Even If i Walk Alone

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

commitment

Go the Extra Mile

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As Christians I believe we are called to live lives that are a cut above the rest of the world. I don’t mean to imply that we are somehow better than everyone else, but I do believe we are to act better than everyone else. We belong to no nation, but rather are citizens of the kingdom of God; this in and of itself should dictate that we be held to a higher standard.

A positive attitude will go a long way in setting yourself apart from the crowd. The world needs no more cynical, defeated individuals. We know Jesus; we have the antidote to a joyless existence! No matter how hard our struggles, we must always be mindful of the fact that Christ died for us. We also should always remember that no matter what’s going on in our lives, no matter how bad it may seem to us, there are millions in the world who are enduring worse things. You are blessed with life, and as long as you have that blessing, remember to be thankful for it and to smile! Smiling will make you feel physically and emotionally better. Smiling at someone else will have the same effect on them. Be the kind of person you enjoy being around. No matter the circumstance or conversation, always be positive and look for the good that is surely buried within the moment.

Jesus followed through on everything He said He would do. As His followers, we need to do the same. Whether the task is at work or at home, when we say we will do something, we need to see it through. Many are tempted to give up when what they are working on becomes difficult; do not be one of those people. Always complete the tasks you said you would complete, and complete it on or before the time you said that you would complete it. People are used to being let down by other people. You can differentiate yourself by simply following through for someone. Once you commit yourself to doing so, following through quickly becomes a habit. While it should be second nature to Christ-followers, seeing our tasks through will make us stand out in the world, thereby encouraging others to find out why we are different. Then we can tell them of the love of Christ and what He means to us.

In close relation to following through on what we say we will do, is doing everything we do with excellence. Always give more than is expected of you. Work a little harder or a little longer, don’t quit until the job is worthy of Christ Himself. Always do more than you are paid to do. You will gain a reputation among all who know you as someone who can be trusted and someone who everyone wants working for them! Again, attaining a reputation such as this will lead to many opportunities to share God’s love with others. Exceed expectations every single time. Jesus lived a life of pure excellence and I believe He demands nothing less from us. He has given us gifts and talents to do His work. With tools like these, how can our work be anything short of excellent?

Set yourself apart from the world as you serve others. Be humble as you do so, remembering you do what you do in honor of Jesus. Stay positive at all times, see all your tasks through to completion, and always give more than is expected of you. In so doing, you will demonstrate the difference that Christ has made in your life.

Life is Not a Bus Stop

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Do you find yourself waiting for something to happen in your life? Are you certain that you were created to do great things, and are simply waiting for the right opportunity to arrive? Day after day you stand in the same spot, looking to the horizon to see if your moment is on its way. Perhaps you can even see it far off in the distance but it simply never comes near enough to pick you up and carry you off into the life you were meant to live. Life is not a bus stop; nothing was ever accomplished by waiting for opportunities to sweep you away and give you the life you always dreamed of. When we plan for what we intend to do, when we prayerfully consider whether our plans are in alignment with the character of God, and when we take action on those plans, then and only then will we begin to experience the life He has created us to live.

Many of us desire to follow Christ by living a life of greatness through the use of the gifts He has given us. We become so convinced that this is our calling that we sabotage ourselves by sitting around and waiting for the stars to align or a shout from Heaven to signal the beginning of our work. There is no Scriptural basis for any of this, so I am deeply puzzled how we ever got to this point. There is plenty of Scriptural support for planning your projects and your future. A plan, however, is useless if we don’t ever start to actively follow through. No plan is accomplished without action. You cannot wait your way to success, but you can certainly wait your way to failure. If you never take a step you aren’t actually walking. If you never start walking, you can’t follow Jesus. If you aren’t following Jesus, then you will never become who He created you to be.

To become all you were meant to be starts with following Jesus. Following Jesus starts by actively engaging in that pursuit. We must devote our entire lives to him. Every area of our life must be surrendered to Him for His use. We must surrender our thoughts, our deeds, our pleasures and our pain. From this point forward, all things must be done for Him. We no longer exist in and of ourselves, but instead exist only for Him. This must be our single focus, our definite chief aim. Let nothing persuade you from remaining steadfastly focused on Jesus. Keep your eyes on Him and do not stray from the path on which He is walking. Boldly move forward without fear of any man or circumstance. Embrace the freedom that is found in a life of following Christ, a life without fear. You will then be free to pursue the passions and dreams He has planted within you and to make use of the gifts with which He has equipped you.

