Even If i Walk Alone

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

passion

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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An Abundant Life

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As you read through Scripture, you find that Jesus has called us to live an amazing life. We are to be lights shining on a hill (Matthew 5:14). Our lives are meant to be full of abundance and lived to the fullest (John 10:10). Our passion for Jesus should spill out on all those around us (Matthew 25:31-40). To follow Jesus is difficult, but the fruits of our following are phenomenal! We live for a Savior whose love is uncontainable.

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To know Jesus is to be consumed by Him. A life surrendered to Jesus is not easy, but it is victorious. It is exciting and beyond comparison. Each morning we awake to new mercies (Lamentations 3:22-23) and new possibilities of what Jesus might do through us. We need only surrender and allow Him to use and live through us.

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The Beauty of Our God

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Today I asked God to spend the entire day in His presence. It then occurred to me how absurd this request was. We would not last a single moment in His presence. He is too holy, too overwhelming. We have become numb to the glory of God. We ask to be in His presence without realizing we, in our sinfulness, would immediately perish. The truth is, we’ve made God too small and too normal.

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While we acknowledge He is higher than everything, we have not even begun to understand His height or depth. We have seen but a glimpse. Or have we? If we had, we would be terrified, and we would be transformed. But we are not terrified of our sinfulness, nor have our lives been yet transformed to look like Jesus.

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The Real Test

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For a couple of decades, my passion was playing the drums. Like many kids of my era, I dreamed of playing on the biggest stages and touring the world. During those days, my musical hero was Neil Peart, the drummer and lyricist for the band Rush. I modeled everything I did after him, and his writing continues to influence my style to this day. While there are no indications Neil had a relationship with Jesus, he said and wrote many wise things that can apply to our Christian walk.

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I was reminded recently of something he once said: “The real test of a musician is playing live.” In an age where there is no shortage of teaching and preaching, it is important to remember the real test of a disciple comes from how we live. As James, the brother of Jesus said, we must be doers not just hearers of the Word (James 1:22).

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Hard Truths

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Many people leave the Church and their faith behind because they no longer agree with the Church’s stance on hot button topics of the age or even long-held teachings that seem antiquated to their itching ears. People leave the truth because they expected it to be easy. They wanted to belong to something. This is not a new phenomenon. Jesus gave a teaching one day that caused his followers to abandon him in droves (John 6:53-68).

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When He taught about giving away all you had to follow Him, His disciples remarked how difficult the teaching was and wondered who could receive it (Matthew 19:23-26). The teachings of Jesus are difficult. They are hard truths because many are called but few are chosen. Few will endure the cost of discipleship.

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