Even If i Walk Alone

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

Galatians

Do You Love Me More Than These?

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Many of us know the story of Jesus restoring Peter to fellowship with Him. We find the story in John 21:15-19, and much has been written and taught about this passage. The first question Jesus asked Peter was, “Do you love me more than these?” He may have been asking whether Peter loved Him more than the other disciples did, or perhaps if Peter loved Jesus more than he did his fellow disciples.

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Another option is Jesus may have been asking Peter if He loved the nourishment of God over bodily nourishment (they were eating breakfast after a night of hard fishing). While people teach the first two more often, I’d like to focus on the third option. I think “Do you love me more than these?” is a good question for us all to ask every day.

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God’s Will for Your Life

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I’m not sure why, but we make following Jesus a lot more difficult than it needs to be. I think when we get to Heaven we’re going to see how complicated we made it and how simple it should have been. Like the Pharisees, we have added all sorts of rules, regulations, and obligations onto what Jesus taught. My guess is we do this to avoid doing what He told us to do.

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Just as claiming to be a perfectionist is often an excuse for procrastination, I think our busyness in the name of Jesus is an excuse for our lack of selflessness and desire to love others. We try and hide the ugly with something good. But ultimately only God is good, and any attempt to mask Him with anything else will result in something less than He is. It will result in worthless pursuits.

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Absolute Surrender

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Surrender is a word which causes mixed emotions for me. My independent and ferocious side wants to scream out, “Never! I won’t quit, won’t stop, won’t ever give in.” Surrender implies I’ve failed in some way. I didn’t complete the task or achieve the mission. I’m not one who likes to be beaten. On the flip side, surrender is the most beautiful word I know and is the aspiration of my life.

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I know I cannot win until I surrender. The mission will fail unless and until I surrender. While my prideful self resists surrender, my love for Christ demands it of me. So, in a paradoxical sense, I must refuse to surrender to ever stop surrendering to Jesus!

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Dead People

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There’s a famous line from the 1999 movie, “The Sixth Sense”, where the little boy says, “I see dead people.” It was supposed to be creepy at the time, but now it is more comical (or perhaps that’s just my own twisted sense of humor!). The fact is, as Christ-followers, we should say “I see dead people” every time we walk into a gathering of believers.

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If our faith in Jesus is genuine it means we have given up everything. Indeed, we have died to ourselves. Jesus said if we would follow Him we must “take up our cross daily” (Luke 9:23). Nobody walks away from their cross alive. We are dead people.

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Breathing Christ

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What if Christ were so central to our lives He became our very breath? Everything would depend on Him just as everything depends on our ability to breathe in and breathe out. Wouldn’t it be amazing if Jesus was so essential to our lives living for Him became as natural and effortless as breathing?

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The Holy Spirit of God infuses our body. He is not an add-on, but rather an integrated part of all we are. He adds no weight and is indeed as light as the air we breathe.  Because of this, communing with Christ can be as natural and easy as breathing in and breathing out.

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