Even If i Walk Alone

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

Discipleship

What does it mean to be a Christian?

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Since we talk so much about Christianity here, I thought it might be worthwhile for some to take a step back and define what being a Christian actually entails. Christianity in the traditional sense simply means one who is a follower of Christ. In modern evangelical terms (if you are new to Christianity, you’ll find we have A LOT of terms), a Christian is defined as someone who has prayed “the sinner’s prayer” and accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. My purpose is not to find fault with either definition, but rather to elaborate on them, with an emphasis on what Jesus commanded of His followers.

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Drive Out Your Idols

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My pastor made a great analogy in his message yesterday which I felt was worth sharing and unpacking a bit. He was talking about how God commanded the Israelites to drive out the people in the Promised Land before settling down there. The reason God gave this command was that the people who inhabited what would become Israel were idol worshippers; they lived promiscuous and evil lifestyles. God knew if these people were allowed to stay, they would tempt His people to abandon the laws of God and partake of their pagan lifestyle. God and evil cannot coexist in the same land. The analogy my pastor (Dave Mullins) made was that our hearts are like the Promised Land. When we invite Christ into our lives, we must drive out the idols in the land.

Flash forward a few thousand years. Not much has changed. We have not yet learned that God and idols cannot exist in the same realm. God gave everything He had, His only Son, for us. In return, if we would follow Him, He demands everything that we have. My experience is that most of us do not completely drive out the idols in our heart before settling down into our “Christian” lifestyle. Sure, we eradicate the more obvious and less painful idols, but we do not complete the job. History has repeatedly shown that ending a war before completely vanquishing the enemy results in an unending series of skirmishes from that point forward. Those that are left standing become a constant source of irritation and pain.

Apply this to your own life. After you accepted Christ, did you complete the assignment? Did you drive out all of the idols in your heart? Did you submit every last area of your life to Him? If you’re like most of us, you quit too soon and kept an area or two for yourself. It’s ironic how we can read the stories in the Bible and shake our heads at the stubbornness of those who disobeyed God. Surely if we had been there we would have made the right choice! Yet every day we are making the same bad choices of those who lived generations before us. We fall for the same tricks and suffer from the same pride and rebellion. It is pride, after all, that causes us to say in full arrogance that we are the exception; we can handle leaving a few idols whereas no one else in human history has been able to do so! It’s time to let go of our pride and do what God has commanded us to do. It’s time to drive all the idols from our hearts; no holding back.

It’s gut check time. Have you permitted idols to remain in your heart while claiming to be a disciple of Christ? Are there areas of your life that you have kept for yourself and refused to submit to him? You are not alone in your failure. Generation upon generation has failed in the same way. Here’s the good news about failure: as Zig Ziglar has said, failure is an event, not a person! Failure is merely an event on the road to victory. Events are temporary and fully recoverable. Failure need not define you. Restart the war and drive out all the idols that remain in your heart. Surrender your entire life again to Jesus, hold nothing back. Turn your failure into victory and begin to walk in the joy that is a life wholly devoted to Christ.

Is Your Life Loud Enough?

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I have a prayer calendar for the persecuted church, positioned in such a way that I see it several times each day. The calendar is put out by The Voice of the Martyrs, and each day has a prayer request for someone in a country that does not allow freedom of religion. Some of the requests are heart breaking, but all remind me of the courage of the believers in these countries. It is often hard to know exactly how to pray for these brave men and women. I am tempted to pray for total freedom of religion in their country. Then I remember that here in America we have religious freedom and the church is withering. The same is true for England, although withering is too kind of a term for what has happened to the church there. Yet in the countries without religious freedom, Christianity is thriving, growing at an incredible pace. How can this be? Christianity has a rich history of persecution. It is always through this persecution that the message of Christ spreads. The way these believers have endured trials you and I can scarcely imagine has spoken volumes to those involved in persecuting them. To pray that these countries would obtain religious liberty is to perhaps doom them to the fate of the Church in the Western world. So I generally pray that the believers there would be strengthened with the power of Christ, that they would be courageous and bold, and above all, that their love would shine so brightly that others would be blinded by it. I pray that the leaders see the positive effect that Christians are having on society and that their message continues to spread. Through it all I am uncomfortably aware of how loud is the love of these faithful believers. They are not allowed to tell others of Christ, yet their lives are lived at such a volume that others cannot help but to experience the love of Christ.

