Even If i Walk Alone

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

Discipleship

Heavenly Minded

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When I was growing up, you’d often hear people refer to someone else as being “so heavenly minded that they were no earthly good”. The crazy thing is that this was meant as an insult, not a compliment. Yes, there are actually Christians who think that if you become too focused on Heaven that you will actually be useless on earth.

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The way I read the Bible, the exact opposite is true.  As we become more intimately acquainted with the Spirit of God, His power explodes through us and we are able to accomplish far more than we ever imagined. And yes, we do that right here on earth because we are so Heavenly minded.
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Living What You Believe

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Francis Chan’s latest book, “You and Me Forever”, will certainly challenge the way you think about your marriage, but perhaps even more importantly it will challenge the way you live your life. Every page seems to hold a new challenge for me. For example, Chan says, “While many of us would say we believe what [the Apostle] Paul believed, our lives do not reflect it. If we believe that billions are dying and headed for God’s judgment, does it make sense to center our lives around anything other than the mission to reach them?… Does the way you are living make sense in the light of the existence of hell? Does your use of time and money make sense in light of the suffering in the world today?” What if we really asked those questions of ourselves?

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Jesus at the Center

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I love this thought from A.W. Tozer: “We should see God at the center, and everything else just at the edges.” Can you imagine being so consumed by God that anything that was not God appeared only in your peripheral vision, and slightly blurry at that? This is the goal of my life and for the life of every true disciple of Jesus. When Christ walked the earth, He did so with His focus firmly and always on the Father. He made it clear that the things He did were only because He saw the Father doing those same works (John 5:19). As people-centric as Jesus is and was, those same people still were only on the edges of His vision. He lived His life so consumed by God that nothing could compromise His mission.

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God on a Leash

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I recently heard Daron Earliwine preach a sermon where he relayed a story about having to keep his new puppy on a leash when they walk. After giving it some thought, he surmised that the reason he keeps his new pal on a leash is because he doesn’t trust him.  They haven’t developed the level of trust where Daron can rely on his dog to stay with him in every circumstance. Since the dog can’t be fully trusted, Daron feels safer keeping him on a leash where he can exercise a modicum of control over his actions. His point was that we often treat God in the same way. We keep Him on a leash, so to speak, because we don’t fully trust Him. Let me explain a bit further.

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The Art of Self-Denial

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There are a few extremes that people hold to on the topic of self-denial. I think A.W. Tozer said it best: “The meaning of self-denial is not an infliction of personal torment nor penance, but it is simply the giving up of the very principle of living for ourselves. It is completely changing the direction of our being and will, so that no longer in any sense do we act with reference to how anything will affect us, but our one thought is how it will affect God or others.” Self-denial then is not principally about doing less for ourselves, but rather doing more for God.

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