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Thursday, October 6, 2022

The Path to the Light of Life - Purity 855

 



 

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.

 

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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 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 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), 98–99.


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