Even If i Walk Alone

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

Discipleship

Urgent Enough

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Something with which I have been struggling is whether I am living my life urgent enough. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older or because I’m gaining more clarity on my mission here on earth, but I have a constant suspicion my life is not being lived urgent enough. The fact is our lives are finite. They are going to end. Most of us probably do not have as much time remaining as we think we do. I know this because few of us think about the end of our lives in a meaningful way.

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As long as we are healthy, we tend to always think there will be a tomorrow, next week, and next year. Those who learn they only have weeks or months to live tend to live their lives differently; they live with an urgency about them. The rest of us? We take life as it comes, always planning for a tomorrow that may never arrive.

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Counter-Cultural

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In a world that promotes self-aggrandizement and getting ahead, living life as a humble servant is truly counter-cultural. It is to invite ridicule, derision, and condescending pity from the masses. No one chooses to live this way because it is easy or socially acceptable. We choose it because Jesus told us this is the way to live. By His own example, Jesus showed although He was superior to all, He chose to be a servant to all (John 13:3-17). He told His disciples anyone who sought to get ahead would be sent to the back of the line (Matthew 19:23-30).

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In the upside-down Kingdom of God, the way to get ahead is to stop promoting yourself and begin building up others. For followers of Christ, life is not about becoming the best known or loved. It’s about serving others in such a way they might see Jesus in us and come to know Him for themselves.

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Follow Him

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Did you ever wonder what it must have felt like for the original disciples when they first heard Jesus invite them to follow Him? We read the story too quickly. Indeed, in its condensed form, it is easy to miss the gravity of the moment. Jesus beckoned them to follow Him, and they dropped their nets and ran after Him. How cool it must have been to be one of the original disciples. If only we had the opportunity, we think, we would have maximized it for all it was worth.

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While the compact telling in the Bible is powerful and shows the great commitment and faith of these men, it doesn’t paint the whole picture of what happened at that moment. These men didn’t just make a decision about what they would do with the rest of their lives, but they were also choosing to walk away from everything they had known.

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Make it Count

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What are you going to do today that matters? I believe followers of Jesus bear the responsibility to ask this question every day. Whatever else we might do today, we’ve got to make it count for Jesus. It’s unbelievable how we’ve allowed ourselves to be co-opted into the culture and we now spend every waking hour, and pretty much every dollar, on things having no eternal value. Friends – Church! – we must wake up.

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Real people, individuals just like you and me, are dying and going to Hell every day of our lives. They are going to Hell because no one told them there was a better way. No one told them no matter what they had done, they were not beyond the love of Jesus. No one told them because we didn’t tell them. We let the day pass by, and we didn’t make it count.

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Rededicate

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It doesn’t take much to see our world is heading in the wrong direction. For those of us in the West, I believe we must accept our own share of responsibility for the way things are. After all, we’ve had religious freedom for a long time. We’ve had knowledge of our Savior for centuries. Somewhere along the line we stopped living as if Jesus was the only thing that mattered and found ourselves more and more seeking our own comfort and security. How can we who have been given so much think we will escape judgment for how little we have done?

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We not only are disobeying Christ’s command to tell everyone about Him (Matthew 28:18-20), but we no longer live as if Jesus is the Lord we claim Him to be. So, we are both disobedient and hypocritical. This is who we have become. This will be our legacy. Is that okay with you? Do you think this is the victorious life to which we have all been called (1 John 5:3-5)?

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