Instant Liberation in Two Words: “I Quit!” -
Purity 824
Purity 824 08/31/2022 Purity 824 Podcast
Good morning,
Today’s photo a of a the “hump” of a “rainbow in the
hollers” comes from a friend who called West Liberty Kentucky home for a spell
and shared this photo back on June 3, 2021.
But moss doesn’t grow on a rolling stone and the holler’s appeal didn’t
last long and instead of staying put, our friend jettisoned his home in the
holler and took to beaches of Florida for a spell and now has set his stakes in
a new home in southwest North Carolina!
But that doesn’t mean he is done traveling because I just saw him share
scenes from somewhere in Georgia just the other day that may be featured in a
future post.
Well, It’s hump day again, and as we seek to
surmount the midpoint of another work week to move on into Labor Day weekend, I
think we should all rejoice over the freedom that the Lord gives us to change
our situations and the fact that He gives us our self-worth that is not dependent
on where we are or what we are doing. Our changing circumstances don’t change
who we are in Christ.
In life we make our best decisions with the
information we have at the time. We may
think a home in the hollers, a beach in Florida, or a place somewhere else may
satisfy us at the time, only to discover that we want to try something else. Moving can be an ordeal but I for one can
attest to the sheer joy that comes from leaving your past behind and finding
peace in a new home.
Likewise professionally, we can decide to step out
and try something new with the hopes of forging a prosperous future only to discover
that the deal that seemed too good to be true was too good to be true and that
the offers and promises that were made before we committed ourselves quickly
changed almost as soon as we did.
In a teaching on Jesus vs The Culture, Dr. Frank Turek
asked if it was ethical for a business to change the conditions of someone’s
employment after they were hired after they had committed themselves and turned
down other offers. The people gathered for his class unanimously agreed that it
was unethical to do that.
But Turek’s question shows that things like this
happen in the world of business, to lure people into filling a job unscrupulous
employers will make promises that they have no intention of keeping and will eventually
change the rules of the game after they hire someone and figure they now “own
them”.
Unfortunately, many people face this type of treatment
and feel that they have no recourse but to stay because they need the money or
the benefits or are told that the negative circumstances are only
temporary.
However, the Lord has given us free will and if we
walk with Him we can be assured that He will be with us whether we decide to
endure in our “raw deal” or if we choose
to utter the two word phrase that leads to instant liberation: I quit!
I think we all know people who have suffered in
negative work circumstances at some point in their work histories and we listen
to their complaints and laments with compassion but are puzzled at why they
continue to stay. Don’t they know they
can quit?
There is no shame in quitting, regardless of reasons,
but if we were lied to or if we are being abused or micromanaged, we have the
right to set ourselves free.
Unfortunately, this issue is close to home for me
because my wife TammyLyn recently took a chance at a new career only to
discover that her employers were dishonest about their expectations of her work
hours and the level of authority she would have as the general manager of their restaurant.
They expected her to turn Hell’s kitchen into heaven
but didn’t give her the power to do it as they almost immediately undermined
her authority, arbitrarily changed policies, gave preferential treatment to
certain employees, allowed a hostile work environment to fester, made insulting
abusive personal comments to employees, allowed rank insubordination to go
without consequence, and tried to make her personally responsible for each and
every aspect of the business, even when she wasn’t there!
My wife was the general manager for less than a
month and last night I fully supported her decision to resign immediately.
I, of course, sought to support my wife in her new
venture by becoming a delivery driver for the restaurant. I figured if she was
there that was where I wanted to be. But
she isn’t there anymore, so I quit too!
No matter how bad things get in life we have the
option of quitting. He have the option of leaving. If we have been lied to, or abused, or disrespected
and hurt, the Lord doesn’t necessarily
want us to stay in that.
Christ came to give us life and life more abundantly
and if people are making our lives hell on earth we can shake the dust off our
feet and leave.
Frank Turek’s point in asking that question about a
business changing the terms of a contract after someone was hired was to ask about
the changes in personal relationships: in marriages. That if someone promises to love, honor and
obey someone for life and abuses the promises of the relationship, and the
abuse continues or the commitment is betrayed, we can try to work on the
problems with counseling but if the other party refuses to repent, we can
leave. Ask me how I know.
