Moment From God – Your Whole Family Be Saved – Purity 737
Purity 737 05/20/2022
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a Lake Ontario Sunset from the shores of Oswego
NY comes to us from Celestial Blue Photography who captured this magnificent
view on May 14th causing several people to respond with such praises
as “Beautiful” “Lovely” and “Wow! Gorgeous!” But my favorite reply came from someone
who recognized the Creator’s handiwork in this scene and shared their
appreciation by commenting:
“Moment from God.” followed by “Ty” the abbreviation for “Thank You.”
I think they were giving their appreciation to the photographer
for sharing their work, because of the lower case y, but I think we should all
pass our thanks along to God for the “big picture”, as in this universe, this
world, placing our photographer friend at that moment at that exact time with
camera in hand, and then having him share it on social media for other people,
who God created, to enjoy this “moment from God.”
That’s the thing, if we simply recognize God as Creator of time
and space and everything that fills it, we will see that He put everything we
experience into motion and that every “present moment” whether stunningly
beautiful visually or not so much is a “moment from God” and they are all “Beautiful.
Lovely. Or Gorgeous.” Because there is life and therefore there is hope But you have to pan back and have the proper
perspective of God’s big picture to see it.
Well, it’s the weekend and it is my prayer that all of my
friends out there will take time to enjoy their lives and recognize that the
moments they have are all “moments from God” and hopefully “moments with God”
as we can all be in a close personal relationship with our Heavenly Father through
faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.
For those who have made Jesus Christ their Lord and Savior, we
can all recall that “first moment with God” where the truth of the gospel of
Jesus Christ became real and meaningful to us as we realized that we could be
forgiven of our sins once and for all and be welcomed into God’s kingdom through
a simple act of faith, that by making Jesus our Lord and Savior we would be
saved from God’s wrath and the Hell that our sin would have sent us to.
When we have that “moment with God”, we are forever changed as
we are born again, given new spiritual life and an unbreakable relationship
with God as members of His royal family.
As much as the experience of being welcomed into God’s family
can cause us great joy at the realization of our personal salvation, it can
also cause us to be greatly alarmed as we realize that, as far as we know. many
of our friends and family have not had a “moment with God” that caused them to
put their faith in Christ!
This great concern for the salvation of our friends and family
is often met by well meaning pastors and other Christians with Bible verses
that indicate that “nothing is impossible with God” and therefore there is hope
for salvation for all our lost family and friends.
In church circles, these verses that speak of God’s desire that
none should perish and that if we ask anything in the Lord’s name that it will
be given to you, along with the story of the Philippian jailer, can quickly be
morphed into a general promise of assurances that “all your family” will be
saved.
I have heard testimonies about the power of prayer and stories
of entire families coming to faith in Christ and so we encourage prayers for
the lost because I recognize that someone seeing the truth of the gospel and making
a sincere decision to make Jesus their Lord and Savior really is a work of the
Holy Spirit. We can’t argue people into God’s kingdom and in thinking of my own
salvation I marvel over how and why I didn’t see “the Truth” sooner.
The answer I have drawn from scripture in 2 Corinthians 4:4 is
that I spiritually blinded by Satan, the god of this world, as are all
unbelievers and it is God who opens are eyes and draws us into His kingdom
(John 6:44, 15:26, 16:8, 16:13). So salvation
comes from the Lord, possibly as an answer to prayer, but in the end He is
sovereign and I know from my experience from walking with the Lord that no
matter how much we pray and plead for things, if our prayers for “what seems
good to us” is not also the will of God, its not going to happen.
In desperation to save our family members, or to be blessed by
good health or financial prosperity, we in our ignorance can fall into error by
thinking that these things are “guaranteed” to us if we “only have enough faith”.
You may have heard encouragements like
that.
Unfortunately if we believe we can push God’s hand, or “receive
what is rightfully ours”, through our own prayerful efforts or through “our
great faith”, we are making ourselves gods and making God our dutiful genie in
a bottle.
The “name it, claim it” “word of faith” heresy that is very
popular because of people’s desires for health and wealth is actually
blasphemous as it puts the “faithful believer” in the driver’s seat, which we
simply are not. This prosperity gospel is often used to separate hurting
Christian families from their finances and can result in bitter disillusionment
with God for withholding our miracles or self condemnation when our “promises”
don’t come true because of “our lack of faith.”
We need to avoid such errors by understanding God’s sovereignty.
While we should “pray without ceasing” we should always keep Matthew 6:10 in
view that says:
Matthew 6:10 (NKJV)
10 Your kingdom
come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.
