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Saturday, June 12, 2021

Purity 443: Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship


 Purity 443 06/12/2021  Purity 443 Podcast

Good morning.

Today’s photo of blue skies and Oahu palm trees comes to us from friend who journeyed to Hawaii for a week to help to their niece make a flight to Guam but also used the time to visit the site of their biological mother’s death, as well as to see the beauty of the islands.  

What better way to say Aloha to the weekend than a photo from Hawaii?  But the short narrative I was able to glean from my friend’s post shows us that life isn’t all blue skies and sunshine.   Life involves doing things you never thought you would out of love for your family. Our friend went half-way around the world to serve their family.  

They also dealt with the issues of life and death as they honored and grieved for the person that brought them into this world, a person they were born from but whose connection was perhaps more biological than relational.       

All of this was brought into the setting of the Pacific Island paradise of Oahu where the beauty of God’s creation is on full display but is contrasted by man’s trappings of civilization that aren’t always so beautiful.   

Yeah, life is a multifaceted and complex thing but the one thing that remains constant in all these functions and settings is the presence of God. He can give you strength to serve. He gives you comfort when you grieve. And He can share in your delight when you discover new areas of His creation.  

While I always invite my friends to bring God along for the ride wherever their travels lead them, I was convicted to remind everyone that we should also actively seek to know Him more by reading His word.  I recently read this quote from Dr. Crawford Loritts which said:

“Spiritual progress is not the product of a lot of empty Christian cliches and emotional experiences, it is taking up the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. It’s not just an intellectual knowledge of truth, it is a heart application of knowledge of truth.”

I encourage people to pursue a relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, but I also encourage them to pursue it because the application of the truth of who we are in Christ leads to the abundant life that God wants us to live.  

The last thing I ever want to be accused of is just dropping Christian cliches and telling people to chase after ecstatic experiences.  I am a Bible College graduate and the victory that I experience in life is built on the foundation of God’s truth that is found in the Bible.  

My attempts to encourage people to see God in the beauty of His creation and our daily experiences is intended to bridge the gap that people sometimes make between the spiritual realm and the real world. My encouragements are my attempt at exposing the fact that there is no division between the two, God is with us, but I also intend to encourage people to draw closer to God by practicing their faith through worship, prayer, and Bible study.  

So rejoice that it’s the weekend, rejoice that God is with us, and consider the possibility that your life could be even richer and spiritual progress could be made by choosing to make a practice of seeking God’s wisdom by studying His word.   


This morning’s meditation verse is:

Romans 12:11 (NKJV)
11 not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord;

Today’s verse is small fragment of a large discourse of practical advice on Christian living that the Apostle Paul encouraged the church at Rome to follow.  This snippet describes the attitude we should take as Christians and defines our purpose.  

So as Christian we should:

·       Not lag in diligence

·       Be fervent in spirit

·       Serve the Lord.

While I think we all understand what it means to serve the Lord, we may not be clear on the other instructions. So let’s break this little verse down.  

Diligence is defined as: “steady, earnest, and energetic effort: devoted and painstaking work and application to accomplish an undertaking”  

When the Apostle Paul tells us not to lag in diligence, He’s is telling us to be diligent. So we are to foster an attitude and behave in ways that would be “steady, earnest, and energetic.  We are not to approach our Christian lives with laziness, inconsistency, or uncertainness. We are to be devoted to what the Lord would have us do with diligence because our efforts are part of God’s purposes, there is no other work that has higher value.  

We should also be fervent in spirit.  Fervent means “exhibiting or marked by great intensity of feeling: zealous”.  Knowing that our lives have been saved by the Creator of the universe and that our lives have a meaning and a purpose for Him should fill us with joy and a dedication to serve the One who graciously chose us for glory.  We may have to remind ourselves of who we are in Christ and of our significance in the kingdom of God to stir up our intensity for the Lord, but His infinite love, grace, and power has been placed in us and when we connect with Him through prayer we can have a holy zeal to follow and serve the Lord.   

The last instruction is to serve the Lord.  As simple as that instruction may be, it can describe a vast number of things that we can do for the kingdom of God.  God has given us all individual talents, gifts, and abilities and put each of us in unique situations. My call to serve the Lord will not be the same as your call as each one of us has a unique purpose for our lives.  But we could say that all the ways to serve the Lord would fall under the categories of Worship or Good Works.    

Now I know that “work is worship” and that everything we do is to be for God’s glory.  So I guess all of our activities are a form of worship.

But for this illustration, Worship would involve doing things directly for and through the church, the local congregation, or other ministries.  Organized church activities in or outside of the church building and missions, foreign or domestic would fall under “Worship”   Something you are doing directly under the leading of the organized body of Christ would be worship.

Good works on the other hand are the things that we are motivated to do by God but are done not under the direction of the church or Christian ministry.  Good works would be anything that you did for the good or service of others in your other spheres of influence that would give God glory.   Doing a good job at work, helping friends and neighbors, or doing random acts of kindness would fall under this category.

So no matter if you’re rolling with the church or doing good works solo, remember to do them diligently and with a zeal that shows that your motivation is to serve the kingdom of God, fulfill your life’s purpose, and to give God the glory. 

As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I always share insights from prominent Christian counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. 

 

Today we continue with Dr. Neil Anderson’s Victory Over the Darkness, concluding Chapter 2, with the final section “The Bright Hope of Being a Child of God”

 

As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to purchase Dr. Anderson’s books for your own private study and to support His work. If you need this title you can find it online at several sites for less than $15.00:

The Bright Hope of Being a Child of God

As children of the sinful first Adam, we were obstinate and ornery, helpless and hopeless, having nothing in ourselves to commend us to God. God's love, however, overruled our unloveliness. Through Christ, God provided a way for us into His family. As God's adopted child, you have been given a new identity and a new name. You are no longer a spiritual orphan; you are a son or daughter of God. As a child in God's family you have become a partaker of His "divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).

If you are beginning to think you are someone special as a Christian, you are thinking right—you are special! Your specialness is not the result of anything you have done, of course. It is all God's doing. We are what we are by the grace of God. All you did was respond by faith to God's invitation to be His child. As a child of God, in union with Him because you are in Christ, you have every right to enjoy your special relationship with your heavenly Father.

How important is it to know who you are in Christ? Countless numbers of Christians struggle with their day-to-day behavior because they labor under a false perception of who they are. They consider themselves sinners who hope to make it into heaven by God's grace, but they can't seem to live above their sinful tendencies.

Look again at the hope-filled words of 1 John 3:1-3: "See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. . . . Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure."

What is the believer's hope? That you are a child of God now, who is being conformed to the image of God. The person who has this hope "purifies himself" and begins to live according to who he or she really is. You must believe you are a child of God to live like a child of God. "God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27).

 


Victory Over the Darkness: Realizing the Power of Your Identity in Christ.

---------------------------more tomorrow------------------------

 

God bless you all!

 

Join our “Victory over the Darkness” or “The Bondage Breaker” series of Discipleship Classes via the mt4christ247 podcast!

at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, You can also find it on Apple podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154). The mt4christ247 podcast is also available on Google Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, and Audible.com. 

Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and to be encouraged.

 

Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship

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