When we decide to follow the Lord with our lives, we
make the decision to live in righteousness and the world may not always like
that. People will hate us for it or they
may see our Christian character as something they can use for their own
purposes.
While we are to love our enemies and to endure through
suffering at times, we are not expected to propagate or allow someone else’s
sin to continue unchecked or without consequence. If you lie to me or are sinning against me, I
can forgive you, but it doesn’t mean I have to stay in relationship with
you.
So if that’s you, quit. Walk away. Forgive them for they know not what they do,
but shake the dust off your feet and surrender them to the Lord, as He says you
are worthy of love, dignity, and respect, and no matter what the Lord will be
with you where ever you go.
So keep walking and talking with God. When we trust the wrong people or suffer
abuse, He will help us to recover and to find a new place where we will be
provided for and where we can find our purpose in Him.
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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:
Jeremiah 29:12-13 (NKJV)
12 Then you will call upon Me
and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
13 And you will seek Me and
find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.
Today’s verses encourage us to call upon the Lord, to pray, and to
seek the Lord with the assurance that He will hear us and we will find
Him.
In life we can learn from our mistakes. When things go south we
can really beat ourselves up for the mistakes we make. But the Lord is with us and the book of
Jerimiah is a rough portion of scripture in which the prophet delivers searing
messages to the nation of Israel about impending judgement that will come
because of their disobedience. But even
in this book of the Bible where there is so much “bad news” , the Lord reminds the faithful that even in
their struggles that He is still with them and that His strength and guidance
can still be found when they call upon Him, pray to Him and seek Him.
So maybe things have gone wrong.
Things didn’t work out the way we hoped.
So what do we do now that our dreams have gone up in smoke?
We do what we always to as followers of Christ. Just like Jesus, we go to the Father, We pray
and we gather strength and wisdom from Him, knowing that He is the one who
defines us and He is the one who determines our worth. No matter what we do or how we may fail or
suffer, God has accepted us as His children because of our faith in Jesus and
He is with us.
So call on the Lord, pray to Him, and seek your will for your
life. He hears you and He will help you to find Him when you search for Him
with all your heart.
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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 Clinton E. Arnold’s
“Powers of Darkness”
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage all to purchase Clinton Arnold’s books for your own
private study and to support his work. This resource is available on
many websites for less than $20.00.
Reasserting the Pauline Emphasis
I
am thus hesitant to use the Pauline references to the “principalities and
powers” as the fundamental basis for developing a theology of society. On the
one hand, a different foundation to social ethics is needed than that which is
provided by those who take a structural interpretation of the powers. On the
other hand, I believe it is essential to take the principalities and powers
into careful consideration when discussing social evil. Robert Webber is
correct when he notes, “A theology of society needs to deal with the problem of
the demonic.”
There is no doubt
Paul envisioned the work of evil spirits to extend beyond their hostile
influence on individuals and the church. In Paul’s letters, however, the
emphasis is clearly on their malevolent activity in preventing people from
becoming Christians and hindering their growth in Christian virtue. The major
issue of concern for Paul, therefore, is not so much the relevance of the
powers with regard to social justice, but their implications on salvation
history and Christian behavior.
In Paul’s eyes the
powers unleash their greatest hostility when they hinder the proclamation of
the gospel. They use the flesh and, indeed, the structures of the world to
blind people from discovering the truth about God’s redemptive work in the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Paul’s concept of
ministry included no injunction for Christians to work toward reforming the
social or political order. As E. Earle Ellis explains it, “As a reality of the
resurrection age Christian ministry has for Paul an evangelical,
Christ-imparting relationship to the community of the dying.” The proclamation
of the gospel takes on decisive importance because it has other-worldly,
eternal implications. Those who affirm faith in Christ are rescued from the
deadly clutches of Satan’s kingdom and delivered from the community of Adam,
which is moving toward its death.
