The Bright Side – Responding to God’s Precious Promises - Purity 1179

 The Bright Side – Responding to God’s Precious Promises - Purity 1179

Purity 1179 10/21/2023 Purity 1179 Podcast

Purity 1179 on YouTube:

Good morning,

Today’s photo of a double rainbow bubble that seems to have a brighter side captured within its dome comes to us from TammyLyn Clark, who walked out on the wet lawn of her countryside home’s backyard, barefoot, to capture this magical sight Saturday afternoon after a day that was otherwise rainy and grey.  

Well, it’s the beginning of another work week and while the weather forecast in my neck of the woods calls doesn’t call for any rain, I suppose the fact that it is Monday may be reason enough to get you down but if you are entering into the day with a lackluster attitude I would remind you that your thoughts drive your emotions and there are many ways you can turn that frown upside down, intentionally.  

One of the fruits of the Spirit is joy and as I encourage everyone I know to put their faith in Jesus and to do “what is right” by following the Lord with the way you live your life, I will be the first to tell you that how you choose to live and what you choose to focus on and think about can make a big difference in your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual lives, especially on “rainy days and Mondays”.  

This morning you could face your workday with gripes or complaints about the “forced labor” you have to endure today, or you can give thanks to the Lord for your ability to work, and the fact that you have a job that gives you and your family the means to support your needs.   That small shift in perspective can make a big difference.

Many of us also have friendships with people that we only know because of where we work. If we didn’t work, we wouldn’t know them and wouldn’t be able to share our lives with them. 

And I know, we might be happy about that prospect with some of the people we work with, but even the difficult people we encounter in the workplace can serve a purpose in our lives. 

They can help us to practice kindness, gentleness, compassion, and patience. Hurt people hurt people, so the prickly pear at work may have faced some serious trauma and rejection in their lives and their surly disposition may result in them not having any meaningful relationships outside of work.  Jesus told us to love our enemies and the Lord may have placed the difficult people in our lives to give us an opportunity to grow in patience as we endure their rudeness and persecution or to grow in compassion as we are challenged to show them kindness and to encourage them to have a relationship with God.  

The word of God encourages us to give thanks in all things and to go into the world to make disciples and when we focus on those two directives our whole attitude can change as we not only see the “bright side” of our lives by focusing on the good we have received in life through the Lord but we can be inspired to be “light bearers” as we try to share the “Light of the world” with those around us who are hurting, blind, or hopeless – and that would describe everyone who doesn’t know Jesus. 

So as we head into the last full week of October, let’s try to think of our lives as a “treat” by focusing on how good God is and the good things we know in life, in general, and specifically because we have eternal life through our faith in Jesus. And let’s not be “tricked” by the world, the flesh, or the enemy, into believing that we lack something.  

2 Peter 1:3-11 (NLT2)
³  By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence.
⁴  And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.
⁵  In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge,
⁶  and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness,
⁷  and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.
⁸  The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
⁹  But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins.
¹⁰  So, dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen. Do these things, and you will never fall away.
¹¹  Then God will give you a grand entrance into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Those are Peter’s words of encouragement that tell us that we have been blessed by God, forgiven of our sins, have received precious promises, and can escape the corruption of this world.   But we are to respond to God’s promises by living a moral life, seeking knowledge of His ways, and showing love towards others.  

When we walk in that “mission” that Peter describes, we will be “walking in the Spirit” and the result will be growth. We will mature in our faith, and we will experience the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. We can have joy even on rainy days or Mondays when we focus on the Lord and on being intentional about thinking about and living out the life He wants for us to live where we are becoming more and more the people He created us to be.  

So keep walking and talking with God. He has given everything you need in His precious promises. We just have to respond to them to experience them today.  

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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 verse comes 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 verses come from the section on Bitterness, Resentment, & Hate.

1 John 2:9-11 (ESV)
⁹  Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.
¹⁰  Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.
¹¹  But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

Today’s verses fall under the eighth point of our counseling reference guide resource’s section on Bitterness, Resentment, & Hate.

 8. One who hates lives in darkness.

Today’s verses encourage us to not be a “hater”. If we walk around with bitterness toward others we are living in a dark place and not representing the Light of the world. Hate blinds us to the reality of how God would see things. God commands us to forgive and to love our enemies.  So if all we can see is someone’s sin or faults and are consumed with hate for them, we are in the dark.  

The Light of the world would reveal that even our worst enemy has the opportunity to be forgiven, saved, and transformed through faith in Jesus Christ.  IF we hate others, we won’t give them the opportunity to live because our bitterness will prevent us from sharing the message of God’s love.   

