Overcoming 101 - Saying Goodbye and Getting Over “The
Hump” - Purity 908
Purity 908 12/07/2022 Purity 908 Podcast
Purity 908 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of Bell Mountain from the shores of
Chatuge Lake comes to us from a friend who shared this scene from Hiawassee Georgia
on social media back on November 27th. This particular friend’s travels have been
highlighted often on the blog and its been a while since I have used any of his
“stuff” but I wanted to let them know that “I see you, brother” and to thank
him for his generosity in sharing his experiences with his friends.
Well, it’s Wednesday again and I share our adventurous
friend’s photo of Bell Mountain today to visual represent our arrival at the
first “hump day” of December and to highlight the enduring quality of
friendship and the personal mountains of adversity that we have to face in life
on the path of Christian Discipleship.
In all honesty, I have never personally met the
photographer of today’s work. I made his acquaintance on social media a few
years ago and have been following him ever since. His journey, that I can see, has been an epic
one. From our view of his life, we have “seen”
him retire and move from his home in Hillsdale in Upstate NY to hop around all
over the place, settling for a time in Kentucky, Florida, and now North
Carolina. And even though those were the states he has set up “camp” for a
while, he has traveled to all the nearby places in between. The only thing that hasn’t changed is his faithfulness
in sharing the things he sees along the way.
If I am ever at a loss for the photo of the day, he is someone I can
look to and can usually count on to have something to “use”. So, thanks Fred, God bless you and your
travelling spirit.
Friends are people we can count right. Friends are
people that we have a bond with that can endure separations and time. As a CFMA, an encourager, for Freedom in Christ
Ministries and as a former teacher, and the last director, of Celebrate Freedom
my former church’s, now defunct, recovery ministry. I have made a lot of friends through the
years. I have increasingly and continually
found my freedom in Christ through the years and since 2015, the year I went into recovery,
I have been sharing the message of the hope for a new life of peace and
abundant joy that is found through faith in Christ alone.
I have encouraged and walked with a lot of people on
the path of Christian Discipleship and unfortunately as I keep walking and
talking with God I eventually am separated from their company. As a facilitator of the Freedom in Christ
course, I meet new people and walk with them for 12 weeks or so and then have
to wish them well as our paths divert. However,
I consider all the people I have known through my old church, and the people I
have met through recovery ministry, and the volunteer work I do at Freedom in
Christ ministries as my bothers and sisters in Christ, but also as my
friends. While we may have parted
company, for whatever reasons, I still consider them to be my friends no matter
how long we have been separated. As I leave the people I meet on the path of Christian
Discipleship, I leave with the encouragement that they reach out to me to keep
in touch or if they need or want to talk.
With my two household existence, and my secular and
ministry work, my availability is something that is hard to pin down on a
regular basis, and let’s face it, if you are walking in the Spirit, the Spirit will
move you to places you don’t expect! But I always encourage the people I meet
along the way to reach out to me periodically or if they are in need because I
want to be a friend they can count on.
We in the body of Christ need each other. I know how lonely this road of following the
Lord can be and I want to be thought of as someone who is faithful to encourage
others who decide to pick up their cross and follow the Lord.
So Monday morning, an old friend from the past
reached out to me to confess that he wanted to talk. I was running out the door
to work at the time and suggested they just text me or record a voice message
to give me a heads up to tell me what was going on and I would respond in kind
later. But they sheepishly replied to
never mind and wished me a “Merry Christmas”.
So as I was driving down the highway, the Holy Spirit
indicated to me to reach out and call them.
My new car likes to highjack my phone and I still don’t quite understand
how it works. So I reached out and eventually figured out how to speak though
my car and learned that my friend had made some bad turns, suffered the
consequences of poor decisions, and wanted some advice about what to do.
Part of my friend’s testimony though revealed to me
the root issue of all his problems: his rebellion. We walked together for a time in the past but
we separated because he went against several of his friends’ advice and got
involved in a relationship that proved to be toxic. He also hid his relapse in
drug and alcohol use. He has been
running ever since and predictably everything has become a huge mess.