How is your volume? When you walk into the room, do people turn and look because the love of Christ is blaring through your pores? Are they blinded by the light of God that shines through every inch of you? How is it that Christians who are not allowed to gather together in countries that are woefully poor continue to have a larger impact than the wealthy, free church of the West? The difference is they love out loud. They are not passive. They don’t wait for the right moment to serve or until they have enough extra to give. They love out loud and our love is barely a whisper. When we are called to give an account of our lives, will God be able to hear our love and all the ways we demonstrated that love to others? More likely than not, our love will be a barely audible whisper and we‘ll have little to show of its use. The good news is we have the ability to amp up the volume of our love. Every time we reach out to help someone in need, our love gets a little louder. Every time we smile at a stranger or offer an encouraging word, our love gets a little louder. Conversely, every time we hesitate, we turn the volume down a notch. Every time we walk by rather than lending a hand, the volume of our love gets that much quieter.

How loud is your life? Does it blare with the love of Christ or does it whisper the sound of selfishness and busyness? Are you willing to crank it up a notch, willing to start sharing the love of Christ every second of every minute of every hour of every day? We are called to love, period. Do you want to be a follower of Jesus? You must love everyone more than yourself. You’ve got to live out loud. You’ve got to put away everything else you’ve been living for and replace it with love for others. So many are passing away without ever believing in Jesus; it’s time to stem the tide and show them a better way. Put away your selfishness and fear. We have no guarantee of tomorrow. The time is now. Turn up the volume of your life so that others cannot help but see Jesus through you.

Unity and the Poor

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Lately my study has been focused on the poor and unity in the Church. In my last post (see “Haiti: What is Our Response?”), I talked about what our response to those in need should be. I want to continue on that topic today as it is so prevalent in Scripture, and so ignored in our modern society.

Let me first speak of unity among the body of believers in Jesus Christ. When we choose to follow Christ, our lives are forever changed. His priorities become our priorities. We love the way He loves. We treat others the way He does. At least this is what should happen. Many of us accept the gift of Christ, pledge to follow Him and we never hear from them again. Others begin to follow Christ and do well until they join a church. Within the walls of the church building they become disillusioned by the infighting, jealousy, greed and apathy. Still others find that their fellow members do not hold exactly to their own beliefs. More infighting breaks out. Along the way, the call to follow Jesus becomes nothing more than some words on a projector screen.

We are not called to this; we are called to be gentle, humble and patient with one another. We’re called to accept everyone with love. We’re called to be unified with peace (Ephesians 4:1-4). We let our petty arguments get in the way of our calling. We are called to the hope of Jesus Christ. What exactly is that hope? That all people would experience the love and grace of God in their lives; this is the hope to which we were called. We cannot take the hope of Jesus to the world as long as we are wasting time fighting one another. As we fail to take the message of hope to the world, the world remains starving and in need.

If we would but put aside our petty jealousies and disagreements we could actually begin to make changes on this planet. If God can use a single individual to effect great change, how much more a hundred individuals or even a thousand! My first plea is to decide right now to strive for unity with everyone you meet, particularly with your brothers and sisters in Christ. We need each other to work for the common goal of living a life that looks like Jesus.

Once unified (or alone if others simply refuse to come together), our mission is simple: give the love of Jesus to everyone we meet; feed the hungry, care for the elderly, house the homeless and take in the orphans. To this we were called, and to this alone. Are you willing to give up everything you have, everything you are, for the simple reason of giving it all to those in need? The poor are all around us, down the street, across town and all over the world; probably even in the pew next to you. What if we, as a church with one purpose, decided to get mad enough to do something about poverty? What if we gave more than one Saturday a month and more than what we could afford to give? What might be accomplished through our unity for the good of the Kingdom? My second plea is to do all you can to serve the poor.

