Importance of Glancing Back To
Move Forward - Purity 821
Purity 821 08/27/2022 Purity 821 Podcast
Good morning,
Today’s photo of the setting sun sinking into a
cloud near the lighthouse on Lake Ontario comes to us from Celestial Blue
Photography as I decided to do a quantum leap backwards in time and discovered
this awesome scene in my phone’s photo archive that they must have shared on social
media back on July 31, 2021.
To the best of my knowledge, I didn’t share this
sight last year, and am glad I decided to intentionally look back a year ago to
see if there were any hidden gems in the photo archive that I didn’t share and
discovered this one and I thought this sunset photo was a good one to visually
represent the sun setting on my summer vacation as we have made it to the
weekend and I actually have to work to day as a pizza delivery guy at the
restaurant my wife manages!
Excuse me? Pizza delivery guy? Manages a restaurant?
Your wife?! Yup these things are all true this weeked but absolutely none of
these little facts were true a year ago! In going back a year on my phone the
sheer magnitude of what has transpired over the last year has really come into
focus. The bottom line: God is so good!
This trip down memory lane started as I decided to
mow the lawn at “my house down by The River” and to burn some brush that I had
cleared and left from the last time I decided to light up the "burning barrel.
Whenever I do work on my property and look over the grounds and see the river
rolling by just across the highway, I am always reminded of just how good God
was to bring me to the little white house that provided a safe haven for my
children and I from my former life and the madness of 2020.
So I wasn’t surprised when I was overwhelmed by that
strange mixture of joy, sadness, triumph, and gratitude that the reflection on
my traumatic journey from married man to single dad in which I lost so much of
what I had and who I was. But the Lord
was with me and as I marveled and wept over the hard road travelled and the
freedom and victories won, I couldn’t help but acknowledge my God and say: “We
did Lord, We did it!”
So that happens, your survived traumas will spill
out from time to time, but honestly in my case there is a lot less lamenting
about the past as there is glorying in having fought for my new life and being
able to share the experience with the Lord as I did what I could and He was
there to keep me company and to work a wonder or two along the way.
But guess what! The wonders haven’t stopped! This
morning’s little trip back in my photo archive has shown me that. In the last year, Tammylyn went from being a
student in my discipleship classes, to my friend, to my girlfriend, to my fiancé,
to my wife. And in that times she has
moved from one job, to another, to this latest adventure in restaurant
management and I have decided to support her and to be with her as we both work
together.
Beyond that I saw in my photos of my setting up my
laptop at my previous church to do my first Freedom in Christ class last September
at my local church, and now I facilitate the Freedom in Christ Course for
Freedom in Christ ministries, nationwide, via Zoom!
In this same year, the Cincotti’s and I have taken our
Bible Study podcast to video that I share on the MT4Christ247 YouTube
Channel.
These things, and others, have all happened over the
last year and while I think that is all pretty amazing, I can tell you that things
like these things have been happening ever
since I made Jesus my Lord and Savior and I decided to try to live my
life as a disciple of Christ, a follower of Jesus.
This is what happens when you surrender to the Lordship
of Christ! Things happen! Things change! Transformation happens! When you walk in
the Spirit, the Holy Spirit will guide you and change your life by showing you
who you are in Christ and by showing you the meaning and purpose of your
life.
So I have to ask? Where were you a year ago? Why don’t you take a look back in your photo
archive and see what the Lord has moved you through in the last year to gauge
whether you are still at the same place or if you have come to something
new?
The mere fact that we live should be
celebrated. Every year there are more
and more people that are taken into eternity, but we remain. So even if you
haven’t had big changes in your life, you can be grateful that the Lord has
protected you and guided you to this place today. There is always something to be thankful for,
and we are commanded to be thankful, when we walk with the Lord.
So keep walking and talking with God. He has a
meaning and a purpose for your life that He wants to discover. And even if we look
back and see that we may have lost somethings along the way or if we have
stepped off the path and been distracted from what we want to accomplish and
failed to make the progress that we would have liked to make, let me encourage
you: the Lord is with us and our journey isn’t over yet!
So whether the last year was a whirlwind of success
or a traumatic walk through loss, or was something in between, rejoice because
you and the Lord did it. You either thrived or survived, but either way: you
and the Lord did it.
So enjoy this last weekend in August to celebrate
the summer and all that the Lord has brought you through. A new season is
coming and brother and sister, I for one can’t wait to see what the Lord has in
store for us next.
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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:
Romans 1:16 (NLT2)
16 For I am not ashamed of
this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone
who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile.
Today’s verse reminds us not to be ashamed of the Good News about
Christ because it is the power of God at work in our lives to save all who
believe.
Today’s verse in our resource under the heading “When you need the
power of God to make a lasting change…” and I couldn’t agree more at the
implications of sharing Romans 1:16 for those who seek God’s power to change
because it details the first step to make a change that will literally last forever!
The Good News of Christ has the power of God at work, to do what? To
save! And the power of the Good News of Christ begins and continues in our
lives when we believe.
It is because of grace and through faith in Jesus Christ are we
saved from the wrth of God and are adopted into God’s kingdom. And it is
through faith that we can see God’s power go to work in our lives.
When we believe, we will:
· Talk to God in
prayer to make our requests known and to listen for guidance
· Read His word to know
Him and His will for us and to have our minds renewed
· Work to fix the
problems in our lives according to who we are in Christ
· Seek to help others
and to walk into the good works that God has prepared for us.
So yes, the power of God at work in our
lives begins when we believe and make Christ our Lord and Savior but the power
of God in our lives doesn’t stop there! God’s grace, His divine favor, is with
us from here to eternity and it will bless us as we faithfully follow the Lord’s
will for our lives.
So don’t be ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ! Share it with others because the power of God will be experienced in your
life when you believe and seek His purposes for your life.
______________________________________________________________________
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.
The Powers Seek to Hinder the Mission of the
Church
The
proclamation of the gospel consumed the apostle Paul in his desire to work
toward the intensive growth of the church through conversions. For Paul
conversion was directly related to the kingdom of Satan and the powers of
darkness. He described conversion as God’s rescue act of plucking the
individual out of slavery from the dominion of Satan and installing him or her
as a member into the kingdom of Christ (Col 1:13). Evangelism, with the goal of
conversion, represents a frontal assault on Satan’s kingdom.
Just as Satan
thundered with fury when the seventy engaged in their mission during the
ministry of Jesus, Satan worked mightily against Paul and the early church in
their evangelistic efforts. This is perfectly understandable. The kingdom of
Satan decreases in direct proportion to the increase of the kingdom of God.
Centuries after the death of Paul, the church continues to engage in this
proclamational activity. So also Satan continues to rage and work with all his
ability and schemes to thwart the mission of the church. As we saw in the
previous section, Satan successfully hinders the mission when he discredits the
church in the eyes of the nonbelieving public. Who wants to associate with
hypocrites, swindlers and the immoral?
Satan’s multifaceted
ways of harming the outreach of the church are innumerable. What needs to be
stressed is his opposition against evangelism. The church today must recognize
that it will face powerful demonic opposition whenever it mobilizes to make
known the good news of Jesus Christ to its community. It is therefore
imperative that the church responds to its evangelistic task through
appropriate spiritual preparation and dependence upon the power of God.[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
on Google Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartradio, and
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), 192–193.
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