The
Path to the Light of Life - Purity 855
Purity 855
10/06/2022 Purity 855 Podcast
Good
morning,
Today’s photo
of the setting sun fading into the horizon resulting in Waite Road fading into
darkness comes to us from yours truly as I captured this scene during a late
afternoon walk back on September 24th.
Well, It’s
Thursday again and even though I have shifted the night of the Freedom in
Christ Course that I facilitate for Freedom in Christ Ministries to Tuesday nights,
some traditions die hard and I still like the idea of sharing pictures of
pathways on Thursdays to encourage my friends to be intentional about following
the Lord with the way they live their lives because I know it is the best
advice I can give them and because Thursdays were the night I had taught and
led the Christian Recovery Ministry, Celebrate Freedom a couple of years ago,
yeah 2020!, at Rock Solid Church in Hudson, NY.
Time
flies sure does fly as we live our lives and I can recall from my distant past of
my undergraduate college days that Thursdays were also considered the beginning
of the weekend, as Friday classes were avoided in general and if I did register
for one they suffered sporadic attendance as my lifestyle of debauchery in
college day led me to pursue things other than higher education. So I
guess it was having recovery ministry on Thursdays was a good choice as a substitute
activity to purge those tendencies to kick back and lose myself in my addictions.
The
process of recovery definitely was a hard road to walk at first but the more I sought
the Lord and believed the truth about who I am in Christ, the road to recovery
and repentance was a lot easier as I learned the threefold keys to victory and
overcoming.
The three
things we need to know intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and experientially
to overcome, to experience victory, and our freedom in Christ are:
1.
My sinful choices are not right or good for me. Our sinful choices violate God’s moral law
and the laws of common sense as our sins do us damage in our mind, body, soul,
and spirit. – Most of us know this but
unfortunately somehow the negative consequences of sin never seemed to be
enough to stop us from sinning for good.
2.
My new identity in Christ is not compatible with my old sinful,
selfish, and fleshly ways from my pre-Christ life where I was dead in
trespasses and sins. Also my new
identity, my new life in Christ, has actually given me the power to say no to
my sinful ways for good. The narrative that needs to happen when we consider
falling into sin is: “That’s not who I am anymore. I am a Christian. I follow
Jesus and I don’t do those things anymore. I walk in the light, not in the
darkness anymore.” Here we not only stand in our identity in Christ by
affirming our belief of what God has done for us, we also act on it, by
shunning sin, and thus verifying the truth, that we are indeed alive to God,
dead to sin, and new creations in Christ.
3.
My sin disrupts the harmony of my relationship with God
and because of what He has done for me, and who I am now in Christ, I don’t
want to do anything to get in the way of the peace and joy that I have with
God. My relationship with God is too precious to mess it up even for a second.
While I know I have been forgiven of all my sins, I have sinned enough in my
past and choose to obey the Lord to keep my communion with Him unsullied. I
love Him and I want to do what pleases Him.
This obviously seeks to foster our love for God and reflects the truth
that sometimes we will do things for our loved ones that we would never do for
ourselves.
You might
not find this three step recipe for overcoming anywhere else. The Lord knows
that it took me a long time of seeking Him and His righteousness to see the
different aspects of my victory. And it
is my prayer that you see that the three steps are more steps of faith than
works of our will.
I seek to
encourage people to keep walking and talking with God because I know that if
someone seeks God’s will for their life by studying His word and by applying
its wisdom in life, the Lord will empower them to repent and to not be complacent
about the sin in their lives.
Unfortunately,
many churches are so graceful and compassionate that they will console their
congregations about their sins rather than challenge them to overcome them. The
“just a sinner saved by grace” mentality keeps Christians in bondage to their
sins and in the negative mind states that result from the guilt and shame of
their moral failures and the demonic influences that gain a foothold in their
lives because of their failure to repent.
So
pervasive is this “compassionate care of failure and forgiveness” that many
Christians don’t take seriously the word of God that tells them that they have
been freed from sin. They disbelieve the
word of God. And while they will proclaim that Christ is the Lamb who overcomes
the sin of the world, somehow He has failed to overcome “their personal sins”. That the Christian faith may work for some, but it doesn’t work for
them. If they don’t think that victory
over the sins that besets them is possible why would they even try, besides
they have been forgiven… like the woman caught in adultery, Christ won’t condemn
them.
You will
actually hear that rationale from some Christians. But I always encourage them to read through
to the end to see that while the woman caught in adultery was given mercy that
was not all she received.
John
8:10-12 (NKJV)
10 When Jesus had raised
Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, "Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one
condemned you?"
11 She said, "No one,
Lord." And Jesus said to her, "Neither do I
condemn you; go and sin no more."
12 Then Jesus spoke to them
again, saying, "I am the light of the world. He who
follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life."