If we love Jesus, we will do what He says (John 14:15). Do you love Him? Are you truly a follower, one who has committed all to follow Him? Are you holding back, concerned about doing it your way, or maybe wounded by the words of others? We have a limited number of breaths on this earth. How many more will you spend not caring for the poor and others in need? We, as followers of Christ must put everything aside and serve in unity. It is our duty to serve the poor. Let’s come together and make a real and lasting difference in the lives of those in need. We are the called; are you with me?

Integrity

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Are you a person of integrity? As I have stated previously on this blog, I believe integrity is an all or nothing character trait. You do not have amounts of integrity; it is either something you do or do not have. To be a person of integrity is to be above reproach at all times. So how could anyone possibly live a life of integrity when we constantly mess up and fail?

I believe living a life of integrity means you are constantly building your integrity. Whether or not you have integrity is really more of a heart attitude. What, in the very depths of your soul, at your core, do you desire? Do you want to be someone who never cheats, never lies, never cuts corners, and always puts the interests of others before themselves? If you do, I believe you have integrity. However, that integrity needs to be manifested in your behavior. Every day we are building or tearing down our perceived integrity. To put this in another way, whether or not we have integrity is a heart issue; whether or not we demonstrate that integrity is a matter of choices.

In the business world, you build integrity every time you are honest with a client. You build integrity when you put the needs of your customers and your employees before the needs of yourself. Every time you refuse to cut corners, you build your integrity. In business, the most successful individuals are historically those with a perceived high degree of integrity.

Integrity is demonstrated in our relationships as well. Here again, putting the needs of your husband or wife before your own shows that you have integrity in your relationship. Modeling respect for your spouse (or boyfriend or girlfriend) also shows integrity. For example, noticing an attractive member of the opposite sex does not show a lack of integrity. However, letting your gaze linger and your mind ponder possibilities with that individual shows a complete lack of integrity. You promised an unwavering life-long commitment to your partner, and a person of integrity honors their commitments. Jesus says that if we think something sinful, it is the same as having done it. Having integrity in our thought life is one of the most important traits a Christian can have. It is also one of the most difficult.

I suppose you may be wondering why we’re having this discussion of integrity. Simply put, if we cannot be people of integrity in our dealings with everyday life, we stand no chance of living a life of integrity when it comes to serving Jesus. We committed our lives to Him, but how many of us are living out that commitment? Do you keep your eyes fixed on the Holy Son of God, or do they wander to the pleasures of this life, consumed by the lure of instant gratification?
Are we demonstrating integrity in our financial habits? Are you spending more on your entertainment than you are in caring for the poor and needy? Do we demonstrate integrity in our thought life? To quote the late Keith Green, “What’s playing in the theater of your mind?” This is the acid test for integrity: are you living a life devoted to Christ and others, or are you pursuing your own pleasure and happiness?

Tom Ziglar points out a couple of great results of integrity: we never feel guilty about our actions, and we never have anything to hide. If we are living our lives for Christ, then we never need to fear. We can be totally honest with everyone we meet for we have nothing to hide. We can sleep at night without guilt, without regret, for we know we are doing the things Christ would do. We are free, freer than we could ever hope to be otherwise. A lack of integrity brings guilt and fear and wears us down from the endless pursuit of trying to maintain a façade.

Search your heart. Are you a person of integrity? Do you want to serve Christ more than anything in this world? Are you prepared to do whatever it takes to follow Him? If not, pray and ask that God would give you integrity and the strength to demonstrate that integrity through your actions. As a person of integrity, we will love others at all times, assist them in their struggles and serve God every waking moment. Be a person of integrity. Serve Christ with all your heart. When you fall, get up quickly and continue your journey with Him. Let’s build the Kingdom without guilt and with nothing to hide. Determine that today is the day you become a person of integrity. Put the world on notice; from this day forward you will serve and follow Christ with integrity in all aspects of your life.