Even If i Walk Alone

...this i choose to do.

purpose

Our Mission

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Larry Osborne, author of, “Thriving in Babylon”, wrote, “Our great assignment is to go out into all the world and recruit Jesus followers, teaching them to obey everything he taught us. Jesus never told us to create a Christian nation, impose our standards on nonbelievers, or preserve a particular culture. He told us to win over the lost.”

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That is the mission of every follower of Christ. We are to live our lives in a way that draws others to Him. We are to tell others about His love, His beauty, and His character. Everything we do and every word we say should be to point others to Jesus.

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Demonstrating Our Faith

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Kyle Idleman has written another challenging book. This one is entitled, “Don’t Give Up”. Early on, Pastor Idleman makes the statement, “Faith doesn’t tend to be sedentary. It’s always sending us somewhere.” He follows this up by encouraging us to ask ourselves two questions: 1) “Am I following God in a way that requires faith?” 2) “Do I do anything at all in my life that requires courage and confidence?”

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If you aren’t squirming a bit as you contemplate those questions, you are a better person than I. Since we are fellow sojourners in our quest to serve God with all our heart, mind, strength, and soul, I’m going to go ahead and assume those questions made you as uncomfortable as they did me.

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Not My Will, But Yours

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The prayer of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane is powerful for us today. It’s easy to miss the simple power contained within this prayer because we are accustomed to reading it as part of the crucifixion story. Jesus prayed, “Father, if You are willing, take this cup away from Me—nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42). It is the second half of the prayer on which I’d like to focus: “not my will, but yours be done.”

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A couple of years earlier, Jesus had taught His disciples to pray in a similar manner, when He prayed, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10). Jesus prayed and instructed us to pray for God’s will to be done, regardless of what we face or what is swirling around us.

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Building God’s Kingdom

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In Haggai 1:4, God says, “Why are you living in luxurious houses while my house lies in ruins?” While we should certainly feel some conviction of this taken at face value, I think there is also a deeper application. Looking at the state of the typical Christian life today, we could paraphrase this into “Why are you building such a luxurious kingdom for yourself while neglecting My Kingdom?”

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There is no escape from the fact almost every one of us devotes far more time building our own “house” than we do building the Kingdom of God. This attitude permeates how we spend our time and our money. The culture in which we live demands we prioritize self before others and certainly before God.

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Dead People

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There’s a famous line from the 1999 movie, “The Sixth Sense”, where the little boy says, “I see dead people.” It was supposed to be creepy at the time, but now it is more comical (or perhaps that’s just my own twisted sense of humor!). The fact is, as Christ-followers, we should say “I see dead people” every time we walk into a gathering of believers.

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If our faith in Jesus is genuine it means we have given up everything. Indeed, we have died to ourselves. Jesus said if we would follow Him we must “take up our cross daily” (Luke 9:23). Nobody walks away from their cross alive. We are dead people.

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