Even If i Walk Alone

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

I Corinthians

Following Jesus Is Hard

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Let me state the obvious: following Jesus is hard. If you think following Jesus is easy, my bet is you aren’t following Him in the manner His Word prescribes. It’s easy to say you follow Jesus. It’s even easy to place your faith in Him. None of that requires anything on your part, and you can take it back whenever that decision becomes inconvenient.

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The difficult work comes in living for Christ every waking moment of your life. As people born into sin, we all have an innate and outsized portion of selfishness that dominates our motives and desires (Romans 7:18). Keeping that alone in check often takes what feels like a Herculean effort. There’s nothing easy about living a holy life, so there’s nothing easy about following Jesus.

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It’s All True

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A recent survey of American evangelical pastors revealed 20% don’t believe in a literal Adam and Eve. That means 1 out of every 5 pastors does not believe God’s Word is authoritative. Even stranger, 16% did not believe in miracles and 1% did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ. What this shows us is that mainline evangelical pastors think some of the Bible is true, but not all of it.

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It means one out of every five pastors thinks they can tell which parts of Scripture are true and which aren’t (spoiler: it’s all true!). With what wisdom do they make this determination? With the fallible wisdom of man instead of the infallible wisdom of God, of course (1 Corinthians 1:20–25)!

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A High Bar

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One recent afternoon, I was conversing with a close friend of mine who is not a follower of Christ. I would peg him as agnostic, but he is a thoughtful and intelligent man, so while he disagrees with my faith, we can have civil and rational discussions about it. In the conversation, he surprised me with a comment that was both blunt and telling. He said his problem with Christianity was the forgiveness issue.

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He said he could never sacrifice his own son, and his feeling is that instead of forgiving mankind, God should raise the bar and demand more from us. I thought he was going to say he struggled with forgiveness so couldn’t conceive of God forgiving us, but he went another direction. He considers a high bar a better solution than a merciful gift.

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God Is Our Portion

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In a world that obsesses over always having more, we must always remember that God is our portion (Lamentations 3:24). We don’t need the trinkets and baubles of this life. We don’t need fame, success, or notoriety. All we need is Jesus (John 6:35). Jeremiah knew his very existence was because of God’s faithful love (Lamentations 3:22).

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No matter how desperate the situation or circumstances, the prophet rested in the goodness of God. Many centuries later, the Apostle Paul would echo those same sentiments when he wrote that God would supply all our needs (Philippians 4:19). Faithful men of God throughout history have understood what we have forgotten: we need nothing else in life but God Himself (Psalm 73:25).

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What Will You Do With Jesus

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Having a loved one pass away is a sobering experience. No matter if the relationship was one of loving intimacy or marked by pain and resentment, the loss is real. More than the loss, it is always a stark reminder of how limited our time is (James 4:14; Psalm 90:12). The countdown is on. We are finite creatures with a guaranteed expiration date (Hebrews 9:27).

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The question one must wrestle with in times like these is, what will you do with Jesus in the short time you have remaining? It’s one thing to lament the time wasted in our past, but it is unacceptable to waste the rest of our lives. Jesus didn’t suffer so that we could live a lazy life of ease and indifference (Romans 12:11).

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