A 5 Minute Quieting Break & Praying for My Quantum
Leap Blessing! - Purity 952
Purity 952 01/27/2023 Purity 952 Podcast
Purity 952 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of an August sunset falling into the
horizon from the shore of an undisclosed location comes to us from a friend who
shared this scene on social media back on August 23, 2020. I’m cleaning out my phone’s photo archive “closet”
so I don’t know the location or the friend who shared this back in the year of
Covid-19, so if it you, let me know and I will update the blog to give credit
where cred)it is due.
Well, it’s Friday again, so let’s all give credit
where credit is due by thanking God for delivering us to what is, for most of
us, the end of another work week. I of
course had Wednesday off and have to work tomorrow but I am thankful all the
same as it will only be one more day until I am reunited with my wife at our
countryside home and I am looking forward to attending Deeper Walk International’s Free Resilience Conference
later this evening (https://deeperwalkinternational.org/product/free-resilience-online-conference/
) , The event will be featuring
Christian Counselor and Author, John Eldredge who will be discussing practices
to strengthen our emotional, mental, and spiritual resilience. It is also free!
So if you’d like to attend just follow the link that I am sharing on the blog
today.
The global pandemic has had far reaching effects and
many people are still dealing with the effects of the trauma that happened when
the world changed in 2020. Eldredge and the people at Deeper Walk International
have recognized that we can benefit
greatly from “taking a break” from time to time to recharge our batteries with
practices that are proven to assist in building emotional resilience.
One such practice, highlighted in Marcus Warner
& Stephanie Hinman’s book “Building
Bounce” is the “five minute quieting break” which utilizes “box breathing” (https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-is-box-breathing)
– or breathing in a square, and other practices designed to help us to “return
to joy” – to relax.
I am currently enrolled in deeper walk International
School of prayer ministry and the cohort that I am in meets on Thursday
evenings. last night as part of our meeting we did the five minute quieting
break. I found to be quite relaxing and so I'm including the instructions on
the blog today. The instructions read:
“Take
a 5 minute quieting break.
1. Breathe in a square. Inhale deeply as you count to four in your head.
Hold your breath for a count of four. Slowly exhale as you count to four again.
Hold your breath for a four count before going around “the square” two more
times.
2. Bounce. Do jumping jacks, deep knee bends, or a little jig, whatever
gets your body moving. Count to 10 while you do this, then pause and do it
again.
3. Sing. “Joy to the world” or “happy birthday”. singing helps activate
both sides of your brain, and happy or silly songs can make you smile.
4. Rub your arms while breathing deeply. Place your hands on your shoulders and run them
down to your elbows 10 times while inhaling and exhaling deeply.
5. Breathe in a square. Repeat step one.
6. Sit quietly and think about something you enjoy. Think of a memory that makes you happy. Here are
some questions that may help you in engage with the memory. Where were you?
What was the weather like? What do you remember about the way you felt? What
sensations did you feel in your body? Who else was there? What happened? How
does it feel to go back and relive the experience?”
(Warner & Hinman, 2020 - Building Bounce Pages
41, 27)
In our modern lives, we don’t often take a moment to
take a break as our lives are filled with activity of work and family life and
even in our quiet moments we tend to busy ourselves with social media, email,
or texting. So I invite you to give the “five
minute quieting break a try” and to consider doing it regularly to help build
your emotional resilience.
As much as I love to ask God, “What’s next?” as I
try to abide in His presence and walk in the Spirit, that question can be a source of stress if we
are asking the world to answer it. So seek to find some quiet in this noisy
world and to take the Lord with you as you go through the day to day and into
the weekend beyond.
Jesus said in
John 14:27 (NKJV)
27 Peace
I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to
you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
So it is my
prayer that you will continue to seek the Lord and His peace and that you find
it.
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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:
Jeremiah
17:7 (NLT2)
7 “But blessed are those who
trust in the LORD and have made
the LORD their hope and
confidence.
Today’s Bible verse reminds us that we are blessed when we
put our hope and confidence in the Lord.
I have a confession to make. Recently, I was inundated with
some “quantum leap” wishful thinking that something good was coming my way that
while possible was rather irrational and improbable. As I anticipated this “good thing” that “just
might happen”, I prayed for it to magically come to pass with the hopes that
the Lord would be working behind the scenes in the spirit realm to influence
and change the hearts and minds of people who could bless me. Theoretically it was possible. God can “call
us to do stuff” so why not call some people who are able to “bless me”?
I have to shamefully admit that I have been a “hoping and a praying”
for “God to move” in the hearts of minds of other people in the past too! When I
was single, I set my eyes and heart at a woman at my local church and thought,
hoped, and prayed that we would come together and become a “Christian power”
couple in our local church. I imagined getting married to her and doing
ministry with her and obsessively hoped and prayed that it would happen. But my “aim” was off… I was to receive all I
hoped for in my wife TammyLyn, but I had to wait for God to bring her into my
life.
So I was hoping and a Praying, for the wrong woman! It’ wasn’tGod’s
– or this woman’s – will that we would be a couple. So all those thoughts and prayers and dreams,
while in the realm of possibility – turned out to be misplaced, and admittedly
a little irrational and obsessive.
So you would think, I would understand about not putting my
hopes in some other thing, person, or situation that while possible – was also irrational and
improbable. You would think that I
wouldn’t try to use my prayers to push God’s hand to “bless me”, but I
did.
Because I could imagine a blessing – I took any and all signs
that my “blessing” “could happen” as a sign that my blessing “would happen”. Needless to say, the very good possible unlikely
thing, didn’t happen. In essence, the
very good thing was the spiritual equivalent of “winning the lottery”.
