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Friday, May 27, 2022

Seeing, Feeling, and Enduring the Wind - The Full Acceptance of the Mystery – Purity 742




 Seeing, Feeling, and Enduring the Wind - The Full Acceptance of the Mystery – Purity 742

Purity 742 05/27/2022  Purity 742 Podcast

Good morning,

Today’s short video, also shared on YouTube, of weeds being moved by the wind as I take my canine companion, Harley for a walk was recorded yesterday as we walked along Waite Road near my country side home. 

The strong wind blowing the weeds, and a recent teaching at my local church on the Holy Spirit,  reminded me of Jesus’ words in

John 3:5-8 (NKJV) where He said:
5  … "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7  Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' 8  The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit."   

For those who don’t know, the mysterious statement regarding being “born in the Spirit” is quite simple. Those who put their faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior are born of God (1 John 5:1) , are given eternal life (John 3:16), receive the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38. Rom 8:9 ) and are simultaneously sealed by God (Eph 1:13-14, 4:30).  Every person who makes Jesus their Lord and Savior receives the Holy Spirit when their faith in Him and are guaranteed a place in God’s family and eternal kingdom for all time, for there is nothing that can separate us from His love when we become “born again”, when we become “born of the Spirit”.  

But that is just the beginning folks.  Just like the wind blows in today’s video, after we put our faith in Jesus Christ we will feel and see the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. 

After we come to faith in Christ and decide to follow Him with our lives, we can feel the Holy Spirit in our lives, primarily through the joy of our salvation. When we put our faith in Christ, we have joy because we know that we have been forgiven, we have peace with God, we are made His children, and we need never fear death or God’s wrath again.  If we abide in the truth of who we are in Christ, the joy of our salvation can be a continual well spring of hope and motivation to live the Christian life.

Another way we can feel the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives isn’t warm and fuzzy.  After becoming “born of the Spirit”, we can feel convicted when we think and act in ways that are contrary to God’s way. Even though we have the assurance of our salvation and the forgiveness of our sins, somehow the sins we were very comfortable with before coming to faith in Christ, aren’t as much fun as they used to be and we feel a conviction in our spirit’s to repent. The Holy Spirit will cause us to feel that our sins aren’t “okay” just because they are forgiven.

If we walk in the Spirit, where we attempt to follow Jesus’s example and live according to God’s ways, we will feel the desire to stop doing what used to do and start doing what God’s wisdom shows us we could do.  The Holy Spirit’s conviction can sting but healing and peace is found when we surrender to righteous and holy the life God calls us to live.  

The mystery of our faith lies in the acceptance of who we are in Christ and the surrender to God’s will by rejecting all the world’s various options for living that “seem right to a man” and making the decision to follow the Truth, the Way, and The Life: Jesus Christ.  

Our decision to be a disciple of Christ includes believing the good news but it also includes the progressive seeking of the Lord where we attempt to know Him more and His will for our life by understanding the word of God and the implications it has for our lives.  

The appropriate response to being “born of the Spirit” is to live like it, to walk in the Spirit.  And this walk will confound you at times because like Christ’s words says about the wind in general, the mighty rushing wind of the person of the Holy Spirit blows where he wishes. We might not always know where He is coming from or where He is going to send us to, but His leadings will never contradict the word of God and always lead to our growing in our faith and in our love for God.    

Now in man’s attempt to simplify the mystery of faith, we often try to reduce it to pat slogan like: just do the right thing, all the time. Do the right thing and good things will happen to you. 

While this sentiment is seemingly a good one, it can easily become corrupted as man can become prideful and believe that the blessings they have in life are merely the result of their wise decision to work hard and be a “good person” and it can also lead to a false belief of self sufficiency that determines that they don’t need God, or can decide that their sins are okay, because after all no one is perfect, and they work hard after all.  These sentiments would lead to sin and cause us to suffer which could possibly cause us to stop trusting God.   

Yes, whether it is the product of our own or someone else’s sin or whether it is just an affect of the conditions of a world that has been broken because of sin, there is suffering and death in this world.   

Do good, get good is not an equation that always works and in light of the natural course of a life on the earth, where people get sick, age, and die, if we don’t have an understanding of these things according to God’s wisdom, we may think that we have been given a “raw deal”.  

When the “winds of change and tragedy” blow into our lives, our foundation our faith and our relationship with God will be tested.   

