Even If i Walk Alone

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

Faith

No More Financial Goals

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I love goal-setting each year. It’s the way I’m wired. Beginning in November, I begin to get excited about the year ahead as I think and pray about what I want to accomplish. As I mature in my faith, more and more, I am beginning to ask the question, “What does God want me to accomplish in the next year?” I’d love to tell you I’ve always started there, but the truth is I haven’t been as prayerful in this area of my life as I should have been.

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Every year I have set a financial goal, either how much I want to earn, a financial goal I’d like to meet, or even what I would like my net worth to be. This year I felt God telling me quite strongly there should be no more financial goals in my plan. I’d like to explain why and perhaps you might join me in declaring, “No more financial goals!”

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Willing to Die

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Are you willing to die for your faith? Have you ever even considered it? Would you hold fast to Jesus if someone had a knife to your throat demanding you choose to deny Christ or die? While it seems like an extreme scenario to many of us, thousands (perhaps millions) of believers live with this as their reality every day. Recently I learned before you can become a member of the church in Iran, you must sign a paper agreeing to lose your property, be thrown in jail, and die for your faith.

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Photo by Melanie Wasser on Unsplash

If that sounds radical, consider the Church in Iran is one of the fastest growing evangelical communities in the world. The Church is expanding because they are willing to die. Contrast this with the Western church which is shrinking perhaps more than any other reason because we are not willing to die.

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Fear Isn’t Real

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I read a quote from a Malaysian pastor who said, “Fear is not as real as God. When the time comes, we’ll find that it [fear] doesn’t matter anymore.” When we meet Jesus, we will understand how futile our fears have been. In Jesus, there is such love, such joy. There is nothing to fear in the arms of our Savior.

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image © Yuriy Shevtsov via Fotolia

When we see Him face to face we will realize this as never before. But what if we didn’t have to wait? What if we would come to understand right now, in the midst of all we’re going through, the reality of God’s love and the façade of fear?

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What Scares You?

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What scares you? Fear is the great killer of love and hope because we know perfect love casts out all fear (1 John 4:18). Each of us who have chosen to follow Christ has been called to love. We love because Christ first loved us (1 John 4:19; John 13:34). Every waking hour should be spent loving others as Christ did. The reality is we shy away from expressing such love.

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We’re afraid of what others might think or what loving others might cost us. It’s one thing to love your spouse or children; it’s quite another to love a homeless man, gang member, terrorist, or someone in prison. When the going gets tough, we are quick to hit the exit door.

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Starting Over

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What if you were starting over in your walk with Christ? What would you do differently than you are doing right now? It’s easy and even inevitable to fall into ruts if we are not intentional in our choices. Are you living the life you know Jesus wants you to live? Why not? What’s holding you back? What fears have been getting in the way of you living your potential and becoming the person God created you to be?

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I admit it’s a lot of questions to throw at you all at once, but if we aren’t taking the time to evaluate where we are in our relationship with Jesus and how we’re doing in our walk, we will continue to drift along doing the same things we’ve always done and achieving the same results we’ve always gotten.

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