To Be With Jesus – The Chosen Season 3 Purity 893
Purity 893 11/19/2022 Purity 893 Podcast
Purity 893 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of the silhouettes of an Autumn Stripped
tree line against the backdrop of ethereal sunset sky comes to us from my
beloved wife, TammyLyn Clark, who captured this heavenly scene back on November
11th when she decided to take her youngest children and our canine
pal, Harley, to Hudson Crossing Park in Schuylerville for an impromptu walk. When we get to see scenes like this, I think
we get a small idea of the beauty of heaven, and it makes me yearn for the days
when we get to see God’s kingdom and Jesus face to face.
Well, it is the weekend, and it is my prayer that
all who hear or see this message have a wonderful weekend and will consider my
recommendation to go and see The Chosen, Season Three Episodes 1 & 2 in a
theatre near you.
The only thing I was disappointed in at last night’s
viewing of The Chosen, Season 3’s premier was my decision to fall in my
patterned behavior of getting that large popcorn and soda. I know “say it isn’t
so….” As I have said in the past, there is grace for our weaknesses and ours is
a walk of progress and not perfection.
Paradoxically, part of my failure in the decision to indulge
in the popcorn and soda (zero sugar – okay) was the result of a decision to get
serious about my health goal. Say what?
Yesterday, I was either the victim of click bait or genuinely
resolved to get help by seeking the advice of experts in the field of fitness,
as I purchased a fitness plan that is bold in its claims to help people transform
their bodies.
After the bliss of my courtship and wedding to
TammyLyn, I had let my health goal slip in 2022 but recently made steps to
right the ship and have made progress. But after Halloween’s Harvest Fest candy
indulgences and other slips, I have seen my progress stall. Mercifully, I have more or less plateaued,
with only gaining a pound or two back from my recent progress to reclaim the
ground I had lost. So with the knowledge that I had to do something to start
heading in the right direction again, I was open to suggestions.
So I signed up for V-Shred, yup the “swipe up and
take my fitness quiz”-guy, Vince Sant, that you have most likely seen on
YouTube or Instagram plugging his Fat Loss Extreme Program. So I intend to change my normal workout
routine on Monday and trust this program and my personal trainer’s
recommendations to “get shredded” or at least get headed in the right direction
to accomplish my health goal of being in the normal BMI range for my height.
So last night due to the excitement of going out on a
Friday night, and like the alcoholic who gets drunk one last time before going
to rehab, I gave into my patterned behavior of getting a large popcorn and
soda, and of course had to get the refills, AND also got Cookie Dough Pieces!
So, I look forward to my first V-Shred workouts Monday morning so I can atone
for this latest failure.
But, hey, speaking of atonement, I have been
forgiven, right? Because of Jesus Christ, I have been forgiven of all my sins and
have been delivered from condemnation, so I acknowledge my weaknesses, am
seeking help and accountability, and will not beat myself up about failure 1,999.643
or whatever number this one was, and instead will repent and will press into my
health goal with a new resolve on Monday.
And that’s something I think that we should all remember, just because we fail in achieving our goals
in life doesn’t mean we should just abandon them.
This is a tough thing to discern of course because
sometimes our goals can seem unrealistic, or they may indeed be impossible, and
sometimes we have to give them up.
But in this area, our physical health, I believe
that the Lord would encourage us to seek to be good steward of our bodies, the temples
of the Holy Spirit, and would prefer that we didn’t suffer because our lack of
discipline.
Gluttony is not a virtue and Obesity is its bad fruit. Scripture doesn’t have good things to say about
gluttony and there are verses to tell us to take care of our bodies. If you don’t
believe me or need some verses to build a stronghold buster for you health
goal, I am including links to openbible.ifo’s 100 Bible verses about gluttony (https://www.openbible.info/topics/gluttony)
and physical fitness (https://www.openbible.info/topics/physical_fitness)
on the blog today.
You see my health goal is not about vanity. I’m not
looking to impress other people; I’m looking to be as healthy as I can be as I
move into the last years of my life because I want to live as I can to continue
to encourage other people to see what the Lord can do with your life when you
follow Him. And in this latest chapter of the battle of the bulge, which has admittedly
been a lifelong struggle, I hope to utilize the self-control that the Holy Spirit
has brought to my life to accomplish what just about everyone says is impossible:
to be a healthy, or “normal”, weight; to be strong, in the body as well as in
the mind and spirit.
Guys like Vince Sant know that, with proper diet, exercise,
motivation, and discipline people can transform their bodies to be healthy. So why not me? I have already made great strides in my
physical health so why not keep going until “it is finished”? I have already renewed my mind about my
eating habits and altered my diet to have success, so why not be focused to strengthen
my body and further undo the excesses of the past? That’s what I hope to do, and I know that the
Lord will be with me.
And speaking of the Lord being with me, I have to tell
you that the first two episodes of The Chosen Season Three were fantastic! I won’t give you any spoilers, but I
positively loved the interactions of Christ and His Apostles and the supporting
characters in these first two episodes.
