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Friday, September 23, 2022

Overwhelmed - Purity 844




Overwhelmed - Purity 844  Purity 844 Podcast

Purity 844 09/23/2022  

Good morning,

Today’s video of the view from my home “down by The River” comes to us from yours truly and September 24, 2021, the day after TammyLyn Sequin agreed to be my girlfriend.  I don’t remember recording this but I find the fact that the perspective goes “sideways” is rather fitting and may have been a  prophetic indicator of the seismic shift that was happening in my life when TammyLyn and I decide to be more than friends.   

On this day, the 23rd of September, a year ago I realized, and the Holy Spirit may have woke me up to this fact, that the “there was no other” for me. TammyLyn was the faithful Christian woman of God that I had been praying for and despite the uncertainty of how our lives could come together as one, I asked her to marry her, via FB messenger, in a text.  

She said no! So I asked if she would be my girlfriend, via text, and she indicated I had to ask her in person.   So although FB messengers video conferencing feature was somewhat alien to me, I immediately sent her a video call and to my delight she answered and said yes to my request to be my “girlfriend”.  Two weeks later, we were engaged and a few months later on January 1st, 2022 we were married.  So today is the one year anniversary of our being a couple of being more than friends!

And what a year it has been! When I reflect on all the changes that have come to pass since last year I am overwhelmed.  Not only do I have the love of my life as my wife and a new extended family in the Seguins and those Pinter kids, I have a new church in Starpoint Church in Clifton Park, and it was after TammyLyn and I got together that the opportunity to teach the Freedom in Christ Course online nationwide, to men that span from, New York, to Florida, to California for Freedom in Christ ministries came about.  I even got a new car!

TammyLyn’s journey over the last year was just as eventful but I will leave that to her to share on her Ask Seek Knock Podcast, which she started in the last year.  

When I reflect on how we have both been blessed by the Lord with each other and everything that has happened since we got together it reminds me of the Big Daddy Weave Song “Overwhelmed”.  The Lyrics say”

“I see the work of Your Hands

Galaxies spin in a Heavenly dance oh God

All that You are is so overwhelming

 

I hear the sound of Your Voice

All at once it's a gentle and thundering noise oh God

All that You are is so overwhelming

 

I delight myself in You

Captivated by Your beauty

I'm overwhelmed, I'm overwhelmed by You

 

God, I run into Your arms

Unashamed because of mercy

I'm overwhelmed, I'm overwhelmed by You”

Today’s Friday guys, and if you are not overwhelmed by the goodness of God in your life let me encourage you to be “more than friends” with the Lord.  Let me encourage you to make a commitment to surrender to His will, to become a living member of His Church, to become the Bride of Christ.”  

If you are just “playing house with God” by limiting your relationship with Him by just visiting with Him at a church service for an hour a week, it is no surprise to me that your faith life may be a bit underwhelming.  

When Christ called you to place your faith in Him, He wants all of you. And unfortunately because of fear or the opinion of others, or ourselves, sometimes Christians hold back on fulfilling the “marriage vows” that come with being the Church, the Bride of Christ.  We may love and honor Jesus but we fail to obey His call to abide in Him and to be conformed to His image.   

Hey no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus right.  But let me encourage that while we thank Him today for another end of another work week, let’s consider “popping the question” and asking God about His will for our lives and choosing to follow where He leads, as a faithful bride follows her husband.

Since coming to faith in Christ and making the decision to follow Him with the way I live by repenting of my old worldly ways, my life has been transformed and I am continually overwhelmed by the goodness of God in the land of the living.  So as I celebrate the first year with the love of my life, let me encourage you to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all you mind, and with all your strength as you continuall walk and talk with 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:

Psalm 32:7 (NLT2)
7  For you are my hiding place; you protect me from trouble. You surround me with songs of victory.

Today’s Bible verse assures us that the Lord protects us from trouble and He surrounds us with songs of victory.  

Oh Lord, from today’s verse I remember the Iron Bell Song  - The God that Saves – That Chris Manchuck used to sing when I was teaching at my old church’s recovery ministry, Celebrate Freedom.  

