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Monday, October 3, 2022

Praying for Sinners, Pleading for Saints - Purity 852


 

Praying for Sinners, Pleading for Saints - Purity 852

Purity 852 10/04/2022 Purity 852 Podcast

Good morning,

Today’s photo of Blues Skies and the beginnings of the changing colors of Autumn surrounding an outcropping of a rock covered by the waters of a flowing stream comes to us from a friend who spent the first day of October visiting “The Flume Gorge, at Franconia Notch State Park” in New Hampshire.  Our friend shared a bunch of photos during their visit, so we may be revisiting this State Park again as there were other scenes worth sharing, but I liked this one for its simple beauty that testifies to the fact that Fall has descended upon us and the evidence will increase as the days pass.   

And that’s life isn’t it? We get small indications of the future in the present but depending on our ability to live apart from the distractions of this world we may or may not see the signs of the times and only in hindsight can declare that we “knew” what was coming.   

Well it’s Monday, again and even though it is back to work and back to reality, I am rejoicing today because the work we may complain about is something that some of us are not blessed with or able to perform at all.  What we may complain about may be something that someone else would relish being able to do or is something that someone else’s family desperately needs.   

Some of the sick, disabled, infirmed, or aged would gladly trade places with us this morning if it meant that they had the strength and ability to do what we take for granted. 

Some of the unemployed would also trade places with us if it meant they would be able to change their financial circumstances and provide for the needs of their family.  

This subject hits close to home because since 2022 began my wife, TammyLyn, has gone through 4 jobs changes and even though she was willing and able to work and has even done odd jobs, part time work, and did independent work, all of her combined efforts were not enough to adequately provide for the unforeseen inflation and unexpected expenses that came her way in 2022. But throughout it all TammyLyn has not lost her hope and continued to do all she could to persevere and trusted the Lord to guide her path, and today she starts work at her fourth, and prayerfully last new job, this year.    

She has been faithful and God has been faithful to bless her with this new career opportunity and with her family and friends that have helped her along the way.   So thank God. It’s Monday and we all get to go to work!

In examining TammyLyn’s path, we could ask: Why God? But even with all the turmoil along the way, the final results seem to indicate that God has been working all of what TammyLyn has experienced together for good.  This final job and the stability that may provide seems like an answer to prayer, and it is,  even though the process of its fulfillment was not anything that we could have anticipated and certainly not anything we asked for!   

Which brings up the question of prayer and the mystery of how it works or how we should pray, or the thing that’s on my mind this morning, who we should pray for or what we should pray for.  

I have shared enough of my testimony on this blog and podcast to reveal that I did not always walk by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit. I was not always a born again Christian. And even after I put my faith in Jesus Christ, I didn’t repent of all my sins until the Holy Spirit convicted me and led me to repentance. The victory and freedom I have may have been given to me the moment I put my faith in Jesus, but it didn’t manifest in my experience until I made a decision to believe what God said about who I am in Christ and to live like it.    

At first, I rejoiced over my salvation and thought that God’s grace was truly amazing because there was simply no way I was going to change who I was in terms of my brokenness. I was a drunk. That’s who God saved and that’s what God was going to have to deal with.  Or so I thought. 

But as my heart grew to want to follow the Lord and be authentic in my faith, I increasingly was drawn to turn from my worldly ways and leave them behind for good. And God was faithful to give me the strength and wisdom to accomplish what I had considered impossible.  

But here’s the crux of my question this morning, I was a “carnal” Christian for something like 5 years, with little or no indication that I would repent of my fleshly ways.   If you knew what I was up to in the five years before I went into recovery, you may have even doubted if I was a Christian at all!  Although I went to church, served, and even got a an Associates degree in Biblical studies, I still had secret sins that I felt powerless to overcome.  

So, knowing all that, that I tried to live a Christian life, but was failing in major ways, would you have prayed for me if I asked for prayer?   

