Even If i Walk Alone

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

Luke

Which Parts of the Bible Do You Ignore?

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In my reading this week I was challenged by a question that, on its face, seemed ludicrous. Yet I could neither ignore it nor get it out of my head. The question was, “Which parts of the Bible are you choosing to ignore?” It was preposterous in both its implication that I would even think of picking and choosing parts of the Bible to ignore, and also by the insinuation that I indeed was ignoring parts of the Bible. I have been diligently striving to follow in the way of Jesus Christ, to do the things that He would do. That involves not allowing any compromise along the way. So how could I possibly be ignoring parts of the Bible, much less by conscious choice? This story, however, does not have a happy ending. Prayer and introspection revealed that indeed I have been ignoring parts of the Bible. In fact, I have been ignoring multiple parts of Scripture. This realization has been both sobering and challenging. Allow me to share a couple of areas I have been choosing to ignore.

The second greatest commandment, according to Jesus, is to love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:28-31). I do my best to show kindness to my neighbors. I always smile and wave whenever I see them outside. In the winter I even clear their driveways and sidewalks with my snow blower. Therefore, I must be demonstrating love to my neighbor. So apparently I can check this box with an affirmative. Or can I? I am ashamed to admit, I’ve never invited one of my current neighbors over for dinner; I’ve never stopped over just to see if I can help in any way. I’m a great neighbor as long as we happen to be outside at the same time. Otherwise it takes a little work, and apparently that’s been a bit too much for me. For those who are way ahead of me at this point and are still content that they can easily check off the “love my neighbor as myself” box, let me ask you a question. Have you, like a great number of Americans, purchased one of the new, large, flat screen televisions in the past couple of years? If you answered yes to that question, did you purchase one for your neighbor as well? If not, why not? Do you not love your neighbor at least as much as you love yourself? In the interest of full disclosure, I picked the flat screen television example because I don’t have one. I figured that was fair since I took my lumps in the first half of this paragraph. How about groceries? When you purchase food each week, do you purchase a bag for your neighbor as well? I hope you see my point.

Most of us do just enough to make us believe we are doing what Jesus commanded us to do. But when we look a little deeper, if we’re honest with ourselves, we will be forced to admit that we are indeed ignoring parts of the Bible. We ignore that which makes us uncomfortable or requires too great a sacrifice. We give money to those in need, but will we sell all we have and then turn around and give all the proceeds to the poor (Luke 18:18-22)? We’ll volunteer at the soup kitchen, but will we take a stranger in to live with us (Matthew 25:35)? We are ignoring the parts of the Bible that most reflect the mission of Jesus. How dare we call ourselves disciples? We are at best a weak and hypocritical people. The Church is supposed to be the unified body, the very hands and feet, of Jesus. We are to be ushering in His Kingdom by doing the things He commanded us to do while we are still on this earth. We are only half committed; we speak the language but we fail in the execution of the plan.

We must all repent of the parts of the Bible we have ignored out of our selfish sense of comfort. If we would indeed be a follower of Christ, we must look again at what He expects of us. We must look again at the way He lived and the things He did. We must repent of the words He spoke that we have ignored. It is time to rise up as the body of Christ and leave behind the half-hearted effort most of us have given to this point; it is time to work in unison to accomplish the mission of Jesus. As you prayerfully consider the way in which you will live for Him, give fresh consideration to the parts of the Bible you have been choosing to ignore.

Know Your Enemy

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One of the biggest keys to living a life devoted to Christ is to have a clear picture of who our enemy is. You can’t live a victorious life if you don’t know who it is you need to defeat. While it is easy to think of the phrase “life is a battle” as being simply a romantic analogy, it is actually a fundamental truth of Christianity. We are engaged in battle twenty-four hours a day as we seek to live passionately for our Savior.

First, let’s make it clear who your enemy is not. Anything made up of flesh and blood is not your enemy. People are never the enemy. How could we possibly perceive any human being to be our enemy when Christ told us to love every one? Therefore, I submit that it is not possible to love your enemy because if you consider another human to be your enemy, then you do not love that person. I think what Jesus meant when He said to “love your enemy” in Luke chapter 6, was to have no enemies. It is consistent with scripture when we see that Christ did not treat those who would kill Him as His enemies. He knew who was behind their actions as evidenced by His requesting the Father to forgive the people killing Him because “they did not know what they were doing” (Luke 23:33-34). We first need to make the shift in our hearts of transforming our enemies into friends so that we can love them; we need to always see others as Jesus saw them. Satan loves to distract us and to shift our focus onto other humans. We blame other people for our mistakes or our circumstances. We cannot do this and love those same people, which is why we cannot consider anyone to be our enemies while at the same time say that we are followers of Christ. Jesus did not treat humans as enemies; He treated them as friends.

No, our battle is not against flesh and blood, but rather against spiritual forces. Yes, demons really do exist, and yes they can and do impact your life. Perhaps this is where the old “the devil made me do it” excuse came from. The devil cannot make you do anything; he or his demons can put the temptations in place to make you consider doing something, but only we – as creatures gifted with freewill – actually can choose to act on that choice. As a holiday season is upon us, perhaps it needs to be said that Santa Claus is not the enemy of Christmas, but rather it is the spirit of greed and selfishness. The Easter Bunny is not the enemy of Easter, but rather the spirit of denying the resurrection of Christ. Other nationalities are not our enemy throughout the year, but rather the spirit of pride, hate and covetousness. Demonic forces are persistently trying to shift our focus away from the good things of Christ and onto the ruinous things of self. Christ died to not only bring forgiveness for our sins but in doing so He defeated Satan and his demonic forces. He gives us the power to do the same. The good news is that the end of the story is already written and Christ, along with those who profess Him as Lord, will be victorious in the spiritual realm. While we are still on earth, however, the battle rages on.

Don’t mistake who it is that we are fighting. Don’t allow Satan to shift your focus onto the wonders of creation as being your enemy. Our fight is always against the spiritual realm, against Satan. We wage war against those forces by making Jesus the Lord of our life, doing those things he modeled for us and in so doing demonstrate His love to all of His creation. Be careful not to get caught up in actions or arguments that only advance a flesh and blood agenda. Engage only in those things that advance the Kingdom agenda. Love God and all of His creation and demonstrate that love in tangible ways every day that you have breath.

Love in Community

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The title of this blog is “Even if I Walk Alone”. That is a statement that simply means that I have chosen to follow Christ, I have chosen to love as He did, even if no one else will join me in doing so. Ideally I will not walk this path alone; I don’t want to walk this path alone. Being prepared to walk alone should in no way be taken to mean that this is the best way to go about following Christ. A few can accomplish more than one, and the many can accomplish exponentially more than the few. Perhaps the title of this blog really should be “Even If I Walk Alone (…but I’d rather walk together!)”.

Following Jesus is a group exercise, as demonstrated by Jesus calling His twelve disciples (Matthew 10:1-16), sending out the seventy apostles (Luke 10:1-12) and establishing His desire for followers to come together(Matthew 18:19-20). There are times that God has worked through an individual, but by and large God has always worked through groups of people. In our modern society it has become very easy to be self-sufficient. Jesus never calls us to self-sufficiency; He calls us to utter reliance. We are to rely on God in all things, and this includes relying on our brothers and sisters as we all seek to follow Him. Would you rather be self-sufficient or live a life of total reliance on someone else? As someone who grew up fiercely independent, this is a hard question for me, even though I know the right answer. I want, no I need, to rely on God with all that I am. Yet so often I opt for the prideful stance of self-reliance. I take pride in my ability to handle whatever may come my way. Slowly, quietly, my confidence is being swapped out from that of myself, to knowing I can handle anything this world throws at me because of the strength of Jesus within me. It is an agonizing but wonderful process.

