Do you want to
be made well? - Choosing
the Believe the Truth - Purity 841
Purity 841 09/20/2022 Purity 841 Podcast
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a large heron standing in the surf
of the Gulf of Mexico comes to us from the Church at the Well in Cullman Alabama
who recently organized a Ladies Beach Trip and shared over 80 photos of their
adventures to Orange Beach.
How do I know the Church at the Well in Cullman
Alabama being a Yankee amongst the “frozen chosen” in upstate New York?
Well last fall I participated in a training
conference that Freedom in Christ Ministries put on in Latham where the conference
attendees were introduced to Pastor Mike and Chare’ Rester who gave their
testimony of how Chare’ had suffered from bizarre medical symptoms and seizures
that defied medical explanation and how she was healed after going through the
Steps to Freedom in Christ.
I will always remember Pastor Mike’s emphatic and passionate
plea to the conference attendees to complete their training as Community
Freedom Ministry Associates and to help others to receive healing and resolution
to spiritual conflicts and to let the world know of the reality of the spiritual
forces of darkness that can oppress even those in the body of Christ. Pastor Mike had seen the enemy face to face and
it was clear that he he would never forget how his family suffered because of a
supernatural enemy that seeks to destroy us. His voice rang out through the
conference room as he concluded his statements by saying: “There are demons and
we have to fight the enemy!”
While I enjoy this morning’s photo I reminded that
as beautiful as this world can be at times, there is an unseen enemy that seeks
to deceive, tempt, condemn, and accuse us and to lead mankind away from the
truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God.
Tonight I host the third session of the Men’s
Freedom in Christ Discipleship Course that I facilitate on Zoom for Freedom in
Christ Ministries and I have already received reports from one of the group
that he believes that he is under spiritual attack with negative thought and
temptations that have been on the increase since he started the course.
Tonight’s lesson is on Choosing to believe the Truth
and in my short stint in this latest ministry role I know this is the week that
the enemy like to afflict people as my past two sessions had participants
report difficulties in their spiritual walk or who ended up having to miss the
session unexpectantly.
The enemy doesn’t want people to know who they are
in Christ and that our freedom and victory as Christians is not the product of
some magical blessing as much as it is driven by our choice to believe what God’s
word says, to live according to it, and to continue to walk in faith and in the
power of the Holy Spirit.
Tonight’s lesson reveals that we have a role to play
in our relationship with God and that the reception of our healing and victory comes
from making the decision to believe and to follow the Lord.
Unfortunately, some Christians still believe the
fallacy that faith is some magical characteristic that God imparts to some and
not to others.
“I only wish I could have faith like “so & so”!”
You can! Choose to believe God’s word! Choose to
apply His wisdom to your life by changing the way you live to match up with His
ways! And keep choosing to do that!
If you don’t know what the Bible says: Read it. If you want a better prayer life, set time
aside and pray.
Our part is to seek the Lord and keep on seeking Him. And when we do that our faith grows as our
minds are renewed by His word and our lives are changed by the positive experiences we encounter when we
start walking in God’s ways.
So if you are one of those Christians that are
wishing for God to give you “great faith”, start walking towards Him by taking
action to know what His word says and apply it to your life.
The spiritual forces of darkness will attempt to
distract you with temptations in this world to stay away from the things of God
and they will condemn you that you aren’t good enough to “have faith”. But the truth is that you can choose to have
a deeper walk with God, you can overcome the things that keep you stuck, but
you have to choose it.
John 5:6 (NKJV) tells us about the
healing of a man that was unable to walk for 38 years. It says
6 When Jesus saw him lying
there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time,
He said to him, "Do you want to be made well?"
So do you want
to be made well? Christ asked the
question to make the man choose whether he would stay where he was or to rise
up and walk into a whole new life.
It’s the same
with us. Do you want to be well? If so,
you have to choose to believe the truth and keep walking and talking with God
until you see that the old has been made new and the further you go you’ll see
and experience the fact that you have been set free the moment you said “Yes”
to Christ and it was only a matter of choosing to get up and follow Him to know
it.
---------------------------------------
Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible
Promise Book for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verse is:
Hosea 14:9 (NKJV)
9 Who is wise? Let him understand these things. Who
is prudent? Let him know them. For the ways of the LORD
are right; The righteous walk in them,
But transgressors stumble in them.
Today’s Bible verse speaks of the
fact the Lord’s ways are right and that the righteous walk in them because they
are wise and prudent.
We all want to be wise right? And today’s verse indicates that it is wisdom
to walk in the ways of the Lord. The verse assures us that God’s way is the
right way and thus if we walk in them we will be righteous.