While I made a profession of faith in Christ, I still had sin in my life – some pretty blatant sins that are on the “do these and you go to hell list” in

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (NKJV) which says:
9  Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites,
10  nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

So knowing what the word of God says, would you have prayed for me, or anyone else, who does things on this list, if they asked you for prayer?  

I am part of the prayer team at my local church and yesterday our pastor started a series on prayer and at the end of the message he called on the congregation to come up to ask the prayer team and other members of the church leadership to pray for whatever needs they had.  

The prayer team is available to do this each week at our church but yesterday because the emphasis was on “invinting God into your circumstances” through prayer, we had easily double if not three or four times as many prayer requests than we normally do.  

The Holy Spirit was moving for sure and I enthusiastically followed His lead and prayed for several people and their various requests. One after another came up and on a couple of occasions, before I began to pray for their requests, I got the indication that the person standing before me had some pretty obvious sins in their life that needed repenting of, but they weren’t asking for prayer for that. 

So what do you do? Do you sermonize and tell the people that have come forth asking God for help in their lives to repent because you “just know” they are living in sin?  

What would have I said to my former self, if I asked for prayer?  

Well I don’t know if I get these things right, but in the moment,  I did not get an indication from the Holy Spirit that I was to do anything other than to minister to the people before me and to prayer for what they asked for to and encourage them to trust in and follow the Lord, and to leave the results up to God.  

In the moment, that’s what I did and I felt that my prayers and words of guidance and encouragement were what the Lord led me to say.

But afterwards…  you wonder should I have done that? Should I have remained silent about their sin?   

As far as scripture goes, we can easily make a case for judgment or mercy in this situation because the word of God contains lots of wisdom on both. 

Several verses indicate that repentance is something that comes from God, and remembering those, I decided to trust that God would draw them to repentance and I would seek to show love and understanding and come along side these “sinners” in prayer and continue to follow the Lord who would show them the way to go.  

Only God knows the hearts of men, and as a former “carnal” Christian, I know in my situation the only one who could have made me to want to repent of my sins is God.  I was a big rebel and only His authority, grace, and love could guide me to where I am today.  

So even though I have some conflicts in how I feel about “praying for sinners”, I know that I was once lost and it was through a lot of prayer that things changed. 

So I will pray for sinners, but if you ask for counsel I will undoubtedly confront you with the word of God and direct you to repent, as Nouthetic or Biblical counselors are instructed to do. 

But we all have to start somewhere, and the prayers of a righteous person are said to accomplish much, and so we trust the Lord to do what is right, good, and holy and to grant what is His will and will be done for the glory of His kingdom. 

So keep walking and talking with God, pray, and follow where He leads you knowing that nobody’s perfect but Jesus, but His path leads us to be more and more like Him. So keep walking and pray.

_____________________________________________

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 Five

Discipleship and the Individual – Continues

This breaking with the immediacy [Unmittelbarkeit] of the world is nothing other than recognizing Christ as the Son of God, the mediator. It is never an arbitrary act, in which a person loosens his or her ties to the world for the sake of some ideal, exchanging a lesser ideal for a greater one. That would again be enthusiasm, high-handedness, even a return immediacy to the world. Only the disciples’ recognition that the deed is done, namely, that Christ is the mediator, separates them from the world of people and things. Jesus’ call, to the extent that it is understood not as an ideal, but as the word of the mediator, brings about this accomplished break with the world in me. If it were only a matter of weighing ideals against each other, then by all means a balance should be sought, which then could turn to the advantage of a Christian ideal, but this should never be one-sided. From the point of view of idealism, or from the perspective of “responsibilities” of life, it would be inexcusable to radically debase the natural orders of life by confronting them with a Christian ideal of life. Instead, much would have to be said on behalf of the contrary evaluation—especially from the point of view of a Christian idealism, a Christian ethic of responsibility or ethic of conscience! But the issue here is not at all about ideals, values, responsibilities. Instead, it is about accomplished facts and recognizing them, and therefore about the person of the mediator himself, who has come to stand between us and the world. That is why there must be a break with the immediacies of life; that is why a person called must become an individual before the mediator.[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), 94.

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