Life is not meant to be a bus stop, it is meant to be a full throttle joyride rocketing down the road Christ has laid before you. Follow Him with certainty and without fear. Give up everything you have to experience the joy of true freedom. It all starts with us boldly taking action and pursuing Him with all that we are. Don’t get left behind; be bold, take action, and move!

For Whom Would You Die?

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The most unfathomable concept in all of Christianity is the fact that Jesus died for us. This wasn’t some romantic fairy tale death of a hero. Nor was it the death of a man whom everyone knew deserved it. His was a real death, dirty, painful and torturous. He endured things that you and I can scarcely imagine, much less ever have to experience. Why? Because He loved us; He knew this was the only way. This was His mission. It was not something he necessarily wanted to endure, but He was willing to do so because He knew it was the only way. He would have to become the sacrifice so we might live. It’s odd to me that we often gloss over His death and how rarely we truly dwell on it. True, His resurrection is the brilliant culmination of the story, and the part that made it all worth it. But there would have been no resurrection had He not first chosen to die.

One of the things I often contemplate is what my reaction would be if I had to choose between being put to death and denying Christ. I am confident I would choose death. What if the choice was between ongoing torture and denying Christ, would my answer change? An untold number of our brothers and sisters in Christ face this very decision every day of their lives. Although I have some trepidation as to what effect physical torture might have on my resolve, I feel I can honestly say still that I would choose Christ and not deny Him. If you are a devoted follower of Jesus, I suspect that you feel the same as I do. No one wants to face a violent death or brutal torture, but we know He endured both of these things for us; we must be willing to do the same for Him.

Which leads me to an uncomfortable question: if we are willing to die for Christ, why is it we continually refuse to die to self? Are we more important than Christ? We say we would die for Him, but we won’t give up certain parts of our life to Him. “I’ll do anything for You Jesus, I’ll even die for you… just don’t ask me to give up [insert your idol of choice here]”. It cheapens our supposed commitment to Him. To imply that we are too precious to die for is almost blasphemous. He did not consider His own life too special to not offer it up for you. Yet every day we refuse to die to self, every time we protect our personal idols, we tell Him He’s just not worth it. God forgive us for our ignorance and our hardened hearts.

What parts of your life are you refusing to give up? Which parts of your life have you resisted putting to death? He gave up everything for us. It will be difficult and may cause some anguish. We may beg to hold on to our little idols. But only a life that is submitted to Christ in every area can claim to be following in the way of Christ. He did it for us; we must do it for Him. He died for us; we say we’d die for Him. But are we first willing to die to ourselves?

Do Something in Difficult Times

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After dealing with poverty over the last two posts (see “Haiti: What’s Our Response?” and “Unity and the Poor”), I had intended to move to a different topic today. But in addition to continuing to read Richard Stearns’ excellent “The Hole in Our Gospel”, I ran into these sobering words from Proverbs this morning:

“If you do nothing in a difficult time, your strength is limited. Rescue those being taken off to death, and save those stumbling toward slaughter. If you say, ‘But we didn’t know about this,’ won’t He who weighs hearts consider it? Won’t He who protects your life know? Won’t He repay a person according to his work?” Proverbs 24:10-12 (HCSB)

The fact is we do know what is going on in the world; we are aware. Never before has the world seemed so small. We have up to the minute newscasts available to us from almost every part of the world. Television, newspapers, magazines and the Internet put pictures and video right in front of our face. It is not that we are unaware of the poverty and evil in the world, it is simply that we do not care. What other conclusion can be drawn from our lives?

