A Firm But Supernatural Foundation - Happy Easter - Purity 707
Purity 707 04/16/2022 - Purity 707 Podcast
Good morning,
Today’s photo of bare earth
and a concrete slab underneath a blue and cirrus cloud filled sky comes to us
from a friend who not too long ago dreamed of and made the decision to build a
new home in Florida for their retirement. Dreaming about and deciding things is
one thing, purchasing the land and laying a foundation is quite another. Generally, when we make statements to others
about what we want to do with our lives that seem to be out of the norm, our friends
and loved ones will ask “are you
serious?”
Well our friend put their money where their mouth was, and their
spade to ground, to show that they were indeed very serious about their dream
and decision, and they shared this photo of the firmly planted foundation of
their future home on social media back on April 7th.
That sky is brilliant but the thing of beauty in this photo are
the things unseen. This photo’s beauty is
the beauty of hope, and potential. This photo’s beauty lies in the things not
seen, that seemingly came out of nothing, but with determined effort will
materialize in the manifestation of our friend’s vision in which they will actually,
physically live. This photo conveys the
wonder of the world that God has made for us.
God made a world in which we could envision and create almost
anything we put our minds to. I almost
said that we could create or do anything we put our minds to but the truth is
that God gave us such a wonderful faculty of imagination that it is possible to
envision things that we can’t actually create physically.
But as a I think about it, even among the physically impossible
dreams we have, we could create works of art to reflect our vision. Whether it’s
a drawing, a painting, a sculptor, a novel, a blueprint, or a motion picture,
God gives us a means of expressing even the wildest visions of our imagination.
It just may not be something we can hold in our hands or “live in”.
So I guess we can create anything we put our minds to but the
finished product of our imagination may need to be tempered with how our dreams
manifest.
Creative works of art aside, when it comes to real life, I have come
to have less patience with and don’t invest my thoughts and imaginations on
plans for my life that I can’t work towards and accomplish.
Back in my drug using days, I would spend time with people who
would endlessly talk about their future hopes and plans for their lives that
had little or no chance of actually happening, especially considering all they
did was do drugs and talk about the future as if things would just magically
appear.
“Some day I going to live there. I’m going to get me one of those
one day. I’m going to live in a mansion with, a swimming pool, a four car
garage, and never have to work a day in my life.”
Unfortunately, saying it doesn’t make it happen and the dreams
that we have for “one day” or “some day” will never happen if we don’t plan for
and work toward today.
Some people feel that they can pray and God will provide things
miraculously. While that is possible, I
feel that God’s moving in the miraculous is a rare occasion and tends to have a
higher purpose than meeting our personal desires. People with this view of the Lord have Him
confused with a genie.
Unfortunately, our misunderstandings about God and our
unanswered prayers can cause us to decide that He doesn’t exist or that He either
doesn’t care about us or can’t help us.
So how do we know God cares and how can we experience His help
in our lives?
Well, the evidence for God, the manifestation of His vision to
help us and to reconcile us to Him, was born in a manger in Bethlehem. Jesus
Christ is the culmination of God’s plan of redemption for mankind that was first
prophesied about in the third chapter of Genesis and continues throughout the
Old Testament scriptures. God used men
to speak about the coming Messiah and to envision a day when He would come to
save us.
Unfortunately, men’s imaginations aren’t perfect and the majority
opinion that the Messiah would come as a conqueror didn’t quite play out like
they thought it would. Although there are scriptures that describe the Messiah as
one who would rule and reign (Isaiah 32:1) there are others that describe him
as a suffering servant (Isaiah 53).
With the advent of Christ, we now understand that these
seemingly contradictory prophesies are both true. They describe Christ’s first appearance
on the earth, when He suffered, died, was resurrected, and ascended to heaven,
and his eventual second coming that was promised in the Book of Acts, right on
the heels of the moment of his heavenly departure by an angelic messenger. Jesus is coming back.
So God had a plan for mankind and although it hasn’t been
completed yet and it is working out more and more each day as people
continually see the truth and put their faith in Jesus as their Lord and Savior
and decided to stand on the firm foundation of the Rock by following Him.
As we will celebrate Christ’s resurrection tomorrow, I can remember
before I was born again, how I was always troubled and confused about Easter. I
just didn’t get it. All the weird symbolism, the traditions of men, and the confounding
truth of Christ’s death and resurrection, was an offense to my logical mind and,
now that I have some clarity on the matter, I realize that it was an offense to
my conscience.
If Christ died for my sins and was raised from the dead it meant:
·
I was a sinner. There
were things I was doing that were wrong. That I should not do. That I should
stop doing. And that need to be forgiven
of and paid for.
It also meant that:
·
Christ was God
And that meant that, I didn’t really have a choice:
If Jesus was the Truth, the Way, and the Life, I had to choose
to follow Him or I was going to have to pay for my sins and have God’s wrath
poured out on me, that I would be separated from God’s kingdom, and consigned to
eternal suffering in Hell.
