Even If i Walk Alone

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

Discipleship

Countercultural

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In a recent sermon, Greg Boyd said, “You can’t live out the Kingdom and not be countercultural.” Living the way Jesus lived will make you stand out from the crowd. You’ll definitely look weird compared to the standards of your society. Of course, for those of us who have committed our lives to serve Christ, we don’t mind the long stares, awkward conversations, or sometimes outright hostility.

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We understand it comes with the territory and realize the mission of Jesus is far more important than any of that. Still, too many professing Christians want to build God’s kingdom, but they want to build their own along the way.
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Living in Love

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In a recent post (see “When All is Said and Done”) I discussed how it is vital that we live our lives with an eye toward retelling our story to Jesus. This is an important concept to grasp, because each of us will one day have to give an account of our lives to Him (Romans 14:10-12).

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With that in mind, I wanted to look at practical ways we can live to ensure we have a pleasing story to tell. This isn’t a list of “do’s and don’ts”, but rather a motivation that must invade every aspect of our lives. That motivation is love.
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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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