God’s will will be done
on earth, not necessarily ours. And
that goes along with the implied promise of “all our family being saved”.
In thinking about this I decided to look at one of the
scriptures that this sentiment is based on. The Philippian Jailer’s story is told
in Acts 16 and the scriptures say:
Acts 16:27-31 (NKJV)
27 And the keeper of the
prison, awaking from sleep and seeing the prison doors open, supposing the
prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself.
28 But Paul called with a
loud voice, saying, "Do yourself no harm, for we are all here."
29 Then he called for a
light, ran in, and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas.
30 And he brought them out
and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
31 So they said,
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your
household."
There it is MT! Right there! "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
you will be saved, you and your household." If I believe on the Lord Jesus, not only will
I be saved but my household will be saved to!
Presto Chango, my faith in Christ will save my family!
Maybe it will. Maybe your prayers and faithful witness to
Christ will draw your family to seek the Lord and find Him. But this scripture isn’t a promised guarantee
that your faith will somehow force God to save your family and somehow force your
family members to put their faith in Jesus, magically, because of your “great
faith.”
In fact what does the rest of the Philippian Jailer’s story
in scripture tell us?
Acts 16:32-34 (NKJV)
32 Then they spoke the
word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his
house.
33 And he took them the same
hour of the night and washed their stripes. And immediately he and all his family were baptized.
34 Now when he had brought
them into his house, he set food before them; and he rejoiced, having
believed in God with all his household.
So, in this case, the jailer’s household:
·
Heard the “word of Lord”, the gospel
·
Believed in God
·
And were baptized
The members of the jailers household all individually heard
the word of God, made a decision for Christ, individually, and agreed to be
baptized individually, granted as a part of a group.
Nowhere in this narrative, does the Philippian’s jailer’s “great
faith” seem to impact the members of his household. In fact, it seems like the
members of his household were saved simultaneously with him, not because of
him.
We must all have the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ be
revealed to us by the Holy Spirit through hearing the word of God. We must all come to believe in Christ
individually. And as scripture indicates in several places, we must all be
baptized individually, through our own decision, as an act of and a demonstration
of our faith, and not through surrogates or sponsors who “stand up” for
us.
Our faith is a personal relationship with God. And we must
individually come to Him and declare that we surrender to the Lordship of
Christ to be saved.
Now don’t get me wrong, we should absolutely pray for the
people we know to be saved but we should also be bold in speaking the word of
God and the good news of Jesus Christ because it appears that this is the means
that the Holy Spirit can use to bring people to Christ.
Now while we may not always see things change immediately,
or at all, our hope isn’t wasted. The
process of relying on the Lord builds are faith in Him and helps us to
mature. I have grown a lot in the bitter
disappointments that resulted from my “hopin’ and a Praying”, in my ignorance
for things that were not according to God’s will.
If I had faith in the “promises” or the “benefits of faith”,
more than in God Himself, my faith would have only appeared to be in the
Father. If I had faith in the fact that
“everything was going to be alright” because I went to church, more than I had relationship
with God, I would have not had “saving faith” and I would have undoubtedly grown
angry and disappointed and walked away from believing in and following the
Lord.
This happens. People appear to have faith in the Lord and
are walking strong for a time. They receive blessings and are seemingly on fire
for God. But then something happens. Their
“faith” grows cold or they have something bad happen in their lives that causes
them to leave the church and stop “believing” in God.
Two possibilities here. They were false converts, tares
among the wheat. Or they are saved and the Lord is not done with them yet. Like
the Apostle Peter, who denied Christ, it is possible for a someone to walk away
and then repent and come back and serve.
I wouldn’t encourage anyone walking away to test their faith
though. The world is a dark place and
scripture attests to the possibility of “believer’s” believing the doctrines of
demons and that we are to “seek our salvation with fear and trembling”, that we
are to stay in the faith. So if you make
Christ your Lord and Savior, commit yourself to following Him regardless of the
benefits you receive here on earth because no matter what blessings or
sufferings we receive in this mortal life, our names are written in heaven and
our current sufferings will not compare with the glory we will all some day
experience when enter into heaven and when Christ returns to rule and reign in
the new heaven and new earth.
I just received word yesterday, that my cousin, who was as
lost as I was before coming to Christ, who has a long story of confusion and
brokenness, made Jesus His Lord and Savior on May 11th.
