Even If i Walk Alone

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

I John

Living Linearly

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In my constant quest to simplify and strip away all which is not Christ in my life, I have been thinking recently about living linearly. It seems more than ever these days, we tend to live our lives in parallel. We never do one thing at once. We read or watch television while we eat. We do daily chores with our attention divided between the squawk of the television or the words and beats flowing through our headphones.

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To increasing peril, we use our phones while we drive. Even in conversation, we spend much of it thinking of what we want to say next rather than focused on what is being said to us. Instead of focusing on one thing at a time and living linearly, we are distracted by many things and constantly processing our life in parallel.

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The Myth of the Sinner’s Prayer

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I grew up in churches where an invitation was given at the end of every service. As part of the invitation, people were invited to receive Christ and were led through “the sinner’s prayer”. This prayer was holy and awesome. It was the key to the Kingdom of God, after all. While as kids you might have messed around throughout the service, you didn’t dare misbehave at this point.

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Variations of the same prayer have been around for a couple of hundred years and it persists to this day, although it’s use and invitations, in general, are far less common in churches today, especially those of the mega variety. There’s nothing wrong with saying this prayer. It’s one way to confess your need for Jesus. The problem is it’s not Biblical and it’s not enough.

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Where is Your Treasure?

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Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke12:34). As I have written previously, a good test of where you are placing your treasure is to look at your bank and credit card statements. Where you are spending your money is where you are placing your treasure. While this is true, it recently occurred to me there is a much deeper meaning to Jesus’s words.

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It’s not just the specifics of where we are spending our money which reveals where we are placing our treasure, it’s much bigger than that. We will spend our money on things of this world or for God’s Kingdom. Our treasure is being amassed in earthen containers (banks, possessions, and brokerages) or in Heavenly realms. We are either building up things we cannot keep or investing in what we cannot lose (Luke 9:24).

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Nothing to Fear

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We spend too much of our lives in fear. We fear violence, terrorism, being disliked or ridiculed. We fear speaking up for justice or being the dissenting opinion in a crowd of peers. Some fear dying, while others fear being alone. Still others fear being forgotten, passed over, overlooked, or ignored. We fear financial markets and technology. There are so many things about which so many are afraid. This isn’t the way God designed us to live.

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He created us to be more than conquerors (Romans 8:37), with a spirit of boldness, not timidity (2 Timothy 1:7). You were created to love, not fear (1 John 4:18). Since God is for us, we know nothing can stand against us (Romans 8:31). As long as we are living our lives in the pursuit and will of God, we have nothing to fear.

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Fear Isn’t Real

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I read a quote from a Malaysian pastor who said, “Fear is not as real as God. When the time comes, we’ll find that it [fear] doesn’t matter anymore.” When we meet Jesus, we will understand how futile our fears have been. In Jesus, there is such love, such joy. There is nothing to fear in the arms of our Savior.

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image © Yuriy Shevtsov via Fotolia

When we see Him face to face we will realize this as never before. But what if we didn’t have to wait? What if we would come to understand right now, in the midst of all we’re going through, the reality of God’s love and the façade of fear?

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