Even If i Walk Alone

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

Discipleship

Comfort Zone

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When faced with stressful and overwhelming circumstances, we all tend to pull back and retreat into what is most familiar to us. If what is most familiar and comfortable to us is sin, then we will find ourselves indulging in sinful behaviors every time our world feels like it is collapsing around us. Thus, when we most need God (as if we aren’t in constant need!), we are rebelling against Him. It’s not a good plan.

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A far better plan is to instill healthy spiritual disciplines that will cause us to retreat into habits like prayer and Bible reading when our life begins tilting upside down. Solomon wrote, “As shameful conduct is pleasure for a fool, so wisdom is for a man of understanding” (Proverbs 10:23). We need to be so obsessed with God and His Word that He becomes our comfort zone.

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No Substitute

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With all the turmoil in the world, it can be difficult to know how to respond. Do you speak out or hold your tongue? Should you join the crowd or stand with the resistance? When it comes to figuring out how you should live and which direction to go, there is no substitute for God’s Word. We do not place enough emphasis on the study of God’s Word today.

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So many preachers are busy delivering self-help sermons and trying to read themselves into the Bible that we’ve lost the basic need and discipline of reading and studying the Scriptures. Bible reading is not a tired and dusty practice. It is as essential as oxygen in the life of every believer.

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Conformed or Transformed?

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Are you being conformed or transformed? It’s a question I heard a preacher ask not too long ago. The question is both cutting and convicting and should lead to a healthy dose of self-reflection. If we give our lives to Jesus, the Holy Spirit will begin the work of transforming us into the image of Christ.

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However, if we give ourselves over to the pursuits of pleasure, success, and happiness, the spirit of the age will be at work conforming us to the things of this world. Depending on our choices, our lives will reflect either the Holy God or the evil devil. Being transformed leads to eternal life, while being conformed leads to eternal damnation.

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This New Year

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As this year draws to a close, we look back and think of what occurred, what we accomplished, and what might have been. The end of a year brings a mix of thoughts of satisfaction, relief, achievement, sorrow, pain, and regret. There’s something about completing a chapter in one’s life that invokes nostalgia, retrospection, and hope in all of us. A brand new year promises a clean slate for us.

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Goal setting and resolutions run rampant, filling even the weakest of us with resolve and willpower for at least a day or two. Humans are a predictable but interesting lot. This new year, let’s focus less on ourselves and more on what matters. Losing weight, buying a new house, and finding a better job are worthwhile pursuits, but none of them will matter if we die tomorrow. The only thing that matters is what we do for Jesus.

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A Sense of Wonder

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Another Christmas season is behind us, and now we must determine how the birth of Christ will change how we live for the next 365 days. Because that’s the point, isn’t it? Christmas isn’t about giving and receiving gifts from others. It’s about accepting the gift given to us by God. It’s the only gift that lasts, the only gift that truly satisfies you, and the only gift that brings eternal life along with it.

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How many times during the past Christmas season did you stop to consider that? How often are you considering it now? We don’t live with a sense of wonder and awe, but we should. The gift of Jesus is unbelievable, undeserved, without a doubt, unappreciated.

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