But transgressors, those who ignore
God’s ways and choose their own wordly ways are guaranteed to stumble through
life. I know I got tired of falling down and stumbling over
the negative consequences of doing things my way. So the Lord shared His wisdom and
understanding with me and I realized that His word was true and if I walked in
His ways I wouldn’t stumble like I used to.
Today’s verse encourages us to follow
the Lord’s ways and live a life that is right.
And I encourage you to listen and follow the Lord’s lead into a
righteous life that is wise and prudent.
______________________________________________________________________
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 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
“Discipleship”, also known as “The Cost of Discipleship”
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage all to purchase Bonhoeffer’s books for your own
private study and to support his work. This resource is available on
many websites for less than $20.00.
Chapter Two
The
Call to Discipleship - Continued
At this point let us
now take a look at Christian pastoral care. It is particularly important for
pastors giving care to speak from knowledge of both of these statements. They
need to know that sorrow over a lack of faith repeatedly comes from disobedience,
which may be intentional or even no longer noticed, and that such sorrow all
too often corresponds to the comfort of cheap grace. But the disobedience
remains unbroken, and words of grace become a consolation which the disobedient
grant to themselves and a forgiveness of sins they accord themselves. But for
such people, the Christian message becomes empty; they no longer hear it. Even
though they forgive themselves a thousand times over, they are incapable of
believing in true forgiveness, because in truth, it has not been granted them.
Unbelief feeds on cheap grace, because it clings to disobedience. This is a
common situation in today’s pastoral care. What then happens is that people get
so stubborn in their disobedience through their self-granted forgiveness that
they claim they can no longer discern what is good and what is God’s command.
They claim it is ambiguous and permits various interpretations. At first they
know clearly that they were disobedient, but their knowledge is gradually
dimmed until they become unapproachable. Then the disobedient have entangled
themselves so badly that they simply are no longer able to hear the word. Then they can no longer have faith.
Something like the following conversation will take place between the obstinate
disbeliever and the pastor: “I can believe no longer.”—“Listen to the Word, it
is being proclaimed to you!”—“I hear it, but it doesn’t say anything to me. It
seems empty to me; it is beyond me.”—“You don’t want to hear.”—“Yes, I do.”
With that, they reach the point where most pastoral conversations break off,
because the pastors do not know what is going on. They only know the one
statement: only the believer obeys. With this statement, they are no longer
able to help the obstinate unbeliever, who does not and cannot have this kind
of faith. Pastors think they are standing here before an ultimate puzzle, that
God gives faith to some and denies it to others. With this one statement, they
surrender their efforts. The obstinate persons remain alone and continue to bewail
their predicament. But this is the turning point in the conversation. The
change is a complete one. There is no longer any sense in arguing; the
questions and worries of the other person are no longer taken so seriously.
Instead the person hiding behind them is taken all the more seriously. The
pastor breaks through the walls such a person has built with the statement,
“Only the obedient have faith.” So the conversation is interrupted, and the
pastor’s next sentence is, “You are disobedient; you refuse to obey Christ; you
desire to keep a piece of autonomy for yourself. You cannot hear Christ,
because you are disobedient; you cannot believe in grace, because you do not
want to obey. You have hardened some corner of your heart against Christ’s
call. Your trouble is your sin.” At this point Christ reappears on the scene;
he attacks the devil in the other person, who until then had been hiding behind
cheap grace. At that point everything depends on the pastor having both
statements ready: only the obedient believe, and only the believer obeys. In
the name of Jesus, the pastor must call the other to obedience, to a deed, to a
first step. Leave what binds you and follow him! At that moment everything
depends on that step. The position taken by the disobedient person must be
broken through, for in it Christ can no longer be heard. Fugitives must leave
the hiding places they built for themselves. Only when they get out of them can
they again see, hear, and believe freely. Indeed, as far as Christ is concerned,
doing the deed itself gains nothing; it remains a dead work. But in spite of
that, Peter has to step out onto the rolling sea, so that he can believe.
In short, the
situation is that people have poisoned themselves with cheap grace by the
statement that only the believer obeys. They remain disobedient and console
themselves with a forgiveness that they grant themselves, and in doing so, they
close themselves off from the word of God. The fortress walls around them
cannot be broken through, so long as all they hear is the statement they are
hiding behind being repeated. A change has to come about by calling people to
obedience: only the obedient have faith!
Will people thus be
led down the fatal path of belief in their own works? No, they will learn
instead that their faith is not faith; they will be liberated from their
entanglement with themselves. They have to get out in the fresh air of a
decision. In that way Jesus’ call to faith and discipleship is made audible
anew.[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, You can also find it on Apple podcasts
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Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship
[1]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship,
ed. Martin Kuske et al., trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, vol. 4,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 67–69.
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