This consideration
does not mean that Christians are released from any obligation to society at
large. Second to Jesus’ command to love God with full devotion is his command
to love our neighbors. Paul reiterated this command when he called Christians
to love their neighbors (Rom 13:8–10) and to do good to all people (Gal 6:10).
The Influence of
the Powers on the World
The
question we now ask is specifically how do the powers influence the world
system with its manifold structures? I suggest two ways of describing the evil
work of the powers on the social order.
First, it is
essential to return to Paul’s emphasis on the direct work of the powers in the
lives of individuals. According to Paul, spiritual warfare involves direct
demonic enticement to individuals to violate God’s standards of holiness and
act in ways contrary to his revealed will. Extrapolating from this explicit principle
of operation to a larger scale, we must remember that people control
governments, corporations, media and various other structures of our existence.
If the powers of darkness can gain significant influence over the lives of key
people, through them they can create oppressive dictatorships, evil drug rings,
exploitative multinational corporations and all kinds of horrific, destructive
mechanisms bent on destruction and terror.
The powers are not
merely “up there” in the heavens waging war among themselves. They are here,
very close to us, trying to influence our affections and our decisions.
Paul’s Jewish
predecessors and contemporaries thought in these terms. For example, the
first-century A.D. section of a Jewish document, entitled Ascension of Isaiah,
reflects on why one of the kings of Judah was able to lead the whole city into
apostasy:
And
Manasseh abandoned the service of the Lord of his father [Hezekiah], and he
served Satan and his angels, and his powers.… And he rejoiced over Jerusalem
because of Manasseh, and he strengthened him in causing apostasy, and in the
iniquity which was disseminated in Jerusalem. And sorcery and magic, augury and
divination, fornication and adultery, and the persecution of the righteous
increased through Manasseh. (Ascension of
Isaiah 2:2–5)
In
this text it is clear that the powers of darkness are viewed as independent
agents who worked directly on the leader of a country to create a regime of
terror and evil. Many similar references could be cited, but this is adequate
to illustrate the simple concept of an evil spirit working through an
individual who wields significant civil authority. The same principle could be
applied to many different spheres and social/political structures.
In the twentieth
century we have witnessed the extensive repression and exploitation that
corrupt rulers can wield over millions of people. Mention the names of Adolf
Hitler, Nicolae Ceausescu, Idi Amin, Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein, and one
easily sees images of untold atrocities. Certainly, Satan and his forces make
people of such power the objects of particular attack because of their
political authority. Could it be more than coincidental that reports of these
leaders’ involvement in the occult so often surface after they have fallen from
power? Certainly, Satan has only to exploit the desires of their depraved
natures to bring about his destructive aims. More direct Satanic influence,
however, can sometimes be observed.
Second, I suggest
that Paul’s concepts of “world” (kosmos)
and “this age” (aiōn) correspond most
closely with what many modern interpreters describe as structural evil. Paul
described unredeemed humanity as trapped in a pattern of transgression and sin
against God because “the age (aiōn)
of this world (kosmos)” so heavily
influences them (Eph 2:2). Becoming a Christian involves being crucified to the
world (Gal 6:14) and being rescued from the present evil age (Gal 1:4). When
Paul spoke of “the world” in a moral sense, he was thinking of the totality of
people, social systems, values and traditions in terms of its opposition to God
and his redemptive purposes. The structures of our existence, to a large
extent, represent the composite result of human ideas, affections and activity.
Both people and their ideas can have an evil bent. Yet they are also capable of
redemption and purification. In his insightful book on social ethics Stephen
Mott draws the correct distinction between the powers and the world. He notes,
“The kosmos, a more pervasive theme in the New Testament than the powers,
represents the social structuring of evil without necessitating recourse to the
symbolism of supernatural personages.”28 He draws attention to the
fact that the principle of sin has a serious impact on our social order: “If
sin is as pervasive as we say that it is, … then it will affect not only our
personal motivations, decisions, and acts, but also our social life. It will
powerfully influence our customs, traditions, thinking, and institutions. It
will pervert our kosmos.”
