Even If i Walk Alone

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

James

Glorify God

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No matter what season you find yourself in life, your objective is to glorify God. It’s why we are here. Nothing else matters aside from bringing glory to God. No amount of depression, heartache, tragedy, or hardship changes this equation. Nothing excuses us from doing what God created us to do. From birth, the highest calling of our life is to glorify God. It’s a simple fact almost everyone ignores.

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We want to live for ourselves, which is a nice way of saying we want to glorify ourselves. Do you know who else decided that was the way to live? Satan! When we glorify anyone or anything other than Christ, we are agreeing with Satan that his way is better. That’s uncomfortable and blunt, but it is the truth.

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Proactive Prayers

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How often do we hear about the needs of another and say that we will pray for them? It’s a common occurrence in the life of every Christian. We know the best thing we can do for someone struggling is to pray. When friends are going through a rough period, we might pray for weeks to intercede on their behalf. It’s one of the beautiful things about the body of Christ. We love to pray for each other.

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Did you ever stop and consider how most of our prayers are reactive rather than proactive? How often do we pray for the spiritual vitality of our fellow believers? How often do we pray for their strength to endure persecution and trials before they occur? I am convinced we need to be praying proactive prayers for ourselves and others. I’m also convinced we don’t do it enough.

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Few Are Going to Heaven

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The greatest burden of my life is the conviction that so many, perhaps even most people who proclaim to be Christians are not. It’s not the first time I’ve written about this, and it won’t be the last. That’s what happens when a burden is constantly crushing down on you. When I look around at the modern church, and even more broadly at the industries that have sprung up around it, my soul aches for those who think they are on one path but in reality are on another.

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To quote J. C. Ryle, “According to the men of the world, few are going to hell; According to the Bible, few are going to heaven.” The great tragedy of our day is not that we aren’t bringing more lost people into the body of Christ, but that so many lost people believe they are already in the body of Christ.

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Genuine Repentance

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After recently writing about repentance (see “Repentance”), I didn’t think I’d be revisiting the topic so soon. Then I came across the following quote from Puritan Josias (Josiah) Shute concerning genuine repentance: “True repentance is when a man grieves for his sin to the extent that he abandons it.” It is one thing to think we are sorry for disobeying the commands of God. It is another to resolve from doing it again.

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But it is something else altogether for our sin to so grieve us that we abandon any thought of pursuing it in the future. We don’t just quit repeating the sin for a moment, or even for an extended period, but become so destroyed by even the thought of revisiting such sin that we scarcely even entertain a thought of it for the rest of our lives.

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What Sin Is

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Each of us wrestles with the problem of sin. To understand how to win this battle, we must first define the terms. What is sin? Sin is any violation of God’s Law (1 John 3:4). We know everyone is guilty of this (Romans 3:23). Holiness is the goal because our lives are supposed to look like Jesus. We can’t look like Jesus when we are continuing to indulge in the same sinful patterns that we always have.

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None of us can live a sinless life; only Jesus was able to accomplish that. But each of our lives should move closer to that ideal every day. God’s law is unchanging, and He has plainly stated what violating His law involves (Mark 12:28-31). When we love anything more than God or when we do not love others as much as we love ourselves, we are sinning. There is no vagueness about what sin is.

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