Even If i Walk Alone

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

priorities

Stay Focused

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The latest book by Francis Chan, “Letters to the Church” is a fantastic and convicting work that compares the modern Western church to the early Church detailed in the New Testament. This will always be a touchy topic because one feels the need to walk the tightrope between offending and convicting. I think Francis does a masterful job of doing this, but much to my delight chooses to err on the side of not worrying what anyone other than God might think.

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Early on, Pastor Chan writes, “The older I get, the more aware I am the end is near. There is no time to care about what I want in the church. There’s no time to worry about what others are looking for in a church. I will be facing Him soon, so I have to stay focused on His desires.” This is a word by which we all should be living.

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God is Not an Afterthought

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The way many of us live relegates God to an afterthought. After we’ve done everything we want to do, spend money on things we want to buy, and talk to the people with whom we want to speak, then we are ready to communicate with God. We owe God the firstfruits of all our offerings (Nehemiah 10:35-37). This implies we also owe Him a tithe on our time. He should get the best of our time, not the leftovers.

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To me, this means beginning each day with God. To not begin the day with God is a recipe for disaster. I see how He rejected Cain’s offering but accepted Abel’s (Genesis 4:3-5). I don’t want to insult God with the time I give to Him. It needs to be my very best, and it needs to be the first I have to offer.

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Useful or Beautiful?

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Do you see God as useful or beautiful? This was a question mentioned somewhat in passing by David Platt recently, but it hit me hard. Why are you a follower of Jesus? You may have initially chosen to follow Christ because you saw the beauty in His love and His compassion for you, but has that same fascination remained?

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Perhaps as the years have passed you’ve come to view Him as more useful than beautiful? A good way to measure this is by looking at the content of your prayers. Are they more focused on His magnificence and the holiness of who He is, or are they more self-focused requests on what you want or need?

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Everything Matters

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For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been haunted by an old Geoff More lyric. It’s from the song, “God Believes in You”, and says, “Everything matters if anything matters at all / No matter how big, no matter how small”.  The implications of the lyric torture me. I think we would all agree some things matter, particularly when it comes to knowing Christ. Knowing some things matter, I am compelled by Scripture to believe everything matters.

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Every word I speak, every thought I think, everything at which my eyes look, every interaction I have with people, how I spend every moment – they all matter. They all will be either for the Kingdom or against it. They all will be either pleasing or displeasing to my Lord.

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What God Deserves

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Every now and then, I hear or read something which flips the way I’ve always looked at things upside down. The latest instance of this came courtesy of Francis Chan. He wrote, “We believe we deserve certain rights as humans. Yet we give little thought to the rights God deserves as God.” How many times have you heard (or said yourself), “Why did God allow this to happen?” Questions like these assume we have certain rights ascribed to us as humans.

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They also ignore the fact that, before we can ever begin to discuss what we as humans deserve, we must first consider what rights and expectations are ascribed to God simply because He is God. When was the last time you gave this any thought? We are quick to proclaim our own offense without ever considering our very declaration might offend the object of our affection. We first and always must consider what God deserves from us.

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