Encouraging Prodigals to Accept the Invitation to
Purpose - Purity 904
Purity 904 12/02/2022 Purity 904 Podcast
Purity 904 on YouTube :
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a parking lot across from my place
of work, in Albany NY, under the last light of day which is sandwiched underneath
the dark clouds reflecting the fact that evening was descending over the land comes
to us from yours truly as I decided to capture this moment from the first day of December of
2022 after an extended day of work. My
last job was a physical challenge that kept me at work later that I would have
hoped for but there was something about the way the light of day was beneath
the clouds of night and the contrast of the man made lights here that made me
pause to take a breath, to enjoy what I was seeing, and capture it before racing
home to rest.
Some times the work day, or the work week, is long, but there is nothing quite like the
satisfaction of knowing that you met the challenges that faced you successfully
and “got ‘er done!” That satisfaction can even make you appreciate the view of a
parking lot!
Well it is Friday, Thank You God! and I for one am
looking forward to the end of today’s work day because no matter what I face
today, I will do my best, and Lord willing will be safely and joyously reunited
with my beloved wife, TammyLyn, at our countryside home later this evening. And
it is my prayer that all who read or hear this message rejoice over what they
got done this week and will get done today, and will enjoy this evening and the
weekend that lies ahead.
For three days, my electronic personal assistance
whose name begins with an A, had been warning me about a high wind advisory for
my area but it wasn’t until late yesterday afternoon when I was working aloft
on a ladder hanging a drop wire on a backyard telephone pole on S Manning Boulevard
did that warning seem to be warranted. I was on the third pole odfa four pole drop
hanging project, throwing a ball of string through tree limbs to guide the drop
to its final destination when suddenly the winds began to gust and caused me to
suddenly remember Alexa’s warning and causing me to immediately call on the
Lord!
“Okay, Lord you didn’t send me up this pole and get
me this far just to knock me down, right Father? I mean, Abba, okay DADDY GOD? I
know I’m not one of call you, Daddy, but if you want to hear it, come one Daddy
God, let’s cool it with the winds okay? We are almost home here. In Jesus, name
I pray?, Amen.”
That may not be a verbatim transcript to our conversation
but that basically included all of the elements of my prayer. It may sound silly but I believe God was
listening because after I steadied myself the gusting wind subsided. I know many would doubt that this lull in
the wind was “answered prayer” but I’ll take it!
You see God is with us at all times and when we talk
to Him and listen for His guidance, you will begin to see phenomenon that will
make a compelling case for the existence of “God with us.”
After getting home last night, and fellowshipping with
my wife via Facebook Messenger, with a December Bible study where we are
reading through the gospel of John, once chapter a day, to prepare our hearts for
the celebration of Christmas, I was ready to call it a night but I was please
to see my son, Brennan and was even more pleased at our conversation.
My son Brennan turns 21 on the 21st and unfortunately,
like most of us at his age, hasn’t really had a vision for what he wants to with
his life. Graduating late in 2020,
Brennan’s attempts at college has been unfulfilling and he has been unmotivated
to pursue work opportunities, and I have had the difficult task of being patient,
loving, and encouraging while he has been not doing much with his life.
My busy schedule and two household existence results
in seeing my adult children like ships passing in the night for the most part.
So, yes, if you’d like to pick up the theme from yesterday’s blog, you can add “You
are not a good father.” to the devil’s accustations of “You are not a good
Christian” and “You are a hypocrite!” that were recently thrown at my feet. But
I’m not really hearing that or agreeing with that lie from the pit of hell.
Since my divorce from their mother that began in
2018 and was final in 2019, I did everything in my power to assist my kids to
transition from teenagers to adults by teaching them to drive, establishing a
new home where they could live in peace, and encouraged them to go to college
and follow whatever path they wanted to pursue in life, with the emphasis on
being independent and responsible. My
daughter, Haley, who to outsiders may seem shy and timid, took my advice and
got an Associates degree and a job at Lowes where she has become one of the
more senior cashiers.
But Brennan, stagnated after covid-19, taking a “gap
year” sitting around my house. After that
he did go to school and seemed to thrive by becoming involved with the theatre
program at HVCC, but he encountered some not so wholesome elements in the
student body there that lead him into confusion, a bad relationship, and
disillusionment and academic ineptitude, resulting in his decision not to go
back to school this fall, which frankly I was fine with because I felt his “friends”
who were confused about their genders, sexuality, or into recreational drugs,
even though Brennan is straighter edge than I ever could have hoped for, were
best left behind and separated from.
But Brennan hasn’t worked anywhere, at all during
all of this time, either, so he has just been sitting around, playing video,
streaming, and staying up late at night.