Go and sin no more?! What?
When we put our faith in Christ, God forgives us everything we
ever did or will ever do but He calls us to follow Christ and to repent, to sin
no more.
Now granted we are all
sinners to some degree because James 4:7 tells us to do what is right and not
to do it is sin, and none of us does every good thing that we know we should do
because none of us is perfect.
However, there is a big difference of being guilty of the
failure to do good and the rebellious violation of God’s moral standards, or
blatant sin. To rest in blatant sin is lie down in darkness and to
deny God’s power to give us new life. To
remain hard hearted towards God’s commands to repent could reveal that we don’t
worship Him, that we worship ourselves or our sin and the love of God is not in
us. If we claim to be Christians and
remain unchanged, by continually falling into the same old sins of our pasts,
we may discover that our faith was false. We may hear Christ repeat those words
spoken in
Matthew 7:23 (NKJV) where he says, to the false converts of
Christianity,
23 … 'I never knew you;
depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'
This verse and verses
like them put the fear of God in me and caused me to seek the Lord to assure
myself that I was His. They caused me to
pray and seek repentance and the Lord was gracious to answer my prayer and to
give me the strength and wisdom to agree with His word and to leave my darkness
behind.
I am not special. I tend to learn from trial and error and
have made lots of mistakes in my life and on the path of Christian Discipleship. But the word of God is true and the Holy Spirit
lives in us to help us, to comfort us, and to guide us in the way we should
go. It only takes a little bit of faith
to believe we can overcome. The word of God teaches a gospel of repentance and
transformation. We simply need to
believe it and follow the Lord to find it.
So keep walking and talking with God. He may have found you in
the darkness but He doesn’t want you to stay there. He was you to know Him and
the peace, love and joy, that comes from walking out of the darkness and into
His light of life.
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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 14:12 (NKJV)
12 So then each of us shall
give account of himself to God.
Today’s Bible verses reminds us that
each one of us will give account to God for how we lived our lives.
Today’s verse should convict us and
cause us to examine how we live our lives and choose to make the decision to
repent and follow the Lord’s ways for what is left of our lives.
Some brash not too bright people say
things like: “Wait until I get to heaven, I am going to give God a piece of my
mind!” but the truth is they will be humbled
and not hurl accusations or condemnations toward our Heavenly Father but will
have to answer to Him with how they lived their lives and failed to worship Him
or failed read His word or obey His commands.
And if they failed to put their faith in Christ there will be hell to
pay.
But the good news is the Christian
doesn’t go to hell and their account of their lives will be used to determine
their rewards rather than to determine their punishment.
So put your faith in Christ to be saved
from God’s wrath and start the good works that God created you for to store up
for yourself treasures in heaven.
____________________________________________
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 – Concludes
It is not in our
power to choose one or the other possibility. According to the will of Jesus,
we are called one way or the other out of immediate relationships, and we must
become single individuals, visibly or secretly.
But it is precisely
this same mediator who makes us into individuals, who becomes the basis for
entirely new community. He stands in
the center between the other person and me. He separates, but he also unites.
He cuts off every direct path to someone else, but he guides everyone following
him to the new and sole true way to the other person via the mediator.
“Peter began to say
to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ Jesus said, ‘Truly I
tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father
or mother or spouse or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the
good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers
and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age
to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be
first’ ” (Mark 10:28–31).
Jesus is speaking
here to people who became single individuals for his sake, who left everything
when he called, who can say of themselves: behold, we left everything and
followed you. The promise of new community is given to them. Jesus says that
already in this life they are to receive a hundredfold of what they left
behind. Jesus is speaking here of his faith-community, those who have come
together in him. Those who left their fathers for Jesus’ sake will surely find
new fathers in the community, they will find brothers and sisters; there are
even fields and houses prepared for them. Everyone enters discipleship alone,
but no one remains alone in discipleship. Those who dare to become single
individuals trusting in the word are given the gift of church-community. They
find themselves again in a visible community of faith, which replaces a
hundredfold what they lost. A hundredfold? Yes, in the mere fact that they now
have everything solely through Jesus, that they have it through the mediator.
Of course, that includes “persecutions.” “A hundredfold”—“with persecutions”:
that is the grace of the community which follows its Lord under the cross. The
promise for those who follow Christ is that they will become members of the
community of the cross, they will be people of the mediator, people under the
cross.
“They were on the
road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were
amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and
began to tell them what was to happen to him” (Mark 10:32). As if to confirm
the seriousness of his call to discipleship, and at the same time the
impossibility of discipleship based on human strength, and to confirm the
promise of belonging to him in times of persecution, Jesus then goes ahead to
Jerusalem to the cross, and those following him are overcome with amazement and
fear at the way to which he has called them.[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
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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), 98–99.
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