Even If i Walk Alone

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

Discipline

Take Up Your Cross

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Jesus said whoever would follow Him had to deny themselves and take up their cross daily (Matthew 16:24). How many of us are doing this on a day to day basis? How many are willing to deny ourselves the comfort, security, and entertainment the world is telling us we deserve? Isn’t it true we want a version of Christianity that doesn’t involve the cross? We like the idea of being a Christian but dislike the sacrifice it requires.

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The notion of a loving God makes us feel comfortable, but His wrath makes us go another way. There is no victory without struggle, but we want our cake and to eat it too. We want all this world has to offer and a little Jesus on the side. This is not the life Jesus called us to live as His followers.

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Creating New Habits

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Nothing ever becomes a habit unless you do that thing for the first time. That sounds obvious, doesn’t it?  While obvious, I think it houses some profound truth. If every habit does indeed begin with the first time, then we must be ever diligent about what “first times” we are allowing to occur in our lives. I believe this is one reason why Paul encouraged us to take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

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If we don’t, we begin to create thought patterns that become more and more difficult to change as time goes by.But it’s not just our thoughts. Every action we take and every word we speak for the first time begins creating new habits. If we aren’t intentional about our thoughts, words, and actions, we will be creating new habits we don’t want to have.

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Drifting

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I recently heard David Platt say, “no one drifts towards holiness.” I have observed the truthfulness of this statement in my own life. When we aren’t intentional in the way we are living, the tendency is to drift into sin, not holiness. Unless we are vigilant, we will allow ourselves to be distracted and the drifting will begin. Life is rarely static.

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We are always moving in some direction. Even when we think we’re standing still, the currents of life are still compelling us in the direction of their own choosing. Unless we are purposefully setting a course, we will soon find ourselves drifting to places we never intended to go.

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Living Linearly

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In my constant quest to simplify and strip away all which is not Christ in my life, I have been thinking recently about living linearly. It seems more than ever these days, we tend to live our lives in parallel. We never do one thing at once. We read or watch television while we eat. We do daily chores with our attention divided between the squawk of the television or the words and beats flowing through our headphones.

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To increasing peril, we use our phones while we drive. Even in conversation, we spend much of it thinking of what we want to say next rather than focused on what is being said to us. Instead of focusing on one thing at a time and living linearly, we are distracted by many things and constantly processing our life in parallel.

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Stealing Time

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Time is rarely stolen from us. Except perhaps in the cases of kidnapping, wrongful imprisonment, or being detained without cause, time is never stolen from anyone. Instead, I propose our time is, for the most part, either given away or sold. We all have the same number of seconds available to us each day. We choose how much of our time will be given away, and how much will be sold.

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Every day we are charged to steward the time allotted to us in a way that honors God and furthers His mission and His Kingdom. If we are not vigilant, we will squander the time entrusted to us or sell it in exchange for our comfort, entertainment, and security.

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