Even If i Walk Alone

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

commitment

What do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

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When you are young, people often ask you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Our answers were always filled with the exuberant and innocent dreams of youth. My earliest recollection of answering that question was that I wanted to be Spiderman. That didn’t pan out and I still haven’t had any encounters with a radioactive spider, so like many passing fancies of youth, it’s probably time to let that dream go.

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But the question of “What do you want to be when you grow up” is a good one for all would-be disciples of Jesus. And it can only have one answer: “I want to be just like Jesus.” While my childhood dream of being Spiderman had no basis on reality, the aim of living like Jesus is both an attainable and worthwhile pursuit.

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Let Us Pray

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I am convicted we who are followers of Jesus are not spending enough time in prayer. We wring our hands about the state of the world and continued attacks on Christianity while neglecting to do the one thing we can do to change it all: pray. Too many of our prayers have become rote and boring. We pray before our meals, before shutting down at night, and perhaps even first thing in the morning.

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But how many of those prayers are for other people, our country, our leaders, persecuted brothers and sisters, or for the lost around the globe? Our prayers are too selfish, too mechanical, and too safe. We need to open our hearts and pour out our cries before the Lord. Let us pray prayers that will move the heart of God rather than bring us more comfort and success.

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Uncomfortable Truths

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We all encounter uncomfortable truths in our life. Some we can do little about on our own. Others are personal and we bear the full responsibility for them. As followers of Jesus, one of those uncomfortable truths is we’re not as much like Jesus as we’d like to be because we don’t want to be.

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We choose whether we will follow God’s ways or our own. It’s easier for us to blame the devil or the culture for the way we live. But the uncomfortable truth is we are as close to God as we want to be. Our lives look like that of Jesus only as much as we choose to align ourselves with Him.

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Unity

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Depending on the source, there are between 1,100 and 43,000 different denominations under the umbrella of Christianity. The best and most agreed-upon definition of what makes up a denomination puts the number somewhere between 9,000 and 30,000. It is important to consider those numbers in light of the last prayer Jesus prayed for His disciples before going to the cross to be crucified for our sins (John 17:20-22). He asked the Father that His disciples would be unified.

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Jesus prayed His followers would be one, just as He and His Father were one. Reflecting on that, how would you say the Church is doing in living out His desire that we would be unified as one? Instead of a vibrant body moving in harmony with one another, we have allowed our petty differences and selfish opinions to divide the body not once, not twice, but over 10,000 times. That’s not unity, and it shows the Church is falling woefully short of what Christ intended it to be.

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Personal Holiness

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God calls each of us to live a life of personal holiness. This goes much deeper than having a daily prayer time or attending a service on the weekend. Personal holiness is more than what we do. It’s also about what we don’t do. It’s what we choose to think about, and what we refuse to dwell on. Personal holiness will affect the words we say and those we don’t speak.

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It’s all-consuming. When we allow the holiness of God to permeate our entire being, everything changes. Everything looks different. We cannot afford to let even the smallest hint of sin take up residence in our hearts because it will eventually infect our entire body.

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