jesus. Do you thirst for Him? Will you forsake everything for Him? How much do you long to be filled with the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ? How desperate are you?

Confessions of a Western Christian

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I have a few confessions to make. I have been a Christian for thirty-seven years now, but it’s only recently that I’ve begun to discover what it means to truly be a follower of Christ. I have bought into the false teachings of Western Christianity and have totally missed the point of what it means to be a believer in Jesus. I have practiced religious rituals that have little or no foundations in Scripture. Worst of all, I have lived a life that is much more about myself than it is about the One who gave His life for me. I am unworthy of His love, and I am ashamed of the number of years it took for me to begin to travel the narrow road that leads to life and glorious light.

The years I have wasted cannot be redeemed. The past has had its say and I stand in judgment without defense. The only thing more tragic than everything I’ve neglected in my past would be if I continued on that same path from this point forward; I simply refuse. Thanks to the teachings of men like Greg Boyd, Francis Chan and more recently, David Platt, my eyes have been opened and I am not going back to the old lies of Western Christianity. It’s not that these men have some new revelation, but rather they (among others) are returning to the roots of the early church. They are casting aside the perverted teachings of the past couple hundred years to uncover anew what a life devoted to Christ really looks like.

This is of paramount importance. Countless men and women are walking around today, convinced that their salvation is secure because they prayed a certain prayer to ask Jesus into their heart. They are convinced that nothing could ever separate them from Heaven or from Christ, and they have a handful of Scriptures they will use to defend their view. These are lives being lived in peril. These are people who are not acknowledging the whole gospel, but rather a gospel of prosperity, comfort and irresponsibility. The teachings of the Bible are plain and they are clear. We are saved because of our faith and acceptance of God’s grace, which is given to us for the purpose of carrying out His mission on earth. We are saved by grace to do the things He commanded us to do. If we leave off the second half of the equation, we become the goats that Jesus refers to in Matthew 25:31-46. We call Him Lord, but we do nothing to give evidence to our claim.

If we are to follow Jesus into Heaven, then we must be willing to follow Him to the ends of the earth and to the end of our own rope. If we are not doing what He commanded us to do, to care for the orphans and the widows, to bring justice to the oppressed and to feed and clothe those in need, then we are in danger of hearing those awful words, “Depart from Me, for I never knew you”. (Matthew 7:20-23) This is not a game. This is not something we can take lightly or put off until later. We have been deceived and we have believed the lie of Western Christianity. A Christian life that looks no different from that of any other is not a life that is devoted to the teachings and the ways of Jesus.

Where do you find yourself at this moment? Have you bought into the lies of Satan and become consumed with a happy and healthy version of Christianity? Are you content to go to church, give some cash and basically be a good person? Or are you dissatisfied with the hollowness of modern Christianity and long for something deeper, something more? A magic prayer won’t get you into Heaven, but a life lived in total devotion to Jesus, regardless of the cost, most assuredly will. There is no more time for contemplation; your life could end today. How will you live the rest of your life? It’s all or nothing. Don’t be satisfied with the lie you have been sold. Choose to abandon everything in order to gain what is more precious than all else combined. No more games, no more lies; no more goats. From this moment on, may you live your life fully for Jesus and for Him alone.

Who Am I?

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There are times, and these are the moments when I am thinking correctly, that I feel infinitely small in this universe. Simply looking around at everything God has created leaves me in awe and in utter awareness of my insignificance within it all. The God we worship is the very one who created the endless arrays of sights, smells and colors that wonderfully permeate our senses every day. This same God posses the immensely vivid imagination responsible for the host of characters that roam the earth; some of his creatures are downright hilarious and I am left with no other conclusion than God has an incredible sense of humor. The ability of the earth to furnish enough food to sustain its every inhabitant, to dispense a seemingly endless supply of water and to provide the abundant oxygen necessary for our very breath is astounding. This was all brought to bear by our Creator God. Man’s intellect and ingenuity would never be able to accomplish these things. Only God has created life from nothing, and only God sustains that life by His power and grace.

Jesus both spoke of and demonstrated His power over creation. He told the winds to be calm, and they immediately fell silent. Others can debate the means by which he did so, but one way or the other He overcame the properties of water which allowed Him to walk atop it. He told us that with only a small amount of faith we could literally move mountains. All of creation is under His control, and all of it defers to Him without question. Jesus gives a command and His creation follows.

There is one exception to this rule, however: humans. Only humans have had the audacity to question God, to refuse to cooperate, to blatantly ignore and reject His commands. Of all creation, only we see ourselves as somewhat superior to God; we elect to do things the way we see fit, rather than in the way He has told us. Who are we to suppose ourselves greater than the One who created us? What right do we have to rebel against the One who not only gives us this life, but holds the keys to our eternal life? How arrogant and thick-headed can we possibly be?

God forgive our lack of reverence and misplaced sense of relevance. We have become a people consumed with ourselves and the comforts we can acquire. We have turned away from the One who loves us and have lost the heart to care for the orphans and widows. We have lost the stomach to fight for justice in our world. How long will we continue to spit in the face of God and carry on our life as if He doesn’t even exist? How is it that we who profess to be followers of Jesus live lives that look no different from those who reject Him? What right do we have to turn our backs on the One who created us, died for us and loves us? Who do we think we are?

Regardless of our answer to that question, we are nothing save the righteousness of Jesus. We are formed from dirt and we are lower than the lowest things on earth. We are wicked and we are evil; we have chosen to turn from the path of life and pursue the road that leads to death. Without the cleansing blood of Jesus, we are wasted, filthy and undone. Who you say you are has everything to do with who you say that Jesus is. If He is not Lord in my life, if I am not fully devoted to Him, then what I am is hopeless. Thankfully there is a better way; there is another answer. I have hope because I have Jesus. I seek Him and I strive to follow in His way. Without Him, I have nothing; with Him, I have everything. Who am I? I am the loved creation of a gracious, patient and forgiving God. I am a follower of His Son, and I am forgiven and free.

How will you answer the question? Ask yourself, “Who am I?” Are you the creation that scoffs and rejects the one who made you, or are you the person that faithfully obeys the commands of your Creator? The choice is ours; again, ask yourself, “Who am I?”