Relationship Recovery – Three Relationships that Need
to End - Purity 1261
Purity 1261 01/30/2024 Purity 1261 Podcast
Purity 1261 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of the Temple of Apollo in Ancient
Corinth comes to us from my pastor, Roscoe Lily who shared this photo on social
media back on January 19th commenting that he “found it fascinating the juxtaposition of the broken
down Temple of Apollo facing a church that worships Jesus. The Jesus that Paul
preached in Corinth is still worshiped 2000 years later…all around the world.
Acts 18:4-11” And although Roscoe didn’t say this, I will, And Apollo? Do people worship him? Not
so much.”
Well, It’s Tuesday and I love that
my pastor had a biblical focus even on his vacation, and shared it with his
friends on social media, showing us that
there really is no time off from our faith.
Our lives as followers of Jesus Christ are to be an ongoing expression
of our relationship to God where we appreciate where it all began – in history,
with our salvation, and how it continues right up until today. Our relationship with God doesn’t end and
because He is our Creator and Redeemer it is the most important thing about
us.
Our church was blessed to have
Pastor Roscoe back this week and he delivered a message for the ages because it
stressed an important application of trying to live as a Christian as it faced
the hard truth that while our relationship with God will never end the fact
that we are trying to follow the Lord may cause us to need to put up boundaries
or even end relationships with toxic people.
I am sharing a link on the blog that will take you to that message and I
encourage anyone who has difficult or toxic people in their lives to watch it.
(https://starpoint.church/archives/?sapurl=LytlMzE4L2xiL21pLytxcTRxN2hjP2JyYW5kaW5nPXRydWUmZW1iZWQ9dHJ1ZSZyZWNlbnRSb3V0ZT1hcHAud2ViLWFwcC5saWJyYXJ5Lmxpc3QmcmVjZW50Um91dGVTbHVnPSUyQnZycHZkeDg=)
As we follow the Lord on the path
of Christian discipleship we will inevitably come to a crossroads in our
journey where we will realize that people in our lives aren’t walking with us
and will choose to leave us, or we will have to make the decision to leave their
company.
Pastor Roscoe’s message preached on
the three types of relationships that need to end stating that we should end
relationships where:
1. People are influencing you negatively.
2. God is moving people out of your life.
3. People are Toxic – where they have a “murderous spirit”
– where all they seem to do is want to “kill, steal, or destroy” everything
good in your life to serve themselves.
Your friends in “low places” - that drag you down,
remind you of your pre-Christ sinful life, and want to keep you there – meet
all three criteria in my book. When we
come to Christ, we die and become new creations and sometimes we need to say goodbye
to relationships that would distract us from the life that God has for us.
And because we never want to think of our Christian
lives as just involving the things we lose or the things we “can’t do anymore”,
we look to fulfill our legitimate needs for relationships and fun by replacing
our old toxic relationships and habits with new ones that will cause us to grow
and thrive in the abundant life that God has for us.
The loss of family and friend relationships that are
toxic can be painful but God provides us with the body of Christ to give us a
new family and new friends that we can do life with where the people influence
us positively, where we can see how God has moved them into our life, and how
they are the opposite of toxic – where they have a life-giving spirit that fills
your life with peace, joy, and thanksgiving at having them in your life.
Do you have a lot of relationships like that? I do and the reason I do, as different as all
my friends are from one another, is because we all have Jesus in common. I
would have never met any of the people that I consider as friends (or really
family – my spiritual family) that I have in my life, with the exception of my biological
family, if it wasn’t for Jesus. Some of them
are reading this message or hearing this message right now. My ministry is one of encouragement because
that is what the Lord has done in my life. He called me, saved me, and moved me
into a new life and so I encourage my brothers and sisters in Christ, and
anybody who will listen, to seek the Lord and His will for your life because of
the joy and peace that comes from living with Him at the center of your
life.
It may a lonely road at times, but if you are
walking with the Lord, He will bring people into your life – through the local
church, social media, and wherever He calls you to go for work or ministry.
When we carry the Lord's love and wisdom into our lives, we encourage and
remind everyone we meet of the goodness of God and the hope we have in
Jesus.
So if your peace and joy in the Lord is being
hindered by people who influence you negatively or are toxic, realize that God
may not lead them out of your life but may be indicating that you will have to
do your part to find your freedom by making the difficult decision to end the
relationship yourself.
Acts of faith and sacrifices are “a thing” in our walk
with the Lord. When we act in faith and do the difficult things to be true to
our relationship with God, rather than man, we grow closer to the Lord and we
are invariably blessed by the absence of negative things and people, and
addition or presence of the good people and things we choose to focus on as
part of our new lives in Christ.
So go into “relationship recovery” by having the
difficult conversations to say “It’s finished” and putting up the appropriate
boundaries to either limit or eliminate completely the presence of people in
your life who impact you negatively, are being moved out of your life by God,
or who are, let’s face it, toxic.
God makes us new creations in Christ so say goodbye
to the old and keep walking and talking with God to say hello to the abundant
life of love, peace, and joy that He has for you.
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For
those who want more evidence for Christianity than my simple encouragements provide,
I offer apologist, Frank Turek’s website, https://crossexamined.org/ .
Today’s
Bible verses come to us from “The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling” By
John G. Kruis.
(
While Bible verses on various topics of Counseling can be found with a quick
Google search, we encourage you to purchase this resource to support the late
author’s work. (https://www.amazon.com/Quick-Scripture-Reference-Counseling-Kruis-ebook/dp/B00CIUJZT2?ref_=ast_author_dp )
This
morning’s meditation verse come from the section on Communication, Gossip, and
Lying.
Proverbs 17:28 (NASB)
28 Even a fool, when he keeps
silent, is considered wise; When he closes his lips, he is considered
prudent.
Today’s
verse is the fifth of five passages of scripture that fall under the fifth point
of our counseling reference guide resource’s section on Communication, Gossip, and
Lying.
5. Be quick to listen,
slow to speak.
Today’s
verse encourages us to at least appear wise, by choosing to remain silent. Oh
the stupid things that I have said that I wish I hadn’t said! Remember, you won’t regret the stupid things
you don’t say! Wiser people than I have
indicated that we should stop and take a pause before everything we say. We pause
to think about what we are going to say and whether or not we need to say it at
all, or whether we need to say it now.
Asking those questions in our minds – do I need to say this, do I need
to say this now – could save us a lot of grief and we may even see that we are
wiser by choosing to remain silent.
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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 “According to Your
Word: Morning and Evening Through the New Testament” By Stephen F. Olford – A
Collection of Devotional Journals: 1940-1941.
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage you all to purchase Olford’s books for your own
private study and to support his work. This resource is available online
for less than $10 at many sites.
MORNING READING: MATTHEW 21
“He was hungry.” – Matthew 21:18
Truly, great is the mystery of godliness – God was
manifested in the flesh! That He, the Jehovah Jireh, should hunger is a mystery
that baffles the finite mind.
Yet it is a precious thought and fact. For having passed
the way of all men, He can now be touched with every feeling of my infirmity.
Having been tested, He can now succor.
Yes, my blessed Lord hungered, slept, wearied, wept,
sorrowed, suffered, and died – Praise His wonderful Name!
Give me the power and grace, O Lord,
to walk
even as You did walk in this scene despite the fact
that You were perfectly human. Amen.[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
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Audible.com.
These teachings are also available on the
MT4Christ247 YouTube 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)
“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]
Stephen Olford and Heather Olford, According to Your
Word: Morning and Evening Through the New Testament, A Collection of Devotional
Journals 1940-1941 (Nashville, TN: B&H Books, 2008).