You Will Always Struggle
with This! – Lies of the Enemy #27– Purity 1039
Purity 1039 05/09/2023
Purity 1039 on YouTube: Coming Soon!
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a tranquil lake scene that
highlights a mountain like reflection of the sky comes to us from a currently unknown
Facebook friend who shared this photo on social media on or around April 16th. At present I don’t know who the photographer
is, I was almost certain it was Fred Dimmick or one of the other “usual suspects”,
but my limited search this morning failed to confirm the source. So if this
beauty of a shot is yours and you want me to give credit where credit is due,
let me know and I will edit the blog post to give you my thanks and
apologies.
Well it is Wednesday, and I used today’s mountain
like reflection to represent the arrival to another hump day, and as I will be launching
a new Christian recovery ministry tonight ( the Celebrate Freedom Growth Group
at Starpoint Church meets tonight at 6:30pm) I am also using it in the hopes
that the Lord will use this group to “move mountains in people’s lives.
And just like I wish to give credit to where credit
is due with today’s currently unknown photographer, I also would point out that
the freedom I have frim my previous “hurts, habits, and hang ups” is only
because of God. If the Lord didn’t call me out of the darkness of a false
religion and my lifestyle of the sins of the flesh, I would have never gotten
sober and found the freedom and continuous peace and joy that I have today.
While I had seasons in my pre-Christ existence where
I managed to stop drinking for a few months, I was “powerless to control my
tendency to do wrong thing” and because I “wasn’t that bad… all the time” I
remained in the bondage of my addictions and mired in denial.
One of the sayings about being a drunk is: “I don’t have a drinking problem. I drink. I
get drunk. I fall down. No problem. So
brazen is this form of denial, you can even get that saying on a T-Shirt (in multiple
colors, long sleeves, short sleeves, tank top, sweat shirt, or pullover hoody) – You can be a drunk for all seasons. You can
boldly display your depravity, where what should be your shame, becomes your
pride. What should be your bad habit, becomes your identity.
Rather than taking your alcoholism for the serious
problem that it is, it becomes a joke.
But I know from experience, the tears of a clown when there is no one
around, and how the high times of drunkenness and drug addiction are surrounded
with desperation, anxiety, anger, and confusion. Being an addict is no laughing matter… and
even though the people locked in addiction know they have a problem don’t necessarily
know they can be free from it. They may have heard that their addiction is hereditary
or and they will “always struggle” with the things that they deny are a
problem.
And this brings us to our current series the “Lies
of the Enemy”, which is
an examination of some of the common lies, sometimes sneakily whispered into
our minds as “first person” statements, that the enemy tells us to cause us to
doubt our faith, lose our peace, cause division, or influence us to not follow
the Lord with the way we live our lives.
So with this current situation in mind, I present
Today’s big lie is:
Lie
#27: You will ALWAYS struggle with this!
This LIE is so pervasive that mental health professionals,
doctors, and pastors who are supposed to encourage healing and the ability to be
well have been known to say it. In some circles,
addiction is considered a chronic addiction, and to be fair, I guess in some
ways it is, meaning that now that I have a huge amount of evidence that proves
that I “have a problem with drugs and alcohol”, it will be wise of me to never
partake of those things again.
When I talk about being free of addiction and that we
don’t have to struggle with “this” anymore – I don’t mean that all has been
cured and I can resume with “social drinking” or “casual sex” again – I suppose I could give it a try but
knowing what I know about alcohol, drugs, sexual immorality, myself, and God –
I know that those habits are wrong and that I can find my peace and have my
needs met in legitimate rather than illegitimate ways.
I reject the lie that I will always struggle with “this”
because I don’t struggle anymore and as hard as it may be to believe I’m
serious when I say that. Temptations to drink, to do drugs, or to be sexually
immoral are so few and far between in my life now that they are practically nonexistent
and if any fleshly suggestions try to come into my mind, they are quickly dealt
with and rejected as a fleshly impulse or a temptation from the enemy.
Alcohol, drugs, and sexual immorality are things
that I don’t do or even entertain in my mind anymore because I know:
A: they are
sin,
B: I know the negative consequences involved with
them from experience,
C: they are not who I am anymore and
D: they would disrupt the harmony that I have with
the Lord.
When you know all these things, in your heart and
mind, those sins of the flesh become “non-negotiable
negatives” – as in their rejection has become so natural, and the thought of
them are so abhorrent, that I don’t even have to “Just say no.” because they
have become logical impossibilities for me.
Its not a matter of debate because there are no circumstances that I can
conceive of that I would desire to ever do those things again.
Of course, this is not my doing, this is the result
of the word of God renewing my mind and that of the Lord turning my heart of
stone into a heart of flesh because He called me out of the darkness and compelled
me to trust and follow Him.
We don’t have to “always struggle with this” but to
be healed and free we have to exchange our broken lives of darkness for the life
of hope, love, joy, peace, and light that the Lord has for those who follow and
live for Him.
So don’t believe the lie that you will always
struggle with this. Instead decide to “always follow the Lord” into the
abundant life that He has for you.
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For those who want more evidence for Christianity
than my simple apologetic will provide, I offer apologist, Frank Turek’s
website, https://crossexamined.org/ .
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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 :
Acts 1:8 (NLT2)
8 But you will receive power
when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling
people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to
the ends of the earth.”
Today’s verse are the words of Jesus who testifies of the power we receive when we walk in the Spirit and decide to be His witness.
When we put our faith in Christ, we receive the Holy Spirit and when we decided to follow Him we can live through His power and the transformation that comes to our lives will cause us to be witnesses of His goodness, mercy, love, and power.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 “Satan, Demons & Satanism: A Sinister
Reality” By June Hunt.
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage you all to purchase June Hunt’s books for your own
private study and to support her work. This resource is available online
for $7.99 (https://june-hunt.myshopify.com/collections/keys-for-living/products/keys-for-living-on-satan-demons-satanism_ ).
Satan, Demons & Satanism
A
Sinister Reality
by June Hunt
IV. Steps To Solution
Remember
on early television broadcasts how the “bad guys” always wore the black hats?
You could tell who would win by the color of their clothes. In Revelation 3:4,
the Bible tells us that the followers of Christ will be robed in white. In
contrast, followers of Satan are known for wearing black. The Bible also tells
us who wins in the end … and it’s not the boys in black. Satan has already been
defeated. He is trying to defeat as many of Christ’s followers as possible before
he meets his ultimate end—the lake of fire.
“Depart
from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and
his angels.”
(Matthew
25:41)
A. Key Verse to
Memorize
“Be
self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring
lion looking for someone to devour.”
(1
Peter 5:8)
B. Key Passage to
Read and Reread
1 John 3:7–10
“Do not
let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he
is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has
been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to
destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin,
because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been
born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the
children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child
of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.”[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 Ask Seek Knock blog (https://tammylynask.blogspot.com/ ), 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)
For those who require the assistance of a Deeper
Walk International Prayer Minister to experience healing or your freedom in Christ,
I highly recommend Christy Edge’s Life on the Edge Freedom Prayer Ministry. You
can schedule a session by going to : https://cedge216.wixsite.com/life-on-the-edge
“The views, opinions, and commentary of this
publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to
reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries,
or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication,
and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the
author may represent.”
Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship
[1] June
Hunt, Biblical Counseling
Keys on Satan, Demons & Satanism: A Sinister Reality
(Dallas, TX: Hope For The Heart, 2008), 14.
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