A Cloud by Day to Guide Us – Will You Follow? Purity 631

A Cloud by Day to Guide Us – Will You Follow?  Purity 631

Purity 631 01/18/2022  Purity 631 Podcast

Good morning,

Today’s photo of a sun illuminated cloud floating over a marina, a stone wall, and green grass comes to us from a friend whose identity will remain safely hidden because I am not able to recall who they were or where they captured this photo!

 But I had no sooner wrote that when just like that their name popped into my head. Not for nothing but I swear the Holy Spirit will “lead you into all truth” and apparently brought this little detail into remembrance.  This friend who our Heavenly Father will never forget actually has a real heart for God and serves the Lord with a Christian motorcycle ministry. I suspect that they may have been thinking about the Israelites being led by a cloud by day as they wandered through the desert, or maybe the glory cloud that filled the temple in Exodus 40,  when they capture this photo while on vacation in St. Augustine, Florida back in December of 2021.   

Well it’s Tuesday and no matter if someone has forgotten your name or where you are from I can assure you that just because you can’t see anyone with you and you may feel all alone, i you have made Christ your Lord and Savior, I can assure you that you are never alone. The question is: will you reach out to try to communicate with the One who will never leave you or forsake you? And if He speaks, will you listen and follow His lead?    

As someone who has been led out of his own personal desert of addiction, depression, anxiety, and anger and who has been preaching and teaching the gospel and the benefits of a life of Christian discipleship for years, I am blessed when people think to reach out to me for advice or for prayer and in either case I am quick to give it.

Social media can tell you a lot about what is going on in someone’s life. As much as most of us try to present a positive image of ourselves on social media, the hurting don’t seem to have the presence of mind to consider how they will be perceived or just don’t care and share everything that is going on in their lives.    

Changing relationship statuses, late night nearly unintelligible posts, and bitter or angry memes show us that people are hurting. Unfortunately, most of us seek happiness through relationships, substances, or the accumulation of material things or experiences and may discover, like I did, that none of those things provide lasting satisfaction or a sense of fulfillment.    

We can go through our life building up a home or a career to meet our physical and emotional needs but have no consideration for our spiritual need to know God and to be in a harmonious relationship with Him.  

So when I see that friends are clearly suffering through the subtle or not so subtle hints they leave on social media, I will say a quick prayer for them to seek the Lord because I know that pestering someone with advice when they don’t want it is an exercise in futility and because I know that a relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ is the only thing that can truly heal and fulfill a person.  

In my experience, some people will humble themselves and ask for help but many times they will receive it, have some victory because of their coming to God in repentance, and will have success over their current crisis but then when the storm settles they walk away from our fellowship and invariably I will see those signs on social media again that indicate that they are back in the things that they had victory over when they were following the Lord.  

If you were in the desert and being led by a cloud from oasis to oasis, would you decide to go your own way?     

Amazingly, the answer for some is a hearty rebellious: “Yes!”

God doesn’t force you to follow Him. He allows us to go our own way even when our way is headed for pain or destruction.  But He is also a merciful God and when we survive the consequences of our selfish and foolish choices, He will leave the door open to welcome us back home.  

So if you unwittingly or willfully stopped following the Lord’s guidance, for years or just for the a few months, weeks, or days, the good news is that He wants you to walk with Him again. You just have to reach out in prayer to the Lord to tell Him you recognize the error of your ways and to tell Him that you need His help and want to follow Him to wherever He wants to take you.  

They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. So take that step today, and keep taking that step, and the Lord will guide you to the abundant life that is free of guilt, shame, regret, bitterness, anger, fear,  and even boredom.  God has a plan for your life and when you call on Him and seek His will and ways, He will reveal it to you.  

So start ,or keep, walking and talking with God. It’s the journey that leads from here  eternity so its best to start enjoying it now.     

Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”.

This morning’s meditation verse is:

Psalm 121:8 (NLT2)
⁸  The LORD keeps watch over you as you come and go, both now and forever.

Or as the NKJV puts it:

Psalm 121:8 (NKJV)
⁸  The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in From this time forth, and even forevermore.

Wow, it’s funny how these random verses drawn from a Men’s devotional book seem to line up with the message every day. We spoke about our journey of faith and how the Lord will guide us if we simply ask Him for His help and agree to follow Him and sure enough today’s Bible verse speaks of our “going out” and “coming in”  and how the Lord will preserve us from this time forth and forevermore.  

