Even If i Walk Alone

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

James

Game Plan for Your Life

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All sports teams devise a game plan for their opponents. Every general draws up meticulous plans before going into battle. Unless you have a game plan for your life, you will wander through it, stumbling about, and never becoming the person God created you to be. That’s tragic. Imagine facing your King and having to explain why you didn’t accomplish the work He gave you to do in the time He gave you to do it (2 Corinthians 5:10).

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We will all be without excuse (Romans 1:20). Praise the Lord, He has not left us without guidance here. He gives us a complete game plan by which to live. In just a few verses, Peter lays out the entire plan.

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Get Ready

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Jesus is coming back and we better get ready. Scripture makes it clear that His coming will be unexpected (Matthew 24:36). It’s going to shock everyone because we aren’t living our lives in eager anticipation of His return (1 Thessalonians 5:2-6). Since you got out of bed this morning, how many times have you thought about the fact that this could be it? You might see Jesus in the very next minute!

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Most days, we would have to answer that we have given little thought to it at all. Sure, on an intellectual level we recognize the possibility He could come back today, but that’s a far cry from eagerly anticipating it (Philippians 3:19-21)! Why are we not more excited about the coming of our salvation? Is it because we’ve become enamored with this world?

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Be Holy

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Never underestimate the wisdom of those who came before us. Today’s messaging is slick, and the messengers are even slicker, but most of what passes for wisdom these days is fluff and void of any scriptural moorings. There is great value to be gleaned from those voices from the past. Consider this from the writings of J. C. Ryle:

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“Sin never announces itself to us with its full intentions. It never says, ‘I am your deadly enemy and I want to ruin you forever in Hell’. It shows its pleasure but hides its pain; shows its sparkle, but hides its death.” None of us is immune from sin’s deception. To survive, we must heed the Lord’s command to be holy, just as He is holy (1 Peter 1:15-16).

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Outside Influences

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When monitoring the outside influences in your life, it’s easy to concentrate so much on things like entertainment and secular activities that we forget one of the most common avenues Satan uses to trip us up comes from within the church. When I was growing up, the list of preachers with world-wide recognition was short. It began and ended with Billy Graham. There were traveling evangelists that were well known in certain regions and countries, but on a global scale, there wasn’t a long list.

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Today, we have a phenomenon known as the celebrity pastor. These are pastors of large churches who have leveraged social media, the internet, and books to build a platform for themselves. Notice the platform they are building is amplifying their name, and that doesn’t always translate into glorifying God’s name. The result is we now have many preachers who are world famous.

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Make No Plans

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Studying the second half of the book of Romans this month, one verse keeps poking me when I read it. Romans 13:14 says, “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no plans to satisfy the fleshly desires.” It’s convicting because how often do we make plans to satisfy those very desires of the flesh the Lord admonishes us not to?

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We are always making plans to do something, go somewhere, or become someone. How many of those plans center on bringing or giving glory to God? If you’re like me, not many. We design almost all our plans to fulfill the desires of our flesh rather than to further the Kingdom of God. There are exceptions, of course, but that they are the exceptions should tell us we have a problem.

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