The lyrics say: 

This soul once torn and beaten

Left without reason to move on

Then You reached down and brought me

Up from the valley of dry bones

 

You are the God that saves

You are the One that rescues me

You rescue me

You are the God that saves

You call me from the grave

You rescue me

 

Ransomed out of the wreckage

Pulled from the ashes of sin's hold

Hope is flowing through these veins

Life born from grace, grace alone

 

You are the God that saves

You are the One that rescues me

You rescue me

You are the God that saves

You call me from the grave

You rescue me

Oh, You rescue me, Lord!

You rescue me

 

I hear the song, I hear the song

Of victory ring over me

Yes I am overwhelmed today because of the God who saves. Because like the psalmist, I know He protects us and surrounds us with Songs of victory.

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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 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 Three

Simple Obedience

When Jesus demanded voluntary poverty of the rich young man, the young man knew that his only choices were obedience or disobedience. When Levi was called from tax collecting and Peter from his nets, there was no doubt that Jesus was serious about those calls. They were supposed to leave everything and follow him. When Peter was called to step out onto the stormy sea, he had to get up and risk taking the step. Only one thing was demanded in each of these cases. That was their entrusting themselves to the word of Jesus Christ, believing it to be a stronger foundation than all the securities of the world. The forces that wanted to get between the word of Jesus and obedience were just as great back then as they are today. Reason objected; Conscience, responsibility, piety, even the law and the principle of Scripture intervened to inhibit this most extreme, this lawless “enthusiasm.” Jesus’ call broke through all of this and mandated obedience. It was God’s own word. Simple obedience was required.

If Jesus Christ were to speak this way to one of us today through the Holy Scripture, then we would probably argue thus: Jesus is making a specific commandment; that’s true. But when Jesus commands, then I should know that he never demands legalistic obedience. Instead, he has only one expectation of me, namely, that I believe. My faith, however, is not tied to poverty or wealth or some such thing. On the contrary, in faith I can be both—rich and poor. The main concern is not whether or not I have any worldly goods, but that I should possess goods as if I did not possess them, and inwardly I should be free of them. I should not set my heart on my possessions. Thus, Jesus says, “Sell your possessions!” But what he intends is that it is not important if you actually do this literally, outwardly. You are free to keep your possessions, but have them as if you did not have them. Do not set your heart on your possessions. Our obedience to Jesus’ word would then consist in our rejecting simple obedience as legalistic obedience, in order to be obedient “in faith.” This is the difference between us and the rich young man. In his sadness, he is not able to calm himself by saying to himself, “In spite of Jesus’ word, I want to remain rich, but I will become inwardly free from my riches and comfort my inadequacy with the forgiveness of sins and be in communion with Jesus by faith.” Instead, he went away sadly[6] and, in rejecting obedience, lost his chance to have faith. The young man was sincere in going away. He parted from Jesus, and this sincerity surely had more promise than a false communion with Jesus based on disobedience. Apparently Jesus thought that the young man was unable to free himself inwardly from his wealth. Probably the young man, as a serious and ambitious person, had tried to do it himself a thousand times. The fact that at the decisive moment he was unable to obey the word of Jesus shows that he failed. The young man was sincere in parting from Jesus. By the way we argue, we distance ourselves fundamentally from a biblical hearer of Jesus’ word. If Jesus said: leave everything else behind and follow me, leave your profession, your family, your people, and your father’s house, then the biblical hearer knew that the only answer to this call is simple obedience, because the promise of community with Jesus is given to this obedience. But we would say: Jesus’ call is to be taken “absolutely seriously,” but true obedience to it consists of my staying in my profession and in my family and serving him there, in true inner freedom. Thus, Jesus would call: come out!—but we would understand that he actually meant: stay in!—of course, as one who has inwardly come out.[8] Or Jesus would say, do not worry; but we would understand: of course we should worry and work for our families and ourselves.[10] Anything else would be irresponsible. But inwardly we should be free of such worry. Jesus would say: if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. But we would understand: it is precisely in fighting, in striking back, that genuine fraternal love grows large. Jesus would say: strive first for the kingdom of God.[12] We would understand: of course, we should first strive for all sorts of other things. How else should we survive? What he really meant was that final inner willingness to invest everything for the kingdom of God. Everywhere it is the same—the deliberate avoidance of simple, literal obedience.[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

(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] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, ed. Martin Kuske et al., trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, vol. 4, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 77–79.


 

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