Even If i Walk Alone

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

Matthew

Confess and Repent

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Christians have been far too passive in our acceptance of the sins in our society. In too many instances, we have not only capitulated to evil but have even joined the chorus of the culture in singing the praises of man’s ideology. Instead of coming out from among them (2 Corinthians 6:15-18), we march arm in arm to show our unity. Darkness has no fellowship with light (2 Corinthians 6:14).

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It never has, and never will. So why are we so intent on pretending the two can coexist? God hates sin and will pour out His wrath on those who engage in it. If Jesus is our Lord, we will abstain from sin and keep ourselves pure before our holy God and King. We will repent and call others to do the same.

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Time to Pray

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After hitting the snooze button a couple of times, I found myself running late on a day that already held more to do than there were available hours. As I swung my legs over the bed, in my mind, I began rehearsing the day to come. Trying to schedule each piece mentally, I hit a jarring thought. Thinking of everything I had to do, I thought, “…and I need to squeeze in time to pray.” That may be one of the worst thoughts my brain has ever contemplated.

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Squeeze time in to pray? The Holy Spirit immediately convicted me of how wrong my thinking was at that moment. I anchor each of my days by doing nothing before spending time in God’s Word and praying. I know nothing sets me up for failure more than neglecting those priorities. And yet, here I was contemplating squeezing in the time to pray.

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Stay Ready

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If we want to be ready for the Lord’s return, we must be diligent to stay ready every day of our lives. To be caught unaware when Jesus comes back should terrify us all. It’s easy for us to shake our heads at the disciples who fell asleep while keeping watch as the Lord went off by Himself to pray in the garden (Matthew 26:36-46), but are we any better?

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Are we not even more guilty of falling asleep as we await the Lord’s return? If we are not focusing our lives on serving Christ and doing the things He commands us to do, we are not staying ready. We are simply going through the motions and living as if His return is not imminent. Jesus could return before you finish reading this post. He could come before I finish writing it! If He does, will He find us ready?

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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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