So check yourself before you wreck yourself. If you hate someone, think about why, and think about how the Lord would encourage you to forgive them and love them. Think about how they could change if knew Jesus. And think about how your relationship could change if you were the one who looked past the darkness of hate to offer them the “Light of the world” that can save and change their lives.  

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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  The Holy Spirit By A.W. Pink.

As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage you all to purchase A.W. Pink’s books for your own private study and to support his work.  This resource is available online for $0.99 (https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Spirit-Arthur-Pink-Collection-ebook/dp/B008CM5292/ref=sr_1_3?crid=AHKAQOM39CTN&keywords=a.w.+pink+the+holy+spirit&qid=1684376225&sprefix=a.w.+pink+the+holy+spirit+%2Caps%2C96&sr=8-3) 

A.W. Pink’s The Holy Spirit

31 - The Spirit Endowing

Non-continuance of Extraordinary Gifts

Now that all of these special impulses and extraordinary gifts of the Spirit were not intended to be perpetuated throughout this Christian dispensation, and that they have long since ceased, is clear from several conclusive considerations. Their non-continuance is hinted at in Mark 16:20 by the omission of Christ’s, “and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). So, too, by the fact that God did not give faith to His servants to count upon the same throughout the centuries: it is unthinkable that the intrepid Reformers and the godly Puritans failed to appropriate God’s promise if any had been given to that effect. “Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away” (1 Cor. 13:8).

The Apostle cannot there be contrasting Heaven with earth, for those on High possess more “knowledge” than we have; so the reference must be to the cessation of the miraculous gifts of 1 Corinthians 12. The qualifying language “which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us … with signs and wonders” (Heb. 2:3, 4) points in the same direction, and clearly implies that those supernatural manifestations had even then ceased Finally, 2 Timothy 3:16, 17 proves conclusively that there is now no need for such gifts as prophecy and tongues: we are “thoroughly furnished” by the now complete Canon of Scripture.^[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 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

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^[1] Arthur Walkington Pink, The Holy Spirit (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, n.d.).

The Ways We Can Encourage Others - Purity 849

The Ways We Can Encourage Others- Purity 849

Purity 849 09/29/2022 Purity 849 Podcast

Good morning,

Today’s photo of the sky reflected in the waters near Murray Bridge in South Australia comes to us from Dave Baun Photography (https://www.facebook.com/DaveBaunPhotography) who shared this pathway on social media back on June 17^th, stating: “Another reflection image from our day at Murray Bridge. We spent hours hiking around the place and enjoying scenes like this all day long.”  

Well, It’s Thursday again and I thought I would use Dave’s photo as a visual representation of the hope we have for those of us who are “going from here to there” on the pathway of Christian discipleship and it is my prayer that my fellow travelers on Christ’s narrow path will have joy in their journey.

In Christian circles where people are actively pursuing all that God has for them by following the Lord’s wisdom and ways as outlined in the Bible, you may have heard the familiar testimony that Christians may not be perfected like Christ yet but they are no longer who they once were.  Apparently this adage was expanded upon and the following quote is attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:   

“I may not be the man I want to be; I may not be the man I ought to be; I may not be the man I could be; I may not be the man I truly can be; but praise God, I’m not the man I once was.” – (https://quotefancy.com/quote/864928/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-I-may-not-be-the-man-I-want-to-be-I-may-not-be-the-man-I-ought-to)  

As a Christian, Dr. King knew about the transformative power that comes through Christ and His dream was that people could get past their differences caused by group identifiers such as race and be united in harmony where people were not judged by the color of their skin but because of the content of their character, knowing that Christ can change people’s hearts.  

And so I encourage people to not just believe in Jesus but to follow Christ in the way they live their lives, to compassionately love and serve others by sharing with them what Christ tried to show us through His teachings in the word of God.  

I know you can’t push people into faith and so I just try to encourage people to seek the Lord by “walking and talking with God” and being open to the possibility to follow where He leads knowing that God is the one that will have to break though the walls that people build between themselves and his love and sometimes His “hard truth”.   

So I just encourage, “go that way “and point to Jesus.

So knowing we can’t affect those changes in people for them, what can we do to encourage them?  

Well Dr. Charles Stanley just happen to send me a letter that shared his wisdom on how we can encourage others. Okay it was a mass mailing from his ministries and not apersonal correspondence from the good Dr. , but it was addressed to me, in fact I got two copies, one to Marc Clark and another to “M. t. Clark” (small t?, typo I guess).    Anyway Dr. Stanley shared that we can encourage others by: 

1.    Giving people our time and attention

2.    Meeting their emotional or physical needs

3.    Building each other up spiritually

4.    And by trying to be a “motivator”. 

So while, I may not be doing all of the above perfectly in all situations, Dr. Stanley and I have the same teacher, the Lord and His word, and apparently I was following the right path in terms of how I try to be an encourager.  

I do my best to give my time and attention to others. I try to meet their emotional and physical needs, where I can. I try to build people up spiritually and I try to motivate others to seek the Lord and to solve their problems with His help.  

My “ministry work” is all about showing others how the Lord can help them with these things and how a relationship with Him through faith in Jesus Christ can help them “cross that bridge from here to there”, to walk toward becoming the person God made us to be and to leave behind the troubled person we once were. 

So be motivated by Dr. Martin Luther King’s quote, consider Dr. Charles Stanley’s “prescription” for being an encourager, and follow the Lord in all your ways and you will discover that when you encourage others, the person that is most encouraged is you.

 

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Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”.

This morning’s meditation verses are:

Isaiah 53:5-6 (NLT2)
⁵  But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.
⁶  All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.

Today’s Bible verses were shared in our resource under the heading “When you wish that some else could carry your problems…”  so while this passage of scripture can serve as evidence for Jesus fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies regarding the Messiah, our simple devotional resource shows us that we can also use today’s verses to find hope and comfort in our walk by putting our current burdens on to the Lord just like the weight and punishment of our sins were laid on Christ on the cross.   

In our Christian walk we will go through trials and tribulations and be rejected by men just like Christ did, but just like Christ endured suffering on the cross for the joy set before Him (our salvation, for the glory of God), we can bear the burdens of our sufferings and rejections because of our communion with Him and we can do it as a continual practice of our faith. 

As the NLT Bible Promise Book for Men indicates, when you wish someone else could carry your promise, you can look at these verses in Isaiah and two things could happen. 

1.     In light of Christ’s sufferings on the Cross to save us our earthly problems may seem somewhat insignificant. Christ’s suffering may put out “suffering” in proper perspective, especially if our problems aren’t as painful as Christ’s passion.  So we could feel relieved and motivated to endure because of Christ’s example. 

2.    We can “give” the Lord our problems by going to the Lord in prayer and asking Him to give us strength by “releasing” or “surrendering” the weight of our problems to Him by making the choice to trust the Lord to help us, to do the best we can and to leave the results up to God.   

I have just suffered another loss and disappointment in my life and at first I agonized over it and tried to “Monday quarterback” the situation and contemplated what I could have done differently that could have changed the situation to avoid this negative outcome.  But after a far amount of thinking about the situation, and the fact that it involved another person, I realized that some of the factors in this situation were simply beyond my control and I took to forgiving myself for anything that I may have inadvertently done to cause offense and then I forgave the other person for the hurt of rejection that they inadvertently caused me.  Sometimes people go separate ways and it isn’t necessarily because of anything we did but our selfish view in life makes it all about us. 

So after forgiving myself and the other person, and knowing that everything I did was motivated by my desire to help and encourage the other to follow the Lord, I prayed to “surrender” this person to the Lord knowing that God’s plan for this person’s life is perfect and it just won’t involve me anymore.

 When our relationships break down in any sense, in order to move on we need to say “good bye”, and the faithful men and women of God that have contributed to my maturity in my Christian walk have taught me to “let go, and let God” by “surrendering” people, things, and situations that are beyond my control to the Lord.   

So if you wish that someone else could carry your problems and you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, there is good news.  Christ took all our sins on Him on the Cross and at the time all of those sins of ours were “future sins”, that means that any sins, problems, or burdens, that we encounter now or in the future can likewise be given to God through Christ.  We can surrender our sins, our pains, and our problems to God and endure.      

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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 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.

Chapter Four

Discipleship and the Cross - continues

The cross is neither misfortune nor harsh fate. Instead, it is that suffering which comes from our allegiance to Jesus Christ alone. The cross is not random suffering, but necessary suffering. The cross is not suffering that stems from natural existence; it is suffering that comes from being Christian. The essence of the cross is not suffering alone; it is suffering and being rejected. Strictly speaking, it is being rejected for the sake of Jesus Christ, not for the sake of any other attitude or confession. A Christianity that no longer took discipleship seriously remade the gospel into only the solace of cheap grace. Moreover, it drew no line between natural and Christian existence. Such a Christianity had to understand the cross as one’s daily misfortune, as the predicament and anxiety of our natural life. Here it has been forgotten that the cross always also means being rejected, that the cross includes the shame of suffering. Being shunned, despised, and deserted by people, as in the psalmist’s unending lament, is an essential feature of the suffering of the cross, which cannot be comprehended by a Christianity that is unable to differentiate between a citizen’s ordinary existence and Christian existence. The cross is suffering with Christ. Indeed, it is Christ-suffering. Only one who is bound to Christ as this occurs in discipleship stands in seriousness under the cross.

“… let them take up their cross …” From the beginning, it lies there ready. They need only take it up. But so that no one presumes to seek out some cross or arbitrarily search for some suffering, Jesus says, they each have their own cross ready, assigned by God and measured to fit. They must all bear the suffering and rejection measured out to each of them. Everyone gets a different amount. God honors some with great suffering and grants them the grace of martyrdom, while others are not tempted beyond their strength. But in every case, it is the one cross.

It is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering that everyone has to experience is the call which summons us away from our attachments to this world. It is the death of the old self in the encounter with Jesus Christ. Those who enter into discipleship enter into Jesus’ death. They turn their living into dying; such has been the case from the very beginning. The cross is not the terrible end of a pious, happy life. Instead, it stands at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ. Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death. Whether we, like the first disciples, must leave house and vocation to follow him, or whether, with Luther, we leave the monastery for a secular vocation, in both cases the same death awaits us, namely, death in Jesus Christ, the death of our old self caused by the call of Jesus. Because Jesus’ call brings death to the rich young man, who can only follow Jesus after his own will has died, because Jesus’ every command calls us to die with all our wishes and desires, and because we cannot want our own death, therefore Jesus Christ in his word has to be our death and our life. The call to follow Jesus, baptism in the name of Jesus Christ, is death and life. The call of Christ and baptism leads Christians into a daily struggle against sin and Satan. Thus, each day, with its temptations by the flesh and the world, brings Jesus Christ’s suffering anew to his disciples. The wounds inflicted this way and the scars a Christian carries away from the struggle are living signs of the community of the cross with Jesus. But there is another suffering and another indignity from which no Christian can be spared. To be sure, Christ’s own suffering is the only suffering that brings reconciliation. But because Christ has suffered for the sin of the world, because the whole burden of guilt fell on him, and because Jesus Christ passes on the fruit of his suffering to those who follow him, temptation and sin fall also onto his disciples. Sin covers the disciples with shame and expels them from the gates of the city like a scapegoat. So Christians become bearers of sin and guilt for other people. Christians would be broken by the weight if they were not themselves carried by him who bore all sins. Instead, by the power of Christ’s suffering they can overcome the sins they must bear by forgiving them. A Christian becomes a burden-bearer—bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2). As Christ bears our burdens, so we are to bear the burden of our sisters and brothers. The law of Christ, which must be fulfilled, is to bear the cross. The burden of a sister or brother, which I have to bear, is not only his or her external fate, manner, and temperament; rather, it is in the deepest sense his or her sin. I cannot bear it except by forgiving it, by the power of Christ’s cross, which I have come to share. In this way Jesus’ call to bear the cross places all who follow him in the community of forgiveness of sins. Forgiving sins is the Christ-suffering required of his disciples. It is required of all Christians.^[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/channel/UCTxjSNstREpuGWuL0bF3U7w/featured

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

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^[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), 86–88.

Ask, Seek, Knock - Another Encourager in the Family!

 

My wife TammyLyn is a faithful woman of God and her faith walk has made some quantum leaps as she has experienced her freedom in Christ and a manifestation of the Holy Spirit in her life.  She now is actively seeking the Lord on a continual basis and it is exciting to see what the Holy Spirit is going to do in her life next as she has already had a voracious appetite for the word of God and has taken deep dives into unpacking scripture through the artistic method of Bible verse mapping.  

But I had no idea the the Lord was moving in her to step out in faith as an encourager as she launched a Facebook group: Ask, Seek, Knock (Ask, Seek, Knock FB Group ) as a platform to offer Christian encouragement and just when I thought I was floored by that. She launched the first episode of her very own podcast, "Ask, Seek, Knock" on Podbean. Ask, Seek, and Knock Podcastst.  

She introduced her FB group with the following text:  

"This simple phrase "Ask, Seek, Knock" has become a critical part of my daily spiritual walk with Christ.

Matthew 7:7-12 (NKJV)

Keep Asking, Seeking, Knocking

7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! 12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

It is a simple phrase but why is it so hard for us to follow through with these simple requests. Christ wants us to be in daily communion with Him through prayer, but why is that so hard?

One reason is because we allow the "world" to get in the way of the "Word."

We need to put our focus back on Christ and His will for our lives.

It is my prayer that I will be able to encourage others through my walk and searching with the Lord. The Lord has been leading me to write and share. I have been doing so through FB posts but I am going to start a podcast and share it here on this page as well as my personal page. It might be rough at first as I get used to this "podcast thing". However I know that Christ is with me and He NEVER puts anything before me that I cannot handle.

So here goes nothing...

In addition to sharing the podcast I will be sharing daily encouragement, scriptures and whatever the Lord leads me to share; whether it be a TammyLyn original or simply a shared post.

Welcome and thank you for choosing to join me on this journey."

So I encourage you to join TammyLyn on her journey of faith where you will receive advice, encouragement, and hope!