Even If i Walk Alone

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

Matthew

Getting Satan’s Attention

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I can imagine few fates worse than being ignored by the devil. Disciples of Jesus make it their business to go about getting Satan’s attention.  Our goal should be to be so effective for the Kingdom that Satan cannot ignore us. I read a prayer once that said, “Lord, it’s not hard to see why Satan attacks. May I continue to be enough of a threat to him to merit his attention! Don’t ever let me become so anemic in my Christian walk that he doesn’t need to bother with me. Amen.”

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That should be our prayer as well. If we’re not getting Satan’s attention, then we are living lukewarm, weak, and ineffective lives.
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Self-Absorbed

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What if we spent every day doing things that actually mattered?  What if our time was focused as much on Jesus as it was on ourselves? How might our lives be different and more importantly how might the world be different? Instead of spending time framing the perfect shot of ourselves to post on Instagram or refining our thoughts into the funniest short sentence to tweet, what if we actually took seriously the call of Jesus on our lives?

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Jesus said if we loved Him we would take up our cross every day and follow Him (Matthew 16:24). This life is all about Christ and not in even the slightest way about us!
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Slow and Simple

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We are a hurried and frantic people. The American culture thrives on busyness. If our lives aren’t hectic, we are viewed as either lazy or unsuccessful. The default answer I get when asking people how they are is one simple word: “busy”. I think Satan loves this. After all, Christians are now too busy to pray, too busy to read the Bible, too busy to sit quietly in God’s presence, and too busy to notice the hurting people all around us.

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In short, our busyness has rendered us useless to the Kingdom of God. Even when we recognize the problem of our busyness, it isn’t long before we have rationalized our way back into our hurried lives.
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Too Many Churches

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I recently learned from an article that the city in which I live has more churches per capita than any other city in America. While some might see this as great news, it left a bitter taste in my mouth. Why do we need so many churches? Doesn’t that mean the vast majority of them are horribly ineffective?

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Perhaps even more troubling is the amount of money these churches are spending on rent, real estate, and building projects. When did those things become more important than feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and providing shelter for the homeless (Matthew 25:31-46)? The Church has become quite efficient spending Kingdom money on things that bear little resemblance to Christ.
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Celebrity Culture

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We live in an era where pastors have become celebrities. Several make more money on the speaking circuit and from writing books than any church could ever have afforded to pay them. I have nothing against these people earning more money, and certainly nothing against more people hearing the truth of Jesus. The problem I do have is our tendency to idolize these men and women.

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We’ve stolen the celebrity culture of Hollywood and applied it to ministry. I am guilty of feeding this machine. I love reading books and attending seminars, always looking for new insights by which I can draw nearer to God. Still, there’s a fine line between earnest student and borderline groupie.
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