If we don’t have an understanding of who we are in Christ and who God is that can equally explain blessings and the “curses” of a fallen world broken by sin, we will be blown all over the place in our emotions and in our responses.  

If we don’t investigate our faith enough to attempt to understand and accept  paradoxes such as: 

·       (Unless Christ returns first), we will die, yet we will live,

·       We are saints, but yet we can and will sin,

·       We are free from sin, and yet we can still choose to sin

·       We may prosper, but suffering may and probably will come

·       The Lord loves us but the world will hate us  

·       People without faith in Jesus may prosper, while those with faith in Christ may suffer  

·       We can “do everything right” and still not get what we want or suffer loss.

So walking in the Spirit may lead to feelings of great joy and victory as we experience the fruit of the Spirit in our lives but it  can also seem to at times to be like we are walking against the winds of a hostile world of suffering and death, against the winds of adversity, and against those constantly blowing winds of change.  

But the Lord is over and above those winds. He calms the storms. And regardless of the sufferings and loss that we will encounter in our walk through life on this earth, if we walk with Him we will endure and be able to know His peace no matter what storms come our way.    

So accept the word of God and obey what it says to know God more and to grow into the person He calls you to be.  While much of our faith can seem mysterious, when we seek the Lord and accept the truth of who He is, who we are in Christ, and what He says about the ways things work we will discover that we can always trust that Lord will “get it right” and that He “will do what’s right”.  

So keep walking and talking with God, He will show you the way the wind blows and how we can endure it and be carried along by it to the place He wants us to go.       

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

This morning’s meditation verse is:

1 Timothy 2:5 (NLT2)
5  For there is only one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity—the man Christ Jesus.

Today’s Bible verse plainly declares the truth that there is one mediator between God and Man: Jesus Christ.  

Enough said?  

I hope so. The exclusivity of Christ to save is a challenge for the world to accept because of the spiritual blindness that we suffer from before we are graced with a revelation of the truth of the gospel by the Holy Spirit.  In truth, The Lord saves us. We can’t save ourselves. In our own wisdom we would never choose to follow the Lord. Our salvation is a gift from God.  

We can’t convince or argue anyone into God’s kingdom.  

But imagine if we could, would we choose it?  While our faith is logical when we understand that it is the truth, when you are on the outside looking in it is “foolishness” to those who are perishing.  

The idea of a free gift, by itself is a hard pill for some people to swallow as their experience has taught them that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”.

The idea of substitutionary atonement through blood sacrifice would probably send us screaming and running for the exits. We have to explain how this works to Christians so it is no surprise that those outside of the faith choose to reject it.  

But course of human history contains a man know as Jesus Christ of Nazareth who influenced the course of global history, that not only established the way we number our days with the “year of our Lord” but who also influenced people to change the way they live their individual lives and cause some to champion righteous causes that establish institutions that established law and order and compassionate services to societies.

There is great evidence in the word of God, archaeology, and in the testimonies of individuals lives to validate the truth of Jesus Christ as the one Mediator who can reconcile mankind to God and I pray that Lord uses some of it to open the eyes of the spiritual blind and welcome more into His kingdom today.  

So let people know that they need to be reconciled to God and tell them of the Way that God makes it possible.  While it can seem complicated explaining the gospel to someone, rest assured that when you speak of it, you are telling the truth and if God wills it, it will be heard and accepted.  

Our mission on earth is tell others of the love, mercy, and grace that God has given us through the revelation of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. So be bold, tell the truth in love and leave results up to God.

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.

5. We make much of Christ in our secular work by earning money with the desire to use our money to make others glad in God.

Everything I said in Chapter 7 assumed that we had money to use in a radical way to show that Christ and not money is our Treasure. But money does not grow on trees; we work for it. We provide some service or make some product that others will pay for. So my point here is that, as we work, we should dream of how to use our excess money to make others glad in God. Of course, we should use all our money to make others glad in God, in the sense that our whole life has this aim. But the point here is that our secular work can become a great God-exalting blessing to the world if we aim to take the earnings we don’t need for ourselves (and we need far less than we think) and meet the needs of others in the name of Jesus.

The Able-Bodied Earners Help the Victims of Loss

God clearly tells us that we should work to provide the needs of those who can’t meet their own needs. It’s true that everyone should work if he can, and that, in general, if you work you will have what you need. “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread” (Proverbs 12:11). But this general rule is not absolute. Drought may strike your farm; thieves may steal what you’ve earned; disability may end your earning power. All that is part of the curse that sin brought into the world. But God, in his mercy, wills that the work of the able-bodied supply the needs of the helpless, especially in hard times. 