Although none of my extended family is close and we don’t really
spend any time together, he reached out to me on FB messenger to let me know
about his decision for Christ and to receive encouragement. I sent him links to various Christian
resources and encouraged that since he made Christ His Savior, he should really
endeavor to following the Lord, stating that otherwise his life might be more
of the same suffering with just a Christian cover. With my simple instruction
to follow Jesus, I tried to impress that the true value of our faith lies in our
relationship with God that is invested in every day.
But then later in the day I saw this photo he sent me where he
had signed a pledge that said he made Jesus His Savior and I remembered, my
broken walk in those early days of faith, and sent him the following words:
“Signed, Sealed, and Delivered!
‘Sorry, for the late response on that cuz.
I was just heading back to the garage and was rejoicing
over our God, and not just over what He done with you, which is freaking
awesome, but that He has changed my life so much that He would have you think
of me to share this with!
No matter what happens in your life from that day forward,
just know that you have been written in the Lamb’s book of Life. You have been
forgiven and given new life!
No matter what you do with it. Remember to rejoice because
you have been saved from God’s wrath and welcomed into His kingdom!
That’s more enough…. But brother Galatians 5:22-23 - the fruit of the Spirit
is waiting to grow in your life,
So I encourage you to walk in the Spirit, and to follow
wherever the Lord leads you because it’s
your journey and the more you follow Him the more you will see and experience
His love. Have a great weekend brother.
It’s so good! 🙌🙌🙌❤️🙏 "
So if you ask me, “Did you pray for your cousin to get
saved?”
The truth is I did, a long time ago. I used to have a volume of names on a list
that I prayed to get saved. If you are
in my family, your name was on that list. If you were in my fraternity in college
and we hung out, your out name was on
that list. If you went to school with
me, were friends with me, worked with me at some point, or we were just Facebook
Friends, chances are your name was on that list too. No guarantees, though, I’m only human and I
may have missed some of you, whoops.
But you know what, some where along the lines I grew in my
faith enough to trust that the Lord would do what was right and that I trusted
that I had prayed for virtually everyone I ever knew and that those prayers
would be answered one way or another according to the Lord’s will.
So I let go of that long list of names, and decided to let
God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, because I knew that my prayers
would never push people into heaven that didn’t want to go there and that God
would make the right call in every instance.
So while I prayed to God for whole family to be saved, I will leave it up to
Him to dispense His grace to those He will choose to welcome into His kingdom. But I will also speak the word of God and
encourage anyone who will listen to seek the Lord and make Jesus their Lord and
Savior because I know that Lord just might use my efforts to bring the dead to
life.
So keep walking and talking with God, and let other people know about Him. The things we say and the things we do that reflect the truth about Jesus and the glory of God just might be used to save someone’s soul some day. We may never know how our faith will be used to expand God’s kingdom but we can always rejoice in our close relationship with the Lord and give worship and praise to the Lord God Almighty when he brings another dead man to life, when he makes another sinner a saint.
______________________________________________________________
Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book
for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verse is:
Proverbs
12:15 (NLT2)
15
Fools
think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others.
Today’s Bible verse reminds us of the simple wisdom to consider other
sources of information.
Let’s face it. We start out completely ignorant and in desperate need
of wisdom. From the earliest days of our
lives we have to learn from others how to live in this world. Our parents,
families, or caregivers taught us everything including how to eat, walk, talk,
and use the bathroom. We would have died
without having someone to care for us and teach us how to live.
Our families or our schools continue our back instruction by teaching
us how to read. After that our potential for learning is virtually without
limit as the world is filled with books that can teach us things in any area of
interest.
One of those many books is the Holy Bible, and in it writers were
inspired by the Lord to tell God’s story and inform us about how our eternal
destiny could be secured, through faith in Jesus Christ. The Bible contains wisdom for living here on
earth and the wisdom of how we can live with God for ever. .
However,
even though the potential for great learning is available through the others
and the potential for eternal life is available through God and faith in Jesus
Christ. God has graciously given us free
will and we can decide what wisdom we will accept, reject, and choose to apply
to our lives.
Unfortunately,
we also have a capacity for pride and can decide that we have learned enough
from others and we can come to a point in our lives were we willfully decide that
“our way” is right and we don’t need to listen to anyone else, including
God.
The
Book of Proverbs declares this to be foolish.
Willful independence where we refuse to consider the wisdom of others is
foolish. But Willful independence where we refuse to consider the wisdom of God
is not foolish, it is dangerous and if unchanged leads to our destruction.
So
don’t be a fool and stubbornly refuse to consider the wisdom of the
others. God put other people on this
earth to help us and we should use all the help we can to live wisely. But we also need to be discerning in whose “wisdom”
we follow because if we see someone else’s way that seems right but it doesn’t agree
with God’s wisdom that is reveal in His word,
what seems like wisdom is actually foolishness.