Not only does sin have
a degenerative effect on the social order, but so also do the powers of
darkness. The powers exert their influence to corrupt the various social orders
of the world as a further means of drawing humanity away from God. Working
through people, the powers can pollute a society’s traditions and values. They
can influence authors, television producers, political thinkers and analysts,
pastors, university professors, composers, artists, screenplay writers,
economic policy makers, architects of defense strategies and journalists.
Through a unified networking influence, it is not difficult to imagine how the
powers can influence the direction of an entire culture. In one decade
something may be considered morally outrageous and in the next morally
acceptable through a changed public opinion.
The powers
themselves, however, are not the structures. Although the powers do their best
to influence the structures, evil still resides in the structures only insofar
as the people involved are evil. Just as a glove has no ability on its own to
carry out a task, ideologies, economic systems and the like have no power apart
from the people who subscribe to them and enforce them. A tradition ceases to
be a tradition when people no longer pass it on.
It is with good
reason that Paul calls Satan “the god of this age (aiōn)” who “has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they
cannot see the light of the gospel” (2 Cor 4:4). We could legitimately say
“Satan is the god of many of the structures that order our existence.” Through
coordinating the activity of his innumerable powers of darkness, Satan attempts
to permeate every aspect of life in his indefatigable attempts to oppose God
and his kingdom. The work of the evil one moves far beyond the simple notion of
tempting an individual to sin. Satan appears to have a well-organized strategy.
He aims strongly at the people with power and influence. The moral lapse of one
pastor can send one church reeling. Inciting the moral lapse of numerous
prominent ministers devastates Christians all over the country and makes
society perceive the fragrant aroma of the gospel as a stench to be avoided.
The powers do indeed
influence society and its institutions. We must be careful not to assume,
however, that the demonic has polluted all institutions, social structures,
traditions and philosophies. As Stephen Mott points out, there is a battle for
the control of God’s creation. Institutions are integral to human life.
“Institutions function both to enslave and to liberate human existence. The
powers are always present along with enslavement and death in small or large
degree; but their real existence is behind the scenes in a system of hostile
values vying for control of the life of the world.”
According to Paul,
God calls Christians to be rescuing agents. The evil-infected institutions of
this present age have trapped people, who are blinded from seeing Christ’s
redeeming love. Since the institutions of this world (kosmos) and the structures of the present age (aiōn) are destined to perish, our highest priority is to help
people find ultimate freedom from the deadly constraints and terror of the
present age and experience the untold blessings of the age to come, and to be
liberated from the world and its hellish prince and be inundated with the love,
joy and peace of God’s kingdom.
By no means is this
an encouragement for Christians to escape completely from the present world and
withdraw from involvement in the social order and the structures of our
existence. Jesus called us to be salt and light, to show the same loving
compassion for our neighbors that led him to lay down his life for the lost.
God demands that Christians engage in social action based on their love for
humanity, their call to be salt and light, and their responsibility to be
careful stewards of the creation.
Christians still live
in the present evil age—in fact, they live in two ages. The kingdom of God and
the blessings of the age to come have broken into the present age in the Lord
Jesus Christ. The Spirit and the gifts, the grace of God and the power of the
age to come are bestowed on us through relationship with the Lord Jesus. We are
called to carry on the redemptive mission that Christ called us to and that
Paul modelled for us by his own life and ministry. We are called to demonstrate
Christ’s love.[1]
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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, You can also find it on Apple podcasts
(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154). The mt4christ247 podcast is also available
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Audible.com.
These teachings are also available on the
MT4Christ247 You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTxjSNstREpuGWuL0bF3U7w/featured
Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and
to be encouraged.
My wife, TammyLyn, also offers Christian
encouragement via her Facebook Group: Ask, Seek, Knock (https://www.facebook.com/groups/529047851449098 ) and her podcast Ask, Seek, and Knock on
Podbean (https://feed.podbean.com/tammalyn78/feed.xml)
Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship
[1]
Clinton E. Arnold, Powers of Darkness:
Principalities & Powers in Paul’s Letters (Downers Grove,
IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 1992), 201–205.