So I have just been waiting for him to DO SOMETHING, anything else, as
his inherited and saved for college funds have depleted.
So when I saw him last night, I reminded him that he
turns 21, in 19 day this morning, and that after that I am no longer financially
responsible for him and that I would discontinue providing to his savings as I
have been doing since he was a child and that the policy of my home is that anyone
living under my roof that isn’t going to school, will pay rent. I advised him that he could do whatever he
would like to do with his life but, after a grace period of one month, for January,
if he wasn’t in school, he would have to start paying rent in February, as
sister is already doing after she decided to not to continue in her studies.
This may seem harsh to some, but it is my intention
to teach my adult children to be accountable, responsible, and independent and to
face the realities of this world. So, I gave him the news and we had a good conversation
about his different options going forward. I’m not sure what he will decide but
one of the options, the one I am asking for prayers for, is that Brennan considered
going to nursing school with the possible future goal of becoming a doctor! I don’t know what will happen but I laid on
the encouragement rather thickly this morning via text as I felt in my spirit
that this may be what the Lord is calling my son to do. So prayers for my son, choosing the path,
whatever it is, that God has for him, would be much appreciated.
Because, I know that the One that can cause the
winds to be still, sometimes will blow “wild ideas” into our attention as
invitation for our destinies. One minute
you are confused and uncertain, and suddenly, something that seems daring, crazy,
and good will occur to you. At this point,
the enemy will discourage you and say “You can’t do that” but at the same time
the invitation is there waiting to be accepted…. The choice is ours to
make. And I say, go for it! God calls
out to step on the waves, man! So go for it! Surf’s up dude! Be bold and courageous
and see what it out there!
Whether we fall on our face and crash or if we are
given a new direction of vitality and purpose, won’t be known unless we step
out and see what the Lord has for us. We
have to take the step of faith into uncertainty and I have discovered the Lord
does this REPEATEDLY in our lives when we walk in the spirit, but when we let
go of fear and follow His call, oh brother!, do good things happen. Sure,
sometimes we struggle, sometimes it’s scary, and sometimes we question what exactly
it is we are doing, but when you honestly follow what you believe the Lord is
calling you to, I discovered that no matter what the results are, there are no
regrets.
You did what you thought was best by seek the Lord
and pursuing a righteous path. That’s all we can do. SO DO IT!
Enjoy your weekend, consider what the Lord is
inviting you to pursue, and keep walking and talking with Him and even if you don’t
where you are going to next, at least you will have some good, loving, and
powerful company along the way.
--------------------------------------------------------
Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise
Book for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verses are:
1
Peter 4:10-11 (NLT2)
10 God has given each of you
a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one
another. 11 Do you have the
gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you.
Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy
that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus
Christ. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen.
Today’s verses just happen to fall in line with today’s message to trust
the Lord by encouraging us to use our God given abilities to discover our
purpose and to give God glory.
God has made us and given us all our
talents and abilities. The problem we run into in life is when we don’t
acknowledge that and decide to use our talents and abilities for selfish gain or
to satisfy our personal lusts, independent of God. The worst mistake we can
make – and believe me most of the world is making it every day, is to establish
our identity in the things of this world and to live our lives as if God doesn’t
exist when we are supposed to live with Him and to be good stewards of the
things He has provided us with for His purposes, which actually with personally
benefit us too, and for His glory.
Yesterday, while at work, I saw a
person riding on a motorcycle and even though they were a bike, they had a
sound system to rival any “car that goes boom”.
And so they were pumping out their “soundtrack”, the music they
identified with and that told other people who they were. I don’t what was playing but it wasn’t praise
music, okay. In considering this person, I had such sorrow over them because
they had believed the world’s lies about who they were. They were proclaiming a
lot about themselves by their mode of transportation, their clothes, and their
music but none of it pointed to God or would really endure and prove to be
meaningful in time.
In time fashions change, music
changes, and our modes of transportation change. What is “cool” today is lame
tomorrow. And these things that we build
up our identity in doesn’t age well.
God bless them but I think that the people who are locked into the music
of their youth, whatever their age, are displaying a fundamental lack maturity
or growth. Their preference show they are frozen in time and that despite of
their age and the changes the world goes through, they are declaring that “their
time, their music was best”, but it is decaying and fading away.
But the Lord doesn’t fade away and
the fundamental truth about us in Christ endures forever, so takes today’s
verse as advice to use what you have as good stewards and to give God the
glory, Amen.