Trust
in the Lord and His wisdom first, and then you will know the wise from the
fools and you will be able to avoid being a fool yourself.
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 John Piper’s “Don’t Waste Your Life”.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes
and encourage all to purchase John Pipers’ books for your own private
study and to support his work. This resource is available on many
websites for less than $5.00.
8 - Making Much of Christ from 8 to 5
It
would be a mistake to infer from the call to wartime living in the previous
chapter that Christians should quit their jobs and go to “war”—say, to become
missionaries or pastors or full-time relief workers. That would be a
fundamental misunderstanding of where the war is being fought. Of course, the
battles are raging spiritually (without bombs or bayonets) among unreached
peoples of the world where the King of kings has sent his selfless “troops”
with the gospel of peace and is gathering a happy people for himself. This is
the glorious work of frontier missions. I will argue later that it is a
magnificent calling; and I pray that thousands of you who read this book will
hear it and go to those front lines.
The War Is Not Geographical
But make no mistake, the
“war” that I have in mind when I speak of a “wartime mind-set” or a “wartime
lifestyle” is not being fought along geographical lines. It is being fought
first along the line between good and evil in every human heart, especially the
hearts of Christians where Christ has staked his claim, and where he means to
be totally triumphant. The “war” is being fought along the line between sin and
righteousness in every family. It is being fought along the line between truth
and falsehood in every school … between justice and injustice in every
legislature … between integrity and corruption in every office … between love
and hate in every ethnic group … between pride and humility in every sport …
between the beautiful and the ugly in every art … between right doctrine and
wrong doctrine in every church … and between sloth and diligence between coffee
breaks. It is not a waste to fight the battle for truth and faith and love on
any of these fronts.
The
war is not primarily spatial or physical—though its successes and failures have
physical effects. Therefore, the secular vocations of Christians are a war
zone. There are spiritual adversaries to be defeated (that is, evil spirits and
sins, not people); and there is beautiful moral high ground to be gained for
the glory of God. You don’t waste you life by where you work, but how
and why.
Secular Is Not Bad, but Strategic
Please don’t hear in the
phrase “secular vocation” any unspiritual or inferior comparison to “church
vocation” or “mission vocation” or “spiritual vocation.” I simply mean the
vocations that are not structurally connected to the church. There is such a
thing as being in the world but not of the world, as Jesus taught when he
prayed in John 17:15–16, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am
not of the world.” So Jesus’ intention is that his disciples remain in the
world (which is what I mean by “secular jobs”), but that they not be “of the
world” (which is why I say we are in a war).
Martin
Luther recaptured the biblical teaching of the priesthood of every Christian
and blasted the spiritual line between clergy and laity. He agreed that there
is a church calling and a secular calling. But his way of
distinguishing them was not based on any superior “spiritual estate.”
It is pure invention that pope, bishops,
priests and monks are to be called the “spiritual estate”; princes, lords,
artisans and farmers the “temporal estate.” That is indeed a fine bit of lying
and hypocrisy.… All Christians are truly of the “spiritual estate,” and there
is among them no difference at all but that of office.… To make it still
clearer. If a little group of pious Christian laymen were taken captive and set
down in a wilderness, and had among them no priest consecrated by a bishop, and
if there in the wilderness they were to agree in choosing one of themselves,
married or unmarried, and were to charge him with the office of baptizing,
saying mass, absolving and preaching, such a man would be as truly a priest as
though all bishops and popes had consecrated him.… There is really no
difference between laymen and priests, princes and bishops, “spirituals” and
“temporals,” as they call them, except that of office and work.… A cobbler, a
smith, a farmer, each has the work and office of his trade, and yet they are
all alike consecrated priests and bishops, and everyone by means of his own
work or office must benefit and serve every other, that in this way many kinds
of work may be done for the bodily and spiritual welfare of the community, even
as all the members of the body serve one another.
The
Bible makes it plain that God’s will is for his people to be scattered like
salt and light among the whole range of secular vocations. Enclaves of
Christians living only with Christians and working only with Christians would
not accomplish God’s whole purpose in the world. That does not mean Christian
orders or ministries or mission outposts are wrong. It means they are
exceptional. The vast majority of Christians are meant to live in the world and
work among unbelievers. This is their “office,” their “calling,” as Luther
would say. We will see why this is God’s will in a moment.[1]
---------------------------more
tomorrow------------------------
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Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship
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