Even If i Walk Alone

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

Love

Is It What You Expected?

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How long have you been a Christian? No matter your answer, I have a question for you: “Is it what you expected?” When you came to acknowledge Christ as your Lord and Savior, what did you imagine would be the result? Increasingly, I see Christians encouraging someone down on their luck by pulling random verses out of context and assuring those people that God has big plans for them if they will only trust in Jesus.

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In one sense, those well-wishers are correct. God has big plans for everyone who calls on His name. He plans to give them eternal life and bring them into His presence forever. There couldn’t be a bigger plan. But I know this isn’t what these people have in mind. Too many so-called Christians today have believed the lie that believing in Jesus is the way to success, health, and wealth in this life now.

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God Knows

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The fact God knows what we’re going through is comforting. It’s amazing to realize He knows each of us by name. But too often, we leave our thoughts of what God thinks about us there and go no deeper. In Psalm 139, David makes it crystal clear that God is intimately aware and present in every moment and aspect of our lives. His presence is an overwhelming fact, not just a trite bumper sticker.

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There is nothing we think, say, do, or desire that catches Him off-guard or unaware. He knew it before we ever spoke, thought, did, or desired it. While this is an enormous comfort, it should also fill us with a fear of how unholy and unworthy we are to be in His presence, much less receive His help and salvation.

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Choosing Divine Love

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One of my favorite Bible verses is 1 John 2:15. It is a beautiful verse with a sobering warning. Put simply, we cannot say we love God if we love the things of this world. Every day, this verse is at the forefront of my mind. It is the lens through which I see the world. To my regret, I still fail far too often to heed the warning. I have yet to learn to keep from loving the things of this world.

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One upside of how evil this world is becoming is that it is becoming far more difficult to love anything about it! Still, the battle goes on every day in the life of every follower of Jesus. There is no excuse for embracing the things of this world for those of us who claim Jesus as Lord. The choice could not be more clear: we either love Jesus or we love the things of this world.

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Never Alone

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Much of persecution aims to make us feel isolated and alone. God designed us to live in community with Him and one another, so being ostracized can cause great stress for most people. That is why going with the crowd rarely leads to any persecution. So long as you are in the flow, the world will readily accept you and you’ll be relatively safe.

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As soon as you swim against the tide, however, you can easily feel like you are the only person fighting the battle. Isolation is mentally wearing on us, and those who would persecute you will do everything to exploit this. The good news is that in Christ, we are never alone. That’s not some spiritual triteness, it is a Biblical certainty in which we can find comfort, rest, peace, and hope.

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The Fear of the Lord

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The fear of the Lord has always been a bit of a conundrum for me. On the one hand, I understand what it means, but in some ways, it is a mystery. We know we should fear the Lord because He is holy and His wrath is terrifying. At the same time, His love and mercy are comforting and we know those who love Him are safe in His arms. The paradox of fearing and loving God has led to a lot of thought, study, and confusion for me.

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Perhaps you are in the same boat. Thankfully, the Lord cleared all this up for me in an instant this week. I was reading in the book of Proverbs, one of my favorite books in the Bible, and one I have read countless times. Yet for the first time, I saw something I’d overlooked before.

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