And I didn’t like that! I didn’t want to “be good”. I didn’t want to change!
So I used my snarky wit and disdain for the cute and cuddly
symbols of Easter, to basically reject it all.
But at various times, I would also try to claim a place in
heaven through nothing more than the fact of my infant baptism. That somehow I
could just be forgiven because of a ceremony that was done on my behalf when I
was too young and unaware that I was being promised to be a part of God’s kingdom.
I didn’t want to go to hell but was too rebellious to make
anyone “my Lord”.
But thanks be to God, the Lord never let me go and during the 38th
year of my life, He arranged for me to hear the gospel message that saved my
life. The message told me that I didn’t have to earn my salvation, like I
thought I had.
The message told me of God’s plan that began in antiquity and
moved through the ages until Christ was born and died for us. It also told me
that for me to be forgiven of my sins, and to be a part of God’s plan for all
eternity, all I had to do was say “Yes” to Jesus as my Lord and Savior.
The message told me that God did exist, He did care for me, and
He could help me if I would only come to Him.
And I did.
But like I said, I don’t like ethereal dreams or spiritual
wishes. If I was going to be a part of
God’s vision for me, I wanted to make it real.
If I was going to be a Christian, I wanted it to be real and
even though I was still in bondage to the besetting sins that I would one day
be freed from, I was drawn to read the Bible to get to know God more.
I figured I was hopeless in terms of sinning. God took on a big
burden with me because He was going to have to forgive all my sins and I wasn’t done yet. But I knew He saved me anyway and the love I
had for Him drew me to read His word and to begin to try to live out the plan
He had for me.
Even though I was a rebel and a big sinner, I wanted to change
but I didn’t think I could. In our heart
of hearts, we know when we are doing wrong and a part of us desperately wants
to change, because God wrote His law on our hearts, our consciences come from
Him.
But for me the idea, or the dreams that:
·
Someday I’ll stop doing drugs.
·
Someday I’ll stop drinking.
·
Someday I’ll be pure, and be loyal in thought and in deed, to one
woman.
Seemed as crazy as some of the drug fueled fantasies that I had
heard from some of ghosts in my pasts.
But the Lord had a vision and plan for me and when I realized
that I wanted it too and started walking and working towards it, God’s creative
work that He began in my heart became manifest in the world of the living, and
just like the work of the creation of the universe, the work that He began in
me keeps going and going and going as I allow His word and Spirit to expand my
horizons and to take me to places physically, emotionally, and spiritually that
I would have never dreamed possible.
But what man thinks is impossible is possible with God. The Lord
is the Creator of Life and that what He wants all of us to have through Jesus
Christ, Life and life more abundantly.
So as we enjoy Saturday today and celebrate Easter tomorrow,
lets remember all that Christ done for us and let’s decide to let God work out
the plan that He has for our lives. Our
life of faith is no pipe dream. If we decide to follow God’s wisdom and ways,
we can discover just how real God is. We can discover just how much he can help
us. And we can discover just how much He cares.
God loves us. So keep walking and talking with Him. All His
plans are good and right now we are living in the beauty of the potential of
the unseen. We don’t know where He is leading us but if we keep going we will
be amazed at all the things we see that will “come out of nowhere” as we walk
with Him from here to eternity.
______________________________________________________________
Today’s Bible verses comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise
Book for Men”.
This
morning’s meditation verses are:
1 John 2:24-25 (NLT2)
24 So you must remain
faithful to what you have been taught from the beginning. If you do, you will
remain in fellowship with the Son and with the Father.
25 And in this fellowship we
enjoy the eternal life he promised us.
Today’s Bible verses encourages us to keep first things first!
As I stated the fact of the resurrection of Christ can be confounding
but it is true and the implications of it are far reaching for us personally
and for all mankind. That gospel truth
of the atonement of our sins and the new spiritual life we receive when we put
our faith in Christ is the first lesson we learn as Christians.
If we don’t believe the fact and implications of Christ’s death and
resurrection and make a personal commitment to put our faith in Him, we aren’t
Christians. The Apostle Paul was known for His scholarship of the Old Testament
Scriptures but He proclaimed
1 Corinthians 2:2 (NKJV)
2 For I determined not to
know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
1 Corinthians 6:14 (NKJV)
14 And God both raised up the
Lord and will also raise us up by His power.
Verse like these show us that Christ’s death and Resurrection matters. They
are the cornerstone doctrines of our faith. They prove Christ was God and that
His words are true.
So as today’s Bible verses tell us, we nee to be faithful to what we
have been taught from the beginning: Christ crucified and raised to life
again.
And today’s verse also indicate that our faith is not “just believing:. We are to remain in the fellowship with the Son
and the Father. That points to a steadfast commitment to be in a living
continuous relationship with God. We don’t
just believe the gospel one time and go about our business. We are to remain in fellowship with God by
living a lifestyle of Christian Discipleship. Far more than just a “worldview”,
we are to remain in fellowship with the Son and the Father by living our lives
according to their commandments and by sharing their love with others.
