Even If i Walk Alone

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

I John

Black and White

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God’s Word is not ambiguous. Humans add ambiguity when they don’t like what it says, so they try to twist it to mean what they want it to say. Reading the Bible should make you feel a little uncomfortable. It’s called the conviction of sin. When reading God’s Word, we instinctively know what is wrong in our life. If we keep reading, we will see God has the solution for everything wrong inside us — His Son Jesus.

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But following Jesus isn’t easy in this world. It’s not because He imposes a lot of rules and requirements on us, but because we want to hold on to what the world offers. We want to fit in, to belong. The Word of God is clear on this. You will either serve God or you will serve the things of this world (Matthew 6:24). It’s black and white, with no gray around the edges.

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Prepared for Persecution

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My heart broke when I read about a recent occurrence in North Korea. That country is second only to Afghanistan in being the most dangerous place for Christians to live (see Open Doors’ “World Watch List”). Government officials raided a secret church meeting of believers. Everyone in attendance was arrested and then summarily executed.

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Without warning and without having had the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones, these dear brothers and sisters were removed from the face of the earth. From the moment they gave their lives to Christ, they knew they were living on borrowed time. They knew the risk of meeting together. They prepared for persecution the best they could and found Jesus worth the cost. But the story gets worse.

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Test the Spirits

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1 John 4 begins with a somewhat curious phrase. John encourages the hearers of his letter to “test the spirits”. First, this implies there are many spirits. In our churches today, it is common to hear about the Holy Spirit, but there is often little attention paid to the other spirits in our world. We ignore these other spirits at our peril. Behind every false teaching, you will find a demonic source.

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Yes, demons are real. They exist and flood the spiritual realm surrounding us. When we go along with false teaching, we are following demons. How’s that for a sobering thought? If we are not careful in examining the teaching we are listening to, there is a very good chance we aren’t being taught God’s truth at all. Instead of growing in our faith, we are opening our minds to demonic influences.

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Aliens and Strangers

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We’re aliens and strangers in this world (1 Peter 2:11). When we turned our lives over to Jesus, we became homeless in this world and began longing for our true home with Christ (1 Corinthians 5:1-3). The closer we draw to Jesus, the more we recognize how out of place we are in this world. Our desires do not match those of society. Our actions often fly in the face of earthly logic and common sensibilities.

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There is a constant sense of being different, of not fitting in here. We don’t feel at home because this world is not our home. We only find peace in the presence of Jesus because He is our home. Having our eyes awakened to spiritual reality, the physical and temporal world can never again captivate us. Indeed, we have become a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).

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The New Command

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As Jesus was having His last conversation with His disciples before His crucifixion, He gave them a new command for living. We read this in John 13:34-35. The new command was to love each other, just as Christ loves us. It’s important to note Jesus said this command was a hallmark of being His disciple. People will recognize we follow Jesus by the love we display for others.

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Unless we love those around us, we will never be a disciple of Christ. God’s very nature is love, so if we want to look and live like Jesus, we must love people. Without love, we’re just making noise (1 Corinthians 13:1). Unless we love, we will never make a difference in this world.

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