Three passages of Scripture make this plain. In 1 Timothy 5:8 Paul speaks to children and grandchildren regarding the aged widows: “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” In Acts 20:35 Paul refers to his own manual labor and then says, “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ” Then in Ephesians 4:28 Paul doesn’t settle for saying, “Don’t steal, work!” He says, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” You can steal to have. Or you can work to have. Or you can work to have to give. When the third option comes from joy in God’s goodness, it makes him look great in the world.

6. We make much of Christ in our secular work by treating the web of relationships it creates as a gift of God to be loved by sharing the Gospel and by practical deeds of help.

I put this last not because it is least important but because some who put it first never say anything else about the importance of secular work. I have made this mistake myself. Personal evangelism is so important that it is easy to think of it as the only important thing in life. But we have seen that the Bible puts a lot of emphasis on adorning the Gospel, not merely saying the Gospel. But now I want to say that speaking the good news of Christ is part of why God put you in your job. He has woven you into the fabric of others’ lives so that you will tell them the Gospel. Without this, all our adorning behavior may lack the one thing that could make it life-giving.

The Christian’s calling includes making his or her mouth a fountain of life. “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life” (Proverbs 10:11). The link with eternal life is faith in Jesus Christ. No nice feelings about you as a good employee will save anyone. People must know the Gospel, which is the power of God unto eternal life (Romans 1:16). “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).

The early church was a “gospelling” band of people. They spoke the Gospel. When the believers were driven out of Jerusalem because of persecution after Stephen’s martyrdom, they “went about preaching the word”—literally, “evangelizing or gospelling the word” (Acts 8:4). The Gospel was on their lips in all their new relationships. Their self-identity was “proclaimers”: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). Freely they had received. Freely they gave.

They were moved by the words of Jesus concerning the value of a single human life: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life?” (Mark 8:36–37). They felt the weight of what C. S. Lewis spoke twenty centuries later when he pondered the relationship between winning one soul to Christ, on the one hand, and the value of his own vocation as an Oxford scholar of English Literature on the other hand:

The Christian will take literature a little less seriously than the cultured Pagan.… The unbeliever is always apt to make a kind of religion of his aesthetic experiences … and he commonly wishes to maintain his superiority to the great mass of mankind who turn to books for mere recreation. But the Christian knows from the outset that the salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world: and as for superiority, he knows that the vulgar since they include most of the poor probably include most of the superiors.

The point is not that Lewis quit his work and became a full-time evangelist, nor that you should. The point is that he saw the meaning of his work in proper perspective and knew that more than one thing gave it significance. To each of the five ways that we have mentioned above, Lewis would add that his vocation created a web of relationships in which he could speak the Gospel. Once when he was criticized for oversimplifying the Gospel, he responded to his critic:

[He] would be a more helpful critic if he advised a cure as well as asserting many diseases. How does he himself do such work? What methods, and with what success, does he employ when he is trying to convert the great mass of storekeepers, lawyers, realtors, morticians, policemen and artisans who surround him in his own city?

Perhaps one other thing should be mentioned in regard to the relationships created by where we live and work. For many of you the move toward missions and deeds of mercy will not be a move away from your work but with your work to another, more needy, less-reached part of the world. Christians should seriously ask not only what their vocation is, but where it should be lived out. We should not assume that teachers and carpenters and computer programmers and managers and CPAs and doctors and pilots should do their work in America. That very vocation may be better used in a country that is otherwise hard to get into, or in a place where poverty makes access to the Gospel difficult. In this way the web of relationships created by our work is not only strategic but intentional.

Conclusion

In conclusion, secular work is not a waste when we make much of Christ from 8 to 5. God’s will in this age is that his people be scattered like salt and light in all legitimate vocations. His aim is to be known, because knowing him is life and joy. He does not call us out of the world. He does not remove the need to work. He does not destroy society and culture. Through his scattered saints he spreads a passion for his supremacy in all things for the joy of all peoples. If you work like the world, you will waste your life, no matter how rich you get. But if your work creates a web of redemptive relationships and becomes an adornment for the Gospel of the glory of Christ, your satisfaction will last forever and God will be exalted in your joy.[1]

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

Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage Breaker”, "Freedom in Christ" series of Discipleship Classes via the mt4christ247 podcast!

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Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship

[1] John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 150–154.

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