Even If i Walk Alone

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

James

Training in Godliness

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We’ve spent several days discussing how to prepare for persecution (see the “Persecution” page under the “Resources” menu to catch up on what you may have missed). The primary way you can prepare for persecution is to be constantly training in godliness (1 Timothy 4:7-8). Every believer in Christ should endeavor to do this, whether we are facing persecution or not.

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As followers of Jesus, we must always be building the spiritual muscles we require to keep us spiritually fit and healthy. We know if we don’t eat right and neglect exercise, we will become fat, sick, and miserable. If it is true for our physical bodies, it’s even more true for our spiritual souls.

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Resist the Devil

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Continuing in our series of how we can prepare for persecution, today we want to look at how we can resist the Devil and stand firm in the faith. As we discovered in “Prepare for Persecution,” the way to prepare for the physical and mental persecution awaiting each of us is to first prepare spiritually.

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We can never stand up to the trials of this world unless we see beyond the physical world into what is happening in the spiritual realm. If you are spiritually weak, you will never stand up to physical abuse. Without the proper spiritual foundation, you will crack under the mental manipulation you will face.

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Getting Lazy

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Yet we all know we can get lazy in our eating, exercise, and work habits. More devastating than any of those areas, though, is when we find ourselves getting lazy spiritually. It does us no good to be disciplined in physical matters if we’re not going to apply the same or greater discipline to eternal things.

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I’m not only referring to the well-known spiritual disciplines of prayer and Bible study, but also the less obvious areas, like our relationships with family and friends, personal integrity, and service to others. It doesn’t take much to knock us off our game in these areas, which hinders our witness to the world, and disrupts our relationship with the Lord.

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Lord or Judge?

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Every man and woman must decide whether Jesus will be their Lord today or their judge in the future. There are no other options. No one gets to create a third alternative. Jesus is Lord or judge; those are your only choices. That probably seems a bit narrow to you, and indeed it is. Jesus said few will choose the narrow path (Matthew 7:14).

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Most will rebel against their perceived confinement to these two options and will walk away from the narrow path. The road they will choose is wide, free to be walked as they choose, but it leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13). The narrow path is a submission to the Lordship of Jesus, while the wide road is a destination ending with the terrifying judgment of God.

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What is Sin?

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We see the results of sin in our lives and in our world. It’s a little like the wind; easy to see the effects, but a bit tough to define. Most of us have no trouble pointing out sin in the life of someone else, but have a bit more difficulty seeing it in our own lives. For new believers, the word can be nebulous. Preachers lash out against it, but without a clear definition, perhaps many are still asking, “what is sin?”

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To be sure we’re all on the same page for our discussion, let’s define what sin is. Sin is rejecting God’s order in the world, rejecting His Lordship in our lives, and rebelling against His laws (see our discussion on the “Ten Commandments”). Sin is living as if we are in charge rather than surrendering our will to God.

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