In his statements to me, in asking for help mind
you, he was trying to establish his rights and his freedom to “have a beer” at
the end of the day and was lamenting over the how he has been misused or
wrongly accused by the state and the other
people in his life. In essence, he was
making the claim that he could do what he wanted and that he was a victim of
circumstances. While he was asking for
help, he seemed to deny that he was the problem.
So what do you do? Agree with him and tell him “the
world sucks” or “Yeah, you do what you want!” I don’t think so!
I reminded him of how when he was clean and sober,
he was thriving in life and I told him flat out that he had to “say goodbye” to
the past, say “goodbye” to the beer, and to start following the Lord
again. I told him that there simply is
no other way but the Lord’s way and that half measures don’t work. If he wanted
true freedom and peace, he had to follow the Lord and do His will.
Amazingly, he thanked me and said that he knew that he
could count on me to “tell it like it is” and he made the decision to start
following the Lord again.
He has texted me over the last couple of days and
says he feels better and he indicates
that he is going to change his story from being a cautionary tale to one that
tells of a turn around and a new life of victory.
I sent him a YouTube video of Bethel’s King of My Heart
and an encouraging word to let the Lord rule his heart, just this morning.
It doesn’t cost a thing to send him an encouraging
word but I know just how valuable it is to have a friend in your corner when
you decide to “climb that mountain” of problems that you have to overcome when
you decide to be real with God and follow where He leads.
I’m not sure what will happen with my friend but I
am praying that he stays faithful to seek the Lord and to surrender his will to
God. It’s hard going on this path of
Christian Discipleship but if you keep walking and talking with God, you’ll get
over that hump and eventually you will leave the darkness of you old life
behind as the Lord will fill your life with meaning and purpose that will just
happen to lead you on a journey that never ends whose road is paved with peace,
love, and joy.
So turn it around and follow the Lord into all He
has for you. He did it for me and He is
faithful and trustworthy to do it for you, too.
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Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible
Promise Book for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verses is:
Isaiah 59:2 (NLT2)
2 It’s your sins that have
cut you off from God. Because of your sins, he has turned away and will not
listen anymore.
Today’s verse speaks of the
spiritual reality of how our sins disrupt the harmony of our relationship with
God.
As born again believers who have put our faith in Jesus Christ as
Lord and Savior, nothing can separate us from the love of God or break our
relationship with Him. But when we come
into a covenant relationship with the Lord through Jesus Christ, there is an expectation
that you are going to “walk the walk” as well as “talk the talk” of a Christian
disciple. It is expected that when we
come to faith in Jesus Christ that we repent. We are expected to turn from our
sinful and selfish ways and to start living our lives according to God’s will
and ways.
So what happens, when we don’t?
Well it feels like God has left us because our sin separates us from
fellowship with Him. we don’t experience
His presence or blessing because WE have walked away from Him by sinning.
One of the principles of prayer is to be “right with God” if we
expect to have our requests heard and fulfilled. Today’s verse indicates our prayers won’t “be
heard”, fulfilled, because of our sin.
But the good news is that God will hear us and be with us the
moment we repent. Our fellowship with God is re-established the moment we
confess our sins to Him and ask for His help.
So don’t treat your faith like some game where you can “sin-confess”,
“sin-confess”, Instead be faithful to never leave the Lord’s side by turning
from sin and walking where He would direct you.
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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.
The
Church of Jesus Christ and Discipleship
Chapter Ten
The
Body of Christ
The first disciples lived in the bodily presence of and in
community with Jesus. What is the significance of this fact, and in what way
does this community still exist for us? Paul states that through baptism we
have become members of the body of Christ. This statement sounds very strange
and incomprehensible to us, and thus requires a thorough explanation.
It tells us that
those who are baptized are still meant to live, even after the Lord’s death and
resurrection, in the bodily presence of and community with Jesus. For those who
belong to him, Jesus’ departure does not mean a loss but rather a new gift. For
the first disciples the bodily community with Jesus did not mean anything
different or anything more than what we have today. Indeed, for us this
community is even more definite, more complete, and more certain than it was
for them, since we live in full community with the bodily presence of the
glorified Lord. Our faith must become fully aware of the magnitude of this
gift. The body of Jesus Christ is the ground of our faith and the source of its
certainty; the body of Jesus Christ is the one and perfect gift through which
we receive our salvation; the body of Jesus Christ is our new life. It is in
the body of Jesus Christ that we are accepted by God from eternity.