When we doe this we prove who we are in Christ for all the world to see
and it will be no surprise to us when we “enjoy the eternal life He promised
us.” So “remain faithful to what you
have been taught from the beginning” and teach it to others by proclaiming it
and by living it every day.
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 John Piper’s “Don’t Waste Your Life” .
As
always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to
purchase John Pipers’ books for your own private study and to
support his work. This resource is available on many websites for
less than $5.00.
An Eighteenth-Century
Preacher Sealed the Breakthrough
Jonathan Edwards came into
my life at this time with the most powerful confirmation of this truth I have
ever seen outside the Bible. It was powerful because he showed that it was in
the Bible. As I write in the year 2003, we are marking his 300th birthday. He
was a pastor and theologian in New England. For me he has become the most
important dead teacher outside the Bible. No one outside Scripture has shaped
my vision of God and the Christian life more than Jonathan Edwards.
I
thank God that Edwards did not waste his life. It ended abruptly from a failed
smallpox vaccination when he was fifty-four. But he had lived well. His life is
inspiring because of his zeal not to waste it, and because of his passion for
the supremacy of God. Consider some of the resolutions he wrote in his early
twenties to intensify his life for the glory of God.
• Resolution #5: “Resolved, never to
lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly
can.”
• Resolution #6: “Resolved, to live
with all my might, while I do live.”
• Resolution #17: “Resolved, that I
will live so, as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.”
• Resolution #22: “Resolved, to
endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness, in the other world, as I
possibly can, with all the power, might, vigor, and vehemence, yea violence, I
am capable of, or can bring myself to exert, in any way that can be thought
of.”
This
last resolution (#22) may strike us as blatantly self-centered, even dangerous,
if we do not understand the deep connection in Edwards’s mind between the glory
of God and the happiness of Christians. The violence he had in mind was what Jesus
meant when he said in essence, “Better to gouge out your eye to kill lust and
go to heaven than to make peace with sin and go to hell” (Matthew 5:29). And
with regard to seeking his own happiness, keep in mind that Edwards was
absolutely convinced that being happy in God was the way we glorify him. This
was the reason we were created. Delighting in God was not a mere preference or
option in life; it was our joyful duty and should be the single passion of our
lives. Therefore to resolve to maximize his happiness in God was to resolve to
show him more glorious than all other sources of happiness. Seeking happiness
in God and glorifying God were the same.
The Great Coming Together for Me
Here is how Edwards
explained it. He preached a sermon when he was still in his early twenties with
this main point: “The godly are designed for unknown and inconceivable
happiness.” His text was 1 John 3:2, “And it doth not yet appear what we shall
be” (kjv).
[The] glory of God [does not] consist merely
in the creature’s perceiving his perfections: for the creature may perceive the
power and wisdom of God, and yet take no delight in it, but abhor it. Those
creatures that so do, don’t glorify God. Nor doth the glory of God consist
especially in speaking of his perfections: for words avail not any otherwise
than as they express the sentiment of the mind. This glory of God, therefore,
[consists] in the creature’s admiring and rejoicing [and] exulting in the
manifestation of his beauty and excellency.… The essence of glorifying … God
consists, therefore, in the creature’s rejoicing in God’s manifestations of his
beauty, which is the joy and happiness we speak of. So we see it comes to this
at last: that the end of the creation is that God may communicate happiness to
the creature; for if God created the world that he may be glorified in the
creature, he created it that they might rejoice in his glory: for we have shown
that they are the same.
This
was the great coming together for me—the breakthrough. What was life about?
What was it for? Why do I exist? Why am I here? To be happy? Or to glorify God?
Unspoken for years, there was in me the feeling that these two were at odds.
Either you glorify God or you pursue happiness. One seemed absolutely right;
the other seemed absolutely inevitable. And that is why I was confused and
frustrated for so long.
Compounding
the problem was that many who seemed to emphasize the glory of God in their
thinking did not seem to enjoy him much. And many who seemed to enjoy God most
were defective in their thinking about his glory. But now here was the greatest
mind of early America, Jonathan Edwards, saying that God’s purpose for my life
was that I have a passion for God’s glory and that I have a passion for my joy
in that glory, and that these two are one passion.
When
I saw this, I knew, at last, what a wasted life would be and how to avoid it.
God
created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming
passion—namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme
excellence in all the spheres of life. Enjoying and displaying are both
crucial. If we try to display the excellence of God without joy in it, we will
display a shell of hypocrisy and create scorn or legalism. But if we claim to
enjoy his excellence and do not display it for others to see and admire, we
deceive ourselves, because the mark of God-enthralled joy is to overflow and
expand by extending itself into the hearts of others. The wasted life is the
life without a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of
all peoples.[1]
---------------------------more
tomorrow------------------------
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Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship
