Even If i Walk Alone

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

focus

Self-Centeredness

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Self-centeredness continues to be the Achilles heel of so many people who desire to follow Christ. We want to serve Him but can’t seem to get our eyes off ourselves. Instead of focusing on how amazing God is, we are content to fret over how miserable we are. A.W. Tozer once said, “The life of the normal believing child of God can never be a life of gloom and pessimism, for it is the Holy Spirit of God who keeps us above the kind of gloomy resignation that marks the secularism of the day.”

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We acknowledge with our minds the Spirit of Christ dwells in us, but live as if He doesn’t exist at all.

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Single-Minded

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I was recently reading Calvin Miller’s excellent “The Disciplined Life” for a second time and came across a statement that exploded off the page. The author wrote, “To hold anything in our hearts that is contrary to the single-minded call is to split our attention between Jesus and whatever else is calling for first place in our allegiance.”
This is the heart of discipleship.

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There is no place in the life of a follower of Christ for anything other than Jesus. A divided kingdom will certainly fall (Mark 3:24), and a divided heart will never find lasting peace or victory. We either solely belong to Jesus or we do not belong to Him at all.
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Focusing On Things That Matter

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I read an awesome prayer recently. It was simply, “Deliver me today from the trifling things and help me to spend every minute of the day on ‘the things that matter.’” I need to pray that every day. My life is often filled with “trifling things”. I am guilty of rejecting the beautiful, matchless gifts of God in lieu of the cheap and fading things of this world.

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It’s crazy when you step back and look at how much we’re giving up and how little we are actually getting. Everything we achieve or acquire in this life will pass away. It won’t last. In the end, it will all be useless; wasted time and wasted trinkets to litter the memories of a possibly wasted life.

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Losing Your Marbles

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I recently heard a story about a man who worried he was wasting his life and not spending enough time with his family. He calculated he had about a thousand Saturday’s left in his life span, so he bought a thousand marbles and put them in a jar. Each Saturday morning he would take a marble out and throw it away.

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This served to help him visualize how finite time is and how it was ever dwindling. The story resonated with me as I am always looking for reminders to keep me focused on my purpose and mission in life. It’s too easy to let our days quickly pass without focusing on Jesus and building His Kingdom.
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Master of Distraction

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For Christ followers, I am convinced that the source of all our discouragement, frustration, and depression is the result of taking our focus off of Jesus. As soon as we revert to our selfish nature, looking at ourselves instead of Him, everything starts to go a bit haywire. Each of us has been uniquely designed by God. We have all been given talents, skills, and passions to use to further His Kingdom. When we begin to live in ways that are not consistent with whom we were created to be, we slip and wander.

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Satan does everything he can to cause this to happen. He tempts us with visions of a better, safer, or easier life. He entices us to fill our lives with things other than Christ. He is the master of distraction, and if we give in to his lies, we will find ourselves frustrated, discouraged, and perhaps even sinking into the depths of depression.
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