Forgiveness, the determination of Discipleship and the acceptance of
some hard truths were major themes in last night’s drama, and they cause me to
appreciate The Chosen with new zeal.
Previously, I watched the show with a love/hate
mentality born from my love for the Bible and the Lord. The Chosen builds a
drama based on scripture and sometimes I have liked what they have done and
other times I have cringed over certain moments where I thought their artistic license
went too far, didn’t go far enough, or took me in a direction I didn’t expect. Admittedly,
I still carry a bit of theological baggage from my long road to freedom in Christ,
and sometimes my objections are born more from my personal history than what
the creators of The Chosen have done. I have
issues…
But, except for a couple of minor moments of critical
scrutiny in the beginning moments of last night’s premiere, I didn’t have any
issues with what the creators of The Chosen did with episodes one and two of Season
3. Quite the contrary, I was moved to
tears more than once at the unfolding drama. I was particularly moved by a
realization that I, like the Apostles, would one day SEE JESUS, and just that
simple thought set my heart ablaze with love and a yearning to continue to be faithful
to follow Him, as I had the absurd but accurate thought that “Jesus was a
really cool guy.”
Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean any
disrespect by that statement. I have deep love, awe and reverence for Jesus and
understand that He is fully God and Man, but The Chosen gives us an opportunity
to imagine what it would be like to be with Him, to be in His physical presence,
to talk with Him face to face, and to hear His voice.
I think as Christians, we don’t think about Jesus as
a Man that we could hang out with and The Chosen Season Three episodes one and
two made me desire the contact that the Apostles enjoyed.
So as we keep stumbling along in life, don’t give up
on your dreams and don’t forget that Jesus walked on this earth and showed His
love to others personally and as strange as it may sound He knows us and one
day we will see Him.
Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible
Promise Book for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verse are:
Romans
6:6-8 (NLT2)
6 We know that our old sinful
selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our
lives. We are no longer slaves to sin.
7 For when we died with
Christ we were set free from the power of sin.
8 And since we died with
Christ, we know we will also live with him.
Today’s
verses remind us that when we put our faith in Him, we died with Christ and were
free from the power of sin, and now live with Him.
When
we know that Christ is for us, it doesn’t matter who comes against us.
In
terms of Spiritual warfare, when our Big Brother, Jesus, is with us, we receive
all His power and Authority to cast out the spiritual forces of darkness. We can utilize his authority to set
ourselves and others free from demonic oppression.
And
in today’s verse, Paul reminds us that Christ also gives us power to say no to
our personal demons of temptation and sin but the key point that Paul makes
here is that we live with Christ, that we follow Him.
If
we just continue in our worldly ways, resting on the forgiveness we have received,
we may be relieved and find comfort from knowing God won’t hold our sins
against us. But that doesn’t make us
free. And even worse, our continued sins
will cause disharmony in our relationship with God as we will persist in living
against His word and apart from His wisdom. When we willfully persist in sin,
we deny our identity in Christ and reject the truth of what God has done in our
lives.
Through
Christ we have been made new creations, but when we choose to sin we deny that
we have been made new and our decisions reveal that we either don’t believe
that God’s ways are best or that we have not een given the power that the word
of God tells us we have.
“You
are always going to sin!” is a phrase that is true, but the Lord gives us power
to decrease the number and to change the quality of our sins if we ask the Lord
for the ability to repent and to overcome the sins that beset us. You might need the help of others. You need
to renew you mind with the word of God. And you might need to try, try, try again but
if we lean on the Lord’s strength and power, we can make a change. We may never
be sin ess, but we can sin less, and the quality of our sins can change.
But
first we need to believe it. Believe these verses, have faith in the word, and
show your faith by demonstrating you believe with the way you live. Victory, peace, and joy come from living with
Christ, so never leave His side.
___________________________________________
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.
The
Sermon on the Mount
Matthew 7
The
Community of Disciples Is Set Apart
The Great Separation
“Enter
through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads
to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the
road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
¶ “Beware of false
prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs
from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad
tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree
bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and
thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.
¶ “Not everyone who
says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one
who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me,
‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your
name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I
never knew you; go away from me, you evil-doers’ ” (Matt. 7:13–23).
The faith-community
of Jesus cannot arbitrarily separate itself from the community of those who do
not hear Jesus’ call. The faith community is called to discipleship by their
Lord’s promise and commandment. That must suffice for them. They submit every
judgment and separation to the one who has chosen them in predestination, not
by the merits of their deeds, but by grace. It is not the faith community which
separates itself from others, yet this separation necessarily takes place in
the call by the Word.
The call separates a
small group, those who follow, from the great mass of the people. The disciples
are few and will always be only a few. This word of Jesus cuts off any false
hope of their effectiveness. Disciples should never invest their trust in
numbers. “There are few of them …,” but there are, and always will be, many
others who go to their destruction. What can console disciples experiencing
this, except the fact that life is promised to them, the eternal communion with
Jesus?[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/@MT4Christ247
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), 175–176.
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