Even If i Walk Alone

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

Romans

Taking Offense

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Nothing good ever comes from taking offense. Think back over your life. When you have been offended, did it ever end well? Did taking offense lead to you looking more or less like Jesus? It amazes me how Jesus never took offense when people ridiculed or even blasphemed Him. He just took it in stride. He looked beyond the comment and into the heart of the one making the comment. He loved them.

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This is not our response when someone wrongs us. We are quick to defend when we perceive ourselves to be wounded. Our pride causes us to withdraw rather than reach out in love. To be blunt, taking offense makes us look like a spoiled child.

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It is Well

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Growing up as a preacher’s kid, I think I learned every hymn forward, backward, and upside down (except for the third verses, of course, which are inexplicably always skipped!). As I grew older, my taste in music transformed and I left the old hymns in the past. Now and again, someone releases a modern remake of an old hymn, and it provides a sweet sense of nostalgia. Updated music has helped me rediscover a few old songs. There is one, however, that over the past couple of years has resonated with me in its original form.

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I love the haunting and solemn melody of “It Is Well with My Soul”. I have an entire playlist of different instrumental versions of the hymn that I often play during my morning prayer time. It stops me in my tracks every time to ponder how, with Jesus, it is well with my soul regardless of what’s swirling around me.

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The Faithfulness of God

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All followers of Jesus desire to grow in their faith. We feel if we had more faith, we wouldn’t get so stressed out or worry as much. So, we pray and study; we beg and plead, all the while asking God for more faith. What if we’re focusing on the wrong thing? What if, instead of focusing on our own faith, we focused on the faithfulness of God?

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His love and provision are everlasting. They never fail. He never leaves our side and is always going with us, no matter what we may face (Deuteronomy 31:6). I believe if we grasped the faithfulness of God, the need for our own faith would be almost irrelevant. He is already more than we could ever need.

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Do Good People Go to Heaven?

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Aaron Rodgers, the star quarterback of the Green Bay Packers made waves when he proclaimed, “I don’t know how you can believe in a God who wants to condemn most of the planet to a fiery hell. What type of loving, sensitive, omnipresent, omnipotent being wants to condemn his beautiful creation to a fiery hell at the end of all this?” Mr. Rodgers is misinformed about the God in whom he does not believe.

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Jesus was clear saying He did not come to condemn the world, but to deliver it from the forces of evil (John 3:17-18). We are saved from the condemnation Mr. Rodgers talks about by bowing down to Jesus as Lord and surrendering our lives to Him. Those who reject Jesus condemn themselves, it is not the will of God (John 3:18; 2 Peter 3:9).

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Diverse and Eclectic

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Most of us hang around people who look like us, think like us, and share the same beliefs as we do. Being charged with furthering Jesus’s mission to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth, I find it difficult to believe Heaven looks like our homogeneous gatherings. No, I think Heaven is the most diverse and eclectic bunch of people we can imagine. If that’s true, why don’t we strive to surround ourselves with similar gatherings now?

diverse and eclectic,mission,love,priorities,commitment,Romans 15:7,accept one another

This life is our only chance to prepare for our eternal one. We may as well practice now. Paul encourages us in Romans 15:7 to accept others just as Christ accepted us.  Jesus takes us as we are. We should also accept others as they are without demanding they become like us. God loves them just as they are, and so should we.

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