Even If i Walk Alone

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

God's Kingdom

Radical Obedience

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I’ve been mulling over the phrase “radical obedience” in my mind of late. Radical means far-reaching or thorough. That describes the type of obedience I long to have with Jesus. In fact, I would say it is the type of obedience demanded by Christ and required of all those who claim Him to be their Lord. Radical obedience is thorough. It is far-reaching. What it is not occasional or situational. Too many follow Jesus when it is convenient or expedient. When push comes to shove, their obedience wanes.

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This type of obedience, which is no obedience at all, runs rampant through our churches and results in an abundance of nominal Christians. Practicing radical obedience should be the rule, not the exception. It is sad the opposite is reality today.

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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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His Own Image

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A.W. Tozer once wrote, “Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him and to bring Him nearer to our own image.” It seems we spend much of our lives doing this. We speak of our love for Jesus with our mouth, but our lives don’t look much like His. It’s as if we need to define who we mean when we say the name of Jesus.

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Do we mean the beautiful, holy, and blameless Son of God, or do we mean the person we’ve created who happens to look suspiciously like ourselves and the model citizen of our society? God’s Word teaches Jesus is the same today as He has always been and will always be (Hebrews 13:8). If we intend to follow Christ, we must follow Him as He is, not who we are making Him to be.

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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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The Purpose of Life

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What did you do yesterday to build the Kingdom? What will you do today? Those two questions may be the most important you can ever ask yourself. Indeed, these questions frame the purpose of life. There is nothing else worth living for other than Jesus. We will spend our lives building His Kingdom or building our own.  The Kingdom of God is eternal.

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It will exist long after our own little kingdoms have faded in history, washed away by the tides of time. But Jesus remains. His Kingdom endures forever. Why would we spend our lives pursuing things which will not last when we can spend it for that which lasts forever?

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