___________________________________________
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
Church of Jesus Christ and Discipleship
Chapter Eight
Preliminary
Questions
To his first disciples Jesus was bodily present, speaking
his word directly to them. But this Jesus died and is risen. How, then, does
his call to discipleship [Ruf in die Nachfolge] reach us today? Jesus no longer
walks past me in bodily form and calls, “Follow me,” as he did to Levi, the tax
collector. Even if I would be truly willing to listen, to leave everything
behind, and to follow, what justification do I have for doing so? What for the
first disciples was so entirely unambiguous is for me a decision that is highly
problematic and fraught with uncertainty. What gives me the right, for example,
to hear Jesus’ call of the tax collector as being addressed to me? Did Jesus
not say quite different things to others on other occasions? What about the
paralytic to whom he extended forgiveness and healing?[2] And what
about Lazarus whom he raised from the dead? Did he love them any less than his
disciples? And yet he did not call them to leave their profession and follow
him, but left them at home with their families and their jobs. Who am I to
recommend myself to do something unusual and extraordinary? Who is to judge
whether I or others are not simply acting out of our own authority and
religious enthusiasm? But that would definitely mean something other than
discipleship!
There is something
wrong with all of these questions. Every time we ask them, we place ourselves
outside the living presence of the Christ. All of these questions refuse to
take seriously that Jesus Christ is not dead but alive and still speaking to us
today through the testimony of scripture. He is present with us today, in
bodily form and with his word. If we want to hear his call to discipleship, we
need to hear it where Christ himself is present. It is within the church that
Jesus Christ calls through his word and sacrament. The preaching and sacrament
of the church is the place where Jesus Christ is present. To hear Jesus’ call
to discipleship, one needs no personal revelation. Listen to the preaching and
receive the sacrament! Listen to the gospel of the crucified and risen Lord!
Here he is, the whole Christ, the very same who encountered the disciples.
Indeed, here he is already present as the glorified, the victorious, the living
Christ. No one but Christ himself can call us to discipleship. Discipleship in
essence never consists in a decision for this or that specific action; it is
always a decision for or against Jesus Christ. And this is exactly why the
situation was not any less ambiguous for the disciple or the tax collector who
was called by him than it is for us today. The obedience of those who were
first called constituted discipleship precisely in that they recognized Christ
in the one who was calling them. For them, as for us, it is the hidden Christ
who calls. The call as such is ambiguous. What counts is not the call as such,
but the one who calls. But Christ can only be recognized in faith. That was
true in the same way for the first disciples as it is for us. They saw the
rabbi and the miracle worker, and believed in Christ. We hear the word and
believe in Christ.
But did those first
disciples not have an advantage over us in that, once they had recognized
Christ, they received his unambiguous command from his very own lips and were
told what to do? And are we not left to our own devices precisely at this
crucial point of Christian obedience? Does not the same Christ speak
differently to us than he spoke to them? If this were true, then we would
indeed be in a hopeless situation. But it is far from true. Christ speaks to us
exactly as he spoke to them. For the first disciples of Jesus it was also not
as if they first recognized him as the Christ, and then received his command.
Rather, it was only through his word and his command that they recognized him.
They trusted in his word and his command, and thereby recognized him as the
Christ. There was no other way for the disciples to know Christ than through
his clear word. Conversely, therefore, to recognize Jesus truly as the Christ
necessarily included a recognition of his will. To recognize the person of
Jesus Christ did not undermine the disciples’ certainty about what to do, but
on the contrary created that certainty. Indeed, there is no other way to
recognize Christ. If Christ is the living Lord of my life, then I am addressed
by his word whenever I encounter him; indeed, I do not really know him except
through his clear word and command. There are those who object that this is
precisely our dilemma: we would like to know Christ and have faith in him, and
yet we are unable to recognize his will. This objection, however, springs from
a vague and mistaken knowledge of Christ. To know Christ means to recognize him
in his word as Lord and savior of my life. But that includes an understanding
of his clear word spoken to me.
Suppose we say
finally that, whereas the command the disciples received was unambiguous, we
have to decide for ourselves which of his words is addressed to us. In that
case, we have once again misunderstood not only the situation of the disciples,
but also our own. Jesus’ command always has a single purpose: it demands faith
from an undivided heart, and love of God and neighbor with all our heart and
soul. This is the only aspect in which the command was unambiguous. Any attempt
to carry out the command of Jesus, without also understanding it in this way,
would again mean that we misinterpret and disobey Jesus’ word. However, this
does not mean that we would have no way of knowing the concrete command.[6]
On the contrary, we hear it clearly in every word of proclamation in which we
hear Christ, but we hear it knowing that it can only be fulfilled through faith
in Jesus Christ. The gift Jesus gave to his disciples is thus fully available
to us too. In fact, it is even more readily available to us now that Jesus has
ascended, by our knowledge of his transfiguration, and by the Holy Spirit that
has been sent.[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), 199–203.
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