Even If i Walk Alone

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

I Peter

The Practice of Sin

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You can’t be a disciple of Jesus and willfully continue to live in sin. Sin will repulse a regenerated heart. The apostle John had much to say about this in his first epistle. He defined sin as practicing lawlessness (1 John 3:4). Another way to say this might be that we sin whenever we rebel against God’s laws. Continuing on a few verses later, John makes it clear if we are born again (born of God), we will not make a practice of sinning (1 John 3:9).

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We can’t do that because God abides in us and sin is abhorrent to Him. As human beings, we will sin. We’re not perfect. But as followers of Jesus, we won’t make a habit of sinning. When we sin, we will immediately be horrified by our failure and repent of it.

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Holy Living

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Holy living isn’t just a nice idea. It is something God commands us to do. Most of us assume holy living isn’t truly possible. Sure, Jesus did it, but He is the Son of God. We’re fallen and fallible human beings. How can we live up to such a standard? Peter gives us a roadmap for holy living in 1 Peter 1:13-16.

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It all starts in our minds. If we get our thinking right, we’ll find it far easier to live holy lives. You can’t be holy when your mind is obsessed with the things of this world. There is nothing holy on earth, so if we are always thinking of unholy things, how will we ever lead holy lives?

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Everlasting Hope

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With everything that’s going on in the world today, it’s easy to become discouraged, and perhaps feel as if things are becoming a bit hopeless. Spend over sixty seconds watching or listening to the news, and I’ll almost guarantee you will feel worse than before you began tuning in. The powers and media of this world do not exist to encourage you.

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It appears their sole function may be to incite fear and division to control the masses. But, thanks be to God, we don’t have to live under such depression and despair. We have a great hope that the powers of this world can not diminish. God has given us a new birth and everlasting hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead (1 Peter 1:3)!

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The Bondage of Little Things

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A. W. Tozer once prayed, “Save and deliver us, we pray Thee, from the bondage of little things.” What a wise prayer. It is often not the big things that keep us from God, but the thousand little things. In the same prayer, Pastor Tozer confessed we can break one, two, even ten of the little habits and comforts keeping us from surrendering to the Lordship of Christ,

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but we are powerless to break the thousand little things that twist together and bind us. When we let little things that are not of God accumulate in our life, we find they become strong chains restricting us and keeping us from complete surrender to our King.

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The Mary Test

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In a recent message looking at the birth story of Jesus, my pastor posed an interesting question: “Could you pass the Mary test?” When the angel of the Lord appeared to Mary, most scholars think she was between twelve and fifteen years of age. Even in the current era of moral decline, that’s very early for a young woman to consider being pregnant.

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Can you imagine the fear she must have felt at the prospect of being a mother when she was barely in her teens? I don’t think Mary was naïve. I believe at that moment she fully understood the weight of what was being asked of her. And yet, look at the beautiful response of Mary in Luke 1:38. She said, “I am the Lord’s slave. May it be done to me according to your word.”

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