The implication is, of course, that we will be walking with the Lord and not walking away from Him.  This is one of many Bible verses that speaks of the Lord’s protection of His people.  

For those in Christ, we are His people.  He gives us the ultimate protection of our salvation and will literally intervene for us at times through His providence and quite possible through miracles.  

But as someone who has suffered injury and disease after coming to Christ, I can tell you that we are not given spiritual bullet proof vests and that we are to still be good stewards of our bodies through exercise and good nutrition and by making wise choices with what we choose to do. 

Foolish choices have consequences. A mind preoccupied with negative emotions or things other than what we are doing at the time can cause us to not be careful and can lead to accidents and suffering.   

Yes, God is walking with you and will preserve your comings and goings, but our responsibility is to walk with Him and to use the gifts of observation and discernment to aide in the Lord’s protection of us.  

We can’t do something stupid and them turn to the Lord and say: “Why didn’t you protect me?”    We can’t engage in an unhealthy lifestyle and then ask the Lord: “Why did this health problem happen to me?”   

The Lord has created the world with natural laws of cause and effects and uses it to test and train us in wisdom.  So if negative effects befall us, we need to examine what happened and try to avoid similar outcomes in the future by  learning from our experiences.   

The Lord will protect us and preserve us but let’s be careful our there and rejoice over all the calamities that don’t happen to us and thank the Lord for giving us minds to think and eyes to see what we are doing wrong and the ability to change our ways to His ways.  

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

Today we continue to share from Dr. Neil Anderson’s . “Restored: Experience Life with Jesus”. Today, we begin sharing from Chapter 5.   

As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to purchase Dr. Neil Anderson’s books for your own private study and to support his work.

CHAPTER FIVE  -  OVERCOMING REBELLION

A young lady made an appointment with her pastor, hoping to resolve a relational issue in her family, but what surfaced during the Steps was an extremely abusive marriage that ended in divorce. She had remarried, but found herself in the same cycle of abuse. Her past training and the pressure of family and friends reinforced the false belief that submission is being passive to physical and emotional abuse. Her strategy for survival was crumbling as was her ability to cope.

Many like her spend their lives accommodating their abusers, hoping someday they will finally live up to their expectations and receive the acceptance and affirmation they believe they must have in order to be worthwhile people. However, ask yourself the question, “What if your mother, father, or spouse never accepted you or gave you the affirmation you believe you need?” That is a real possibility, but you don’t have to have their approval if you know who you are in Christ, because the God of this universe has already accepted and affirmed you. Others decide to do the opposite and make a conscious choice to never be pushed around again by anyone, and they become rebellious. Both the rebel and the co-dependent must find their identity, acceptance, security, and significance in Christ and become the person God created them to be.

WHO IS IN CONTROL?

Who would you say is in control of your life right now? Do you think you are? God never designed your soul to function as master. At any one moment, you are either serving “mammon” or God.88 The poet says, “I am the master of my fate and the captain of my soul.” Oh, no, he isn’t! Self-seeking, self-serving, self-justifying, self-glorifying, and self-centered living are in actuality serving the world, the flesh, and the devil, being deceived into thinking we are serving self.

Denying ourselves is the way of the Cross. Saying no to ourselves and yes to God is the ultimate struggle in life. Believing we are God is the biggest lie of all. It originated in the garden when Satan said, “You will be like God.”₈₉ Trying to be or play God is the biggest mistake we can make. It seems so sacrificial to surrender all to God, but what are you really sacrificing? You are sacrificing the lower life to gain the higher life. It is the great ambition of fallen humanity to be happy as animals instead of being blessed as children of God.

You are sacrificing the pleasure of things to gain the pleasure of life. What would you exchange for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control? A new car? A better home? A higher position? The belief that those things will give you love, joy, and peace is the lie of the world, even though there is nothing inherently wrong with having degrees, titles, and physical possessions. You are sacrificing the temporal to gain the eternal. Some sacrifice! In reality, denying self-rule is the magnificent defeat. Only when we come to the end of our resources do we discover His resources. Lordship is not a negative doctrine. We are liberated in Christ when Jesus is Lord.

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

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Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship