New Grace for Old Relational Patterns of Condemnation –
Purity 690
Purity 90 03/28/2022
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a snowy sunset on the shores of Lake Ontario
in Oswego NY comes to us from Celestial Blue Photography who shared this “dawn-like”
sunset back on February 5th of this year.
Well, whether it’s the sun setting on the weekend or a dawn
of a new week, it’s Monday again and even though we had the potential for
Spring to be sprung, the temperatures have regressed again, and it is a brisk 19
degrees outside of my house “down by the River” this morning.
It is technically spring. It is a new season but as is
evidenced by the cold temperatures outside sometimes things go back to a
familiar pattern of the past even when we would like that to not be the case.
Similarly, Christians who now have a new life in Christ
sometimes revert back to the emotional and behavioral patterns that reflect the
season of their “old man.” We can be walking
in victory and be filled with the joy and peace that comes from being right
with God and living according to His ways and then, just like an unexpected
cold spell can intrude on the early days of spring, suddenly something can happen in our
experience that can trigger a response from our past that tears our peace asunder
and sends us into reactive patterns of negative emotions and behaviors.
I recently experienced such a shift from the peace and joy of
the Lord to the desperate cries of condemnation and bitterness when I overextended
myself and stretched myself too thin.
I recently took an “ego trip” of a vacation by taking a break
from my full time job as a telecommunications field technician to be trained as
a psychiatric technician for my county’s mobile crisis assessment team and had
been excited by the opportunity to put my education in psychology back to work
and to earn a little extra cash as I helped people in my local community to
find peace. The week of training was
challenging but rewarding and I was quite proud of how I was incorporating the
new part time job to work within my busy schedule of life and ministry.
I was looking ahead, and scheduling part time shifts at MCAT and
was excited that I had a pretty clear view of how I could skillfully juggle all
the aspects of my life with just a little bit of planning. I was a little tired
from the shift from my “ego-trip” back to my regular day job last week, but I had
it all figured out and shot a text to my wife to give her a heads up about some
of the part time shifts I was going to pick up in the weeks ahead.
Then the perfect storm of condemnation and bitterness came rolling
in like an unexpected cold front when I suddenly realized my view wasn’t as
clear as I thought, I was stretched a little further than I thought, and I was
still carrying a little behavioral baggage from my past relationships.
In my expert planning, I had missed something. My wife
pointed out that I was “double booking myself” on a particular day in the weeks
ahead and she asked if I had my dates right or if I understood that I was
signing myself up for a 16 hour day of work on a Saturday. Before this mistake was pointed out she also
jokingly asked if I was trying to avoid her by scheduling theses shifts. Ha Ha.
The two unrelated texts – her joke and her good intention to
look out for me – instantly filled me with a mix of condemnation and self-righteous
indignation.
Her joke was taken out of context and cut like a knife. I wasn’t
trying to avoid her at all. I love her madly and was only working this job to
try to take care of my debt because a. it is the right thing to do and b. I
wanted to do so to give us a better future. So the ‘accusation” I heard filled
me with pain that she would ever think that I was trying to avoid her and then also
filled me with anger because I was “doing the best I can” to deal with the
problem of my debt and then it filled me with condemnation that I had only been
remarried for a couple of months and was already “messing it up”.
I thought I had it all figured out and I had made a mistake
by double booking. Apparently, I didn’t have my jobs all figured out and I was
messing up my marriage too.
That was an overstatement of course and I would normally have
thanked my wife for saving me from my mistake, but my lack of rest made me a
little less patient and discerning and what normally would have been a minor
mistake that was quickly corrected went global and brought me to the old familiar
responses of anger and condemnation from my past before being in Christ.
Luckily, my wife was quick to point out that I had taken her
joke badly and my mistake was corrected but inside a part of me was condemning
myself for making the mistake and causing me to wonder if I should ever have
gotten married again in the first place. Maybe, I was the same mess I always
was and was best to be left alone.
No sooner did we get past this little misunderstanding when a
couple of days later, I reacted rudely to my wife Thursday morning, as I felt
pressed for time before work and unceremoniously said goodbye to her in a curt
and dismissive manner, that I almost immediately regretted and later apologized
for.
She admitted the way I had treated her did hurt her feelings,
but she accepted my apology, but inside I was in full blown condemnation mode
and was fully convinced that I was incapable of maintaining a loving relationship
and should have never gotten married again. Again, I had suffered a total global melt down.
This is a big hint for all of us. If things get blown out of
proportion to the point that we see nothing as good and ourselves as absolute
failures we have to realize that we are believing lies. We are probably over-tired
because our normal capacities for patiently dealing with stress have been
compromised and we feel we are in opposition to the world at large and the very
people in our lives that we love the most.
The mole hills of our problems have become mountains and the spring of
hope has suddenly gone to the winter of our discontent.
The feelings of condemnation had me ready to withdraw and
pull away from my wife and isolate from her in some misguided attempt to stop
the damage to our relationship.
That’s the wrong way to go, as an encourager of other’s
attempts to deal with their personal and spiritual conflicts I know the remedy
to imbalances between people is forgiveness and cooperation not withdrawing and
isolating from one another.
So over the weekend, I fought those old patterns that would
send me “ to the basement” of my emotions and keep me in the self-imposed proverbial
“doghouse” of condemnation and instead drew close to my wife and was open and
honest in the confessions of all that was going in in my head and heart. Together we assured each other of our love
and forgiveness for one another and resolved the issue that my misunderstandings
and lack of rest had created.
The most important part of “fixing this problem” was for me
to truly accept my wife’s forgiveness and to forgive myself for my mistakes and
to realize that those old patterns of reactivity were part of my old relationships
and from the person who didn’t have the hope of Christ in his life.
Through Christ, I have been forgiven of all my sins and have
been given a new life. If God has forgiven me of everything I have ever done or
will do, I should forgive others and I should give myself a break when I make a
mistake and forgive myself too.
When I realized that I had slipped back into condemnation, I realized
that I was under stress but also was most likely under a spiritual attack. The enemy loves to accuse us and condemn us,
and I think my bad responses may have been a combination of stress, old
patterns of fear and condemnation arising from the dead, and the enemy whispering
in my ear.
The good news is that whatever caused my going astray doesn’t
matter, the remedy was and always will be to stand on who I am in Christ and to
follow the word of God for my life as a disciple of Christ.
So if you made a mistake over the weekend, don’t run from it.
Stop turn around, admit your wrong, seek forgiveness, and remind yourself of
who you are in Christ. In Him we are forgiven, and we are complete. We just have to keep walking and talking with
God because if we do that continually, He will never let us go astray for long
and His voice will guide us back in the way we should go and into the love,
peace, and joy that is available in His presence.
______________________________________________________________________
Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book
for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verse is :
Romans 3:25 (NLT2)
25 For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People
are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life,
shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held
back and did not punish those who sinned in times past,
Today’s Bible verse
speaks of Christ’s sacrifice for our sins and how we are made right with God when
we believe in Him.
This is the
game changer, guys. The world makes us earn everything we get. There is no such
as a free lunch, right?
Well, the
kingdom of God isn’t like that. We can’t pay God back for our sins. Our sins demand the death penalty, and we
only have one life to live for the multitude of sins that we do in our lives. Our
good deeds are like filthy rags and are insufficient for our atonement. There
is just no way we can pay for our sins and be made right with God through our
own efforts.
But God made a
way when there was no way, through faith in Jesus Christ alone we can be forgiven
of our sins.
God is kind and
gracious and will hold back the penalty of our sins if we just do one thing. If
we just let go of our attempts to be made right with God through our own
efforts and instead believe and put our faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and
Savior we will be forgiven. We will made right with God. We will receive and be sealed by the Holy Spirit. We will be given
a new and eternal life. We will become children of God. And we will be forever
in God’s kingdom.
To let go and
let God means to accept Jesus Christ for our salvation and to live according to
His ways. We surrender our life for His
and our ways for His ways.
God so loved
the world that He gave us Jesus. And now
it’s our turn, to so love Him that we accept His grace and live our life for
Him.
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 sharing from June Hunt’s Overeating: Freedom from Food
Fixation.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes
and encourage all to purchase June Hunt’s books for your own private
study and to support his work. This resource is available on many
websites for less than $5.00.
F. What Will Let You Experience Lasting
Freedom in Your Life?
The
truth is … you can be set free from your fixation on food, but even more
importantly, you can be set free to become all that God created you to be.
Jesus is your divine Deliverer, who paid the price for your sins, cutting off
the chains of harmful habits like compulsive overeating so that you can
experience lasting freedom.
God’s Word tells us that freedom …
leads to praise.…
“Set me free from my
prison, that I may praise your name.”
(Psalm 142:7)
4 Points of God’s Plan
#1 God’s Purpose for You … is Salvation.
— What
was God’s motivation in sending Christ to earth?
To
express His love for you by saving you! The Bible says …
“God so loved the world that he gave
his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have
eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but to save the world through him”
(John 3:16–17).
— What
was Jesus’ purpose in coming to earth?
To
forgive your sins, to empower you to have victory over sin, and to enable you
to live a fulfilled life! Jesus said …
“I have come that they may have life,
and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10 NKJV).
#2 Your Problem … is Sin.
— What
exactly is sin?
Sin is
living independently of God’s standard—knowing what is right, but choosing what
is wrong. The Bible says …
“If anyone, then, knows the good they
ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them” (James 4:17).
— What
is the major consequence of sin?
Spiritual
death, eternal separation from God. Scripture states …
“Your iniquities [sins] have separated you from your God.… The wages of sin is death, but the
gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Isaiah 59:2; Romans
6:23).
#3 God’s Provision for You … is the Savior.
— Can
anything remove the penalty for sin?
Yes!
Jesus died on the cross to personally pay the penalty for your sins. The Bible
says …
“God demonstrates his own love for us
in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
— What
is the solution to being separated from God?
Belief
in (entrusting your life to) Jesus Christ as the only way to God the Father.
Jesus says …
“I am the way and the truth and the
life. No one comes to the Father except through me.… Believe in the Lord Jesus,
and you will be saved …”
(John 14:6; Acts 16:31).
#4 Your Part … is Surrender.
— Give
Christ control of your life—entrusting yourself to Him.…
“Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever
wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross [die to your own self-rule] and follow me. For whoever wants to save
their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What
good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their
soul?’ ” (Matthew 16:24–26).
— Place
your faith in (rely on) Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior and
reject your “good works” as a means of earning God’s approval.…
“It is by grace you have been saved,
through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by
works, so that no one can boast”
(Ephesians 2:8–9).
The
moment you choose to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior—entrusting your life
to Him—His Spirit lives inside you. Then He gives you His power to live the
fulfilled life God has planned for you. If you want to be fully forgiven by God
and become the person God created you to be, you can tell Him in a simple,
heartfelt prayer like this:
|
Prayer of Salvation “God, I want a real relationship with You. I admit that many times I’ve chosen
to go my own way instead of Your way. Please forgive me for my sins. Jesus, thank You for dying on the
cross to pay the penalty for my sins. Come into my life to be my Lord and
my Savior. Change me from the inside out and
make me the person You created me to be. In Your holy name I pray. Amen.” |
What
Can You Now Expect?
With
the Lord in your life, you can trust that even when you feel weak, you will
have His supernatural power working in you to make you strong.
If you sincerely prayed this prayer,
look at how God says He will work in your life!
“My grace is sufficient
for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
(2 Corinthians 12:9)[1]
---------------------------more
tomorrow------------------------
Join
our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage Breaker”, "Freedom in
Christ" series of Discipleship Classes via the mt4christ247 podcast!
at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com,
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Email
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materials, share your progress, and to be encouraged.
My
wife, TammyLyn, also offers Christian encouragement via her Facebook Group:
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Seek, and Knock on Podbean (https://feed.podbean.com/tammalyn78/feed.xml)
Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship
[1]
June Hunt, Biblical Counseling
Keys on Overeating: Freedom from Food Fixation (Dallas, TX: Hope
For The Heart, 2008), 24–26.
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