The above passage in Proverbs calls us to action in difficult times. There is strength in action; lack of action produces, and signifies, weakness. I do not want to stand before the Lord in weakness; I want to demonstrate the strength of His power through one willing to be used. How dare we pretend to be unaware of the plight of the poor, the homeless and the victims of war and genocide? Jesus said that the peacemakers will be blessed (Matthew 5:9). Yet we choose sides in every conflict and pray that the “right” side will win. There is no right side in war. There is only death and peace; those are the two actual faces of war. Pray for peace, pray for the enemy, pray for the lives lost and otherwise permanently affected by the violence. In addition, take action! Do something in the face of difficult times. We each have different gifts and capacities to help, we all have different circumstances and situations, but we can all do something. If you cannot help a hundred people, then help ten. If you cannot help ten people, then help one. We all can help one. This is how differences are made: one person, one precious human life, at a time.

You have probably heard the parable of the starfish before, but it is a relevant and helpful reminder to the problems we see in the world today:

“Once upon a time there was a philosopher who would walk along the beach every morning, thinking about how to help the world.One day as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a figure moving back and forth, rhythmically dancing to the day.

This gave him great pleasure, so he began to walk faster to catch up. As he got closer, he saw that it was a young woman and the young woman wasn’t dancing, but instead she was reaching down to the shore, picking up something and very gently throwing it into the ocean.

When he got closer he called out, ‘Good morning! What are you doing?’

The young woman looked up and replied with simple joy, ‘Throwing starfish in the ocean.’

The man looked puzzled and said: ‘I guess I should have asked why you are throwing starfish in the ocean?’

‘The sun is up and the tide is going out. And if I don’t throw them in they’ll die.’

‘But, don’t you realize that there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it. You can’t possibly make a difference!’ said the man.

The young woman listened politely. She then bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea past the breaking waves and said with a smile…

‘… but I made a difference to that one’.” –Anonymous

Some of us have the power to change the world. All of us have the power to change the world for one person. Together we can do amazing things in difficult times. We will draw strength from each other as we work to take the love of Christ to those in pain and poverty. The call is clear; the mission is set. What will you do in these difficult times?

Haiti: What’s Our Response?

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I try and steer away from tying in a blog post to a current event. My thinking is this gives the posts a more timeless element so that they can be applicable regardless of when you read them. The recent earthquake in Haiti (and subsequent aftershocks) has given me reason to break my unwritten rule. Looking at the pictures of devastation is heartbreaking. There is a great outpouring of support from the world at large which is heartening. At least we have not totally lost our soul; not yet anyway. As followers of Christ we must ask, “What is our response to the tragedy in Haiti?”

The most basic tenet of Christianity is to care for the poor and needy. Haiti is a poor country. They were before the earthquake; they are even more so now. As Christians it is our duty to serve them. We should have been serving them all along, but perhaps this tragedy will awaken our slumbering hearts. In mere moments, tens of thousands found themselves homeless, hungry and without basic sanitation. Tens of thousands more are no longer among the living. In the blink of an eye their lives ended and we lost the opportunity to serve them and to share the love of Jesus with them. It’s too late. We waited too long. We waited because missionary work was always someone else’s job. We waited because we were too afraid to give of our time or our money or ourselves. We waited because we were simply indifferent to the plight of a poor nation thousands of miles from our front door. While we waited, Jesus wept. He gave all He had for us. He died for us. He set the perfect example for our response to those in need. We ignored it.

Now, we are awake. Our eyes are open to the plight of these dear people. Each one of them is created in the image of God. Each one of them is loved unconditionally by the same Savior we call Lord. Do we love them? Are we willing to give everything we have to serve them? Will we open our checkbooks, our cupboards or our life to them? They are our brothers and sisters. Richard Stearns, President of World Vision, in his terrific “The Hole in Our Gospel”, writes “Authentic faith, rooted in the heart of God, is expressed in deeds done to ease the pain of others; it is imbued with personal sacrifice, and it comes with a cost.”

This is our opportunity; this is our time of great decision. We can rise up and stand with people of Haiti, or we can turn our back on Jesus and all we profess to believe. In a couple of weeks, Haiti will be off the front page, but the need will remain for years to come. So I ask again, what is our response to Haiti? Will we be unchanged by the tragic events or will we use it to open our eyes to the poor and suffering all over the world? Haiti needed us before the earthquake, and few of us did anything. Are we awake now? Do we now see the need that has been there all along and is far greater now? What will our response be to Haiti and the rest of the world in need? Whatever we do for them, we do for Jesus; if we turn away, we turn away from Jesus. How will you respond?