Since Adam’s fall God
sent the divine word to sinful
humanity, in order to seek and accept
us. This is why we have received God’s word, to reconcile our lost humanity
with God. God’s word came as promise and as law. For our sake God’s word became
weak and lowly. But human beings rejected this word, refusing to be accepted by
God. They offered sacrifices; they performed good works which God was supposed
to accept in their stead, thereby letting them go free.
Then the miracle of
all miracles takes place. The Son of God becomes a human being. The Word became
flesh. The One who had dwelled from all eternity in the Father’s glory, the One
who was in the form of God, who in the beginning had been the mediator of
creation so that the created world can only be known through him and in him,
the One who was very God (1 Cor. 8:6; 2 Cor. 8:9; Phil. 2:6ff.; Eph. 1:4; Col.
1:16; John 1:1ff.; Heb. 1:1ff.)—this One takes on humanity and comes to earth.
He takes on humanity by taking on human qualities, human ‘nature’, “sinful flesh,”
human form (Rom. 8:3; Gal. 4:4; Phil. 2:6ff.). Now it is no longer only through
the word of preaching that God accepts humanity, but also in the body of
Christ. God’s mercy sends the Son in the flesh, so that in his flesh he may
shoulder and carry all of humanity. The Son of God accepts all of humanity in
bodily form, the same humanity which in hate of God and pride of the flesh had
rejected the incorporeal, invisible word of God. In the body of Jesus Christ
humanity is now truly and bodily accepted; it is accepted as it is, out of
God’s mercy.
When contemplating
this miracle, the early church fathers insisted passionately that while it was
necessary to say that God had taken on human nature, it was wrong to say that
God had chosen a single, perfect human being with whom God would then unite.
God became human. This means God took on the whole of our sick and sinful human
nature, the whole of humanity which had fallen away from God. It does not mean,
however, that God took on the individual human being Jesus. The entire gospel
message can be understood properly only in light of this crucial distinction.
The body of Jesus Christ, in which we together with all of humanity are
accepted by God, has now become the foundation of our salvation.
The flesh borne by Christ
was sinful flesh—yet borne without sin (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15). Wherever his
human body is, there all flesh is being accepted. “Surely he has borne our
infirmities and carried our sorrows.” Only by bearing all our infirmities and
sorrows in his own body was Jesus able to heal the infirmities and sorrows of
human nature (Matt. 8:15–17). “He was wounded for our transgressions and
crushed for our iniquities.” He bore our sin, and was therefore able to forgive
sin; for in his body our sinful flesh had been “accepted.” This is why Jesus
accepted sinners (Luke 15:2): he bore them in his own body. In Jesus the
“acceptable (δεκτόν) year of the Lord” had dawned (Luke 4:19).
The incarnate Son of
God was thus both an individual self and the new humanity. Whatever he did was
at the same time also done on behalf of the new humanity which he bore in his
body. He is thus a second Adam, or the “last” Adam (1 Cor. 15:45). For Adam too
was both an individual self and at the same time the whole of humanity. Adam
also bore the whole of humanity in himself. In him all of humanity has fallen;
in “Adam” (which in Hebrew means “human being”), humanity as such has fallen
(Rom. 5:19). Christ is the second human being (1 Cor. 15:47) in whom the new
humanity is created. He is the “new human being.”
It is only with this
perspective in mind that we are able to understand the nature of the bodily
community which the disciples enjoyed with Jesus. The bond between Jesus and
the disciples who followed him was a bodily bond. This was no accident but a
necessary consequence of the incarnation. A prophet and teacher would not need
followers, but only students and listeners. But the incarnate Son of God who
took on human flesh does need a community of followers [Nachfolgergemeinde] who
not only participate in his teaching but also in his body. It is thus in the
body of Christ that the disciples have community. They live and suffer in
bodily community with Jesus. By being in community with the body of Jesus they
are placed under the burden of the cross. For in that body they are all borne
and accepted.[1]
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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
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Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and
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My wife, TammyLyn, also offers Christian
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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), 213–215.
