Even If i Walk Alone

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

Mark

Our Opinions

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We humans love our opinions. We have opinions about everything! If you don’t believe me, just ask someone for their opinion on anything, and I guarantee you will get an answer. Our opinions create our identity, or so we believe. It’s who we are. They run the gamut from food, style, décor, geography, language, and politics. And that’s just scratching the surface! Our opinions color each of our days. They control what we eat, who we’ll talk to, and what we’ll say.

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To the casual observer, we are the sum of our opinions. You might say they are what make you unique. So, when Jesus invades our lives, it can be a most uncomfortable revelation to discover we must surrender our opinions to Him. Not just some of them. Not just those we hold to with a little less ferocity. All of them. If we want to follow Jesus, we must die to our opinions and allow Him to replace them with His own.

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Love Your Neighbor

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Most of us are familiar with the greatest commandment: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:28-30). And while I think we are aware of the second greatest commandment, “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31), it seems we give that one more lip service. I’m not sure that’s ever more obvious than during a Presidential election season.

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I see a lot of evidence that many forget their allegiance is to Jesus and not to a political party. It manifests in the words we say to each other. To love your neighbor as yourself means to love them even if they support opposing political ideals or candidates than you do. Loving those who agree with us is easy. Discipleship is hard.

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Living in Obedience

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Because of my Scottish heritage, I think I’m biased towards Scottish thinkers and writers. One of my favorites is Andrew Murray, a minister in the 1800s. Murray was a devoted disciple who left many soul-searching and convicting books as his legacy. As I was reading some of his writing this week, I saw this: “The Father in heaven asks, requires, and expects all of His children to give Him whole-hearted and entire obedience all day long, every single day.”

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It seems like a daunting task, but then I suppose if it was easy, we would find many more joining us. If it was easy, the path would be wide instead of narrow (Matthew 7:13-14). No, following Jesus is not the easy path in life, but it is the only one worth following. And if we will brave this path, we must understand it requires our obedience to Jesus every step along the way.

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Discipleship

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer pulled no punches. In his classic, “The Cost of Discipleship”, he wrote, “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” I write extensively on discipleship for the same reason. If you aren’t pursuing a life of discipleship with Jesus, I believe the Bible is clear: Jesus does not know you (Matthew 7:21-23; John 14:15). That’s a strong statement, I know. But we’ve been dancing around this subject for too long.

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We don’t want to seem judgmental or offensive, so we add caveats and couch our words to make them seem less harsh. The result is that millions of people who believe they are Christians are not. It is perhaps the most sinister and ingenious deception Satan has ever unleashed. He continues to deploy this strategy today. It has so infected our churches that most don’t even realize the deception under which they are living.

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Live Like Jesus

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“This generation of believers is responsible for this generation of souls”. Keith Green said that about 40 years ago, and it still resonates with me today. If we don’t model Jesus for others, how will they ever know who He is? As David Platt recently said, “People can’t be what they don’t see.” The apostle Paul said, “How will people come to know Jesus if we don’t tell them about Him?” (Romans 10:14). It is the responsibility of every believer to tell others about Christ.

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We also must make disciples out of those who respond to God’s call (Matthew 28:19-20). We are the boots on the ground for the Kingdom of God. We have a mission. Now is not the time to get lazy. The battle is raging hotter than ever before and we have a role to play in it. Our job is to live like Jesus so others can see what it looks like to follow Him.

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