Another problem we face is that we tend to not keep the same community for very long. A generation ago, people generally grew up and lived out their lives in the same area. Grade school friendships persisted into the twilight of life; you knew most everyone you came into contact with and strangers were easy to spot. In our current era, we are far less likely to stay in the same city we were born in, much less the same neighborhood. College, job advancements and a quest for a better place to raise a family all contribute to a nation of virtual strangers. Even small groups in churches tend to change faces every few years. We just don’t plant ourselves anywhere anymore. Perhaps we need to give more thought to our sense of community before we move on to the next big thing. Is it possible that we can serve God better by staying put rather than taking off to chase “the American dream”, leaving behind the relationships we have established? I’m not proposing that we should all stay where we grew up, but I am saying we are quick to leave a community for generally selfish reasons without ever giving much thought to the community of believers and would-be believers that we leave behind. It should definitely play a part in our decision process.

This brings me to the community where you are now. Are you nurturing your community? Are you seeking out others with whom to build relationships? Do you even know your neighbors? Are you demonstrating love to those with whom you work or are they “just the people at the office”? We are to live in community and we are to love in community. Our free time needs to be turned into community time. If we are passionate about living a life modeled after Christ, then we must be about living in community. It’s time to put selfishness and self-sufficiency aside. We must be willing to walk this road alone, but ever seeking to walk with one another.

Love From Within

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As He was speaking, a Pharisee asked Him to dine with him. So He went in and reclined at the table. When the Pharisee saw this, he was amazed that He did not first perform the ritual washing before dinner. But the Lord said to him: “Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and evil. Fools! Didn’t He who made the outside make the inside too? But give to charity what is within, and then everything is clean for you. – Luke 11:37-41 (HCSB)

How often are we as Christians guilty of being so focused on our outward appearance that we totally neglect our inward spiritual health? As long as people see us doing and saying the right things, as long as we look spiritual to those around us, we are content with our dedication to Christ. But this isn’t dedication at all; rather it is pharisaical. God has no more tolerance for such hypocrisy now than Jesus did when He walked among us.

It is time we rid ourselves of the kind of Christianity that is focused on ritual and tradition, the kind of Christianity that is focused on a list of do’s and don’ts. What matters to God is our inward cleanliness and our inward attitude. If we are seeking to love others and to serve them in that love, then we will achieve the outward appearance of holiness that we are so desperately trying to project by our current piety. Jesus never called us to strive to be worthy of Him; rather, He called us to love everyone we encounter, to serve them and show them mercy.

When we learn to love as Christ loved, from the inside out, our outside will shine just as brightly as our love from within. People will notice. They won’t be able to help but notice. This is the kind of worship our Lord demands and demonstrated in His own life. Let’s reject all forms of outward devotion and learn to let our devotion be self evident by the love of Christ we extend to others.

Enhancing Our Light

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“No one lights a lamp and puts it in the cellar or under a basket, but on a lampstand, so that those who come in may see its light. Your eye is the lamp of the body. When your eye is good, your whole body is also full of light. But when it is bad, your body is also full of darkness. Take care then, that the light in you is not darkness. If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, the whole body will be full of light, as when a lamp shines its light on you.” – Luke 11:33-36 (HCSB)

Why does Christ focus on the eye in this passage? It has always read a bit strange to me. If our eye is the lamp, how do we control the amount of light we give off? For most of us, our eyes are on the front lines of everything we experience. As we weave in and out of our daily lives, it is the eye that receives much of our input and triggers reactions in the brain. Those triggers store images and feelings and launch reactions. The things we see will affect everything we are. If we allow our eyes to constantly look upon sinful things, our light will dim; as we look only on things that darken our light, we ourselves will be darkened. If we rather train our eyes to only look on good and holy things, the light of those things will enhance our own light. The things we take in directly affect our ability to reflect God (the light) to others. Therefore, the things we allow ourselves to be exposed to become of the utmost importance. If we are constantly exposed to light, then the inevitable exposure to anything dark will immediately be drowned out by the light, and the same light will reveal a path around the darkness. Since exposure to sin is virtually guaranteed in our dark world, we must be very careful and certain to only look upon light things whenever we have a choice. This will protect us when we must navigate the darkness.