For example, my
YouTube Channel and podcast could go viral and I get rich as an international
ministry just blossoms overnight! Or someone in ministry invites me to become a
part of their lucrative and successful ministry providing me with a purpose and
the funding to not only to do the Lord’s work but to consolidate my wife and I
into one household almost overnight!
While we can pray for things like these to happen, we can run
into trouble when we trust in these dreams rather than trusting in the Lord,
when we put our hope and confidence in these “quantum leap super blessing
miracles” rather than having a living hope and confidence in God alone through
our relationship with Him.
So when the “impossible dream” didn’t materialize earlier
this week, I was humbled. I would say I was a little disappointed but the
because “the dream” so irrational it’s hard to stay upset when it doesn’t come
to pass. It’s like finding out you didn’t
win the lottery. The odds were stacked against us. It wasn’t likely we would
win and I shouldn’t have put my hope in “winning”. I should put my hope in God.
So just like today’s verse tells us, we are “blessed” when we
trust in God and put our hope and confidence in Him alone.
In Christ, we have the hope and confidence of eternal life with
God and we shouldn’t put our focus on material or situational blessings to the
point we will become discontented with what the Lord has provided us with and
to the point we forget about the abundant life we have with God.
So, pray for good things, but try to keep grounded in reality
by remembering that you are already “blessed” because of who you are in Christ
and that although God is moving all things together for the good of those that
love Him, we don’t know what those things are.
So keep walking and talking with God and put your hope and confidence in
Him.
___________________________________________
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 A.W. Pink’s “The
Sovereignty of God.”
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage all to purchase A.W. Pink’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
SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD
By ARTHUR W. PINK
CHAPTER FIVE
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD IN REPROBATION
“Behold therefore the goodness and the severity of God” (Rom. 11:22).
In the last chapter when treating of the
Sovereignty of God the Father in Salvation, we examined seven passages which represent
Him as making a choice from among the children of men, and predestinating
certain ones to be conformed to the image of His Son. The thoughtful reader
will naturally ask, And what of those who were not “ordained to eternal life?” The answer which is usually
returned to this question, even by those who profess to believe what the
Scriptures teach concerning God’s sovereignty, is, that God passes by the non-elect, leaves them alone to go their own way,
and in the end casts them into the Lake of Fire because they refused His way, and rejected the Saviour of His
providing. But this is only a part of the truth; the other part—that which is
most offensive to the carnal mind—is either ignored or denied.
In view of the awful
solemnity of the subject here before us, in view of the fact that today almost
all—even those who profess to be Calvinists—reject and repudiate this doctrine,
and in view of the fact that this is one of the points in our book which is
likely to raise the most controversy, we feel that an extended inquiry into
this aspect of God’s Truth is demanded. That this branch of the subject of
God’s sovereignty is profoundly mysterious we freely allow, yet, that is no
reason why we should reject it. The trouble is that, nowadays, there are so
many who receive the testimony of God only
so far as they can satisfactorily account for all the reasons and grounds
of His conduct, which means they will accept nothing but that which can be
measured in the petty scales of their own
limited capacities.
Stating it in its
baldest form the point now to be considered is, Has God foreordained certain
ones to damnation? That many will be
eternally damned is clear from Scripture, that each one will be judged
according to his works and reap as he has sown, and that in consequence his
“damnation is just” (Rom. 3:8), is equally sure, and that God decreed that the
non-elect should choose the course they follow we now undertake to prove.
From what has been
before us in the previous chapter concerning the election of some to salvation, it would unavoidably follow, even if
Scripture had been silent upon it, that there must be a rejection of others. Every choice evidently and necessarily implies
a refusal, for where there is no leaving out there can be no choice. If there
be some whom God has elected unto salvation (2 Thess. 2:13), there must be
others who are not elected unto
salvation. If there are some that the Father gave to Christ (John 6:37), there
must be others whom He did not give unto Christ. If there be some whose names
are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life (Rev. 21:27), there must be others whose
names are not written there. That
this is the case we shall fully prove
below.
Now all will
acknowledge that from the foundation of the world God certainly foreknew and
foresaw who would and who would not receive Christ as their Saviour, therefore
in giving being and birth to those He knew
would reject Christ, He necessarily
created them unto damnation. All that
can be said in reply to this is, No, while God did foreknow these would reject Christ, yet He did not decree that they should. But this is a begging of the real question at issue. God
had a definite reason why He created
men, a specific purpose why He created this and that individual, and in view of
the eternal destination of His creatures, He purposed either that this one should spend eternity in Heaven or
that this one should spend eternity in the Lake of Fire. If then He foresaw that
in creating a certain person that that person would despise and reject the
Saviour, yet knowing this beforehand He, nevertheless, brought that person into
existence, then it is clear He designed and ordained that that person should be
eternally lost. Again; faith is God’s gift, and the purpose to give it only to
some, involves the purpose not to
give it to others. Without faith there is no salvation—“He that believeth not
shall be damned”—hence if there were some of Adam’s descendants to whom He
purposed not to give faith, it must be because He ordained that they should be damned.
Not only is there no
escape from these conclusions, but history confirms
them. Before the Divine Incarnation, for almost two thousand years, the vast
majority of mankind were left destitute of even the external means of grace,
being favored with no preaching of God’s Word and with no written revelation of
His will. For many long centuries Israel was the only nation to whom the Deity vouchsafed any special discovery of
Himself—“Who in times past suffered all
nations to walk in their own ways” (Acts 14:16)—“You only (Israel) have I known of all the families of the earth” (Amos
3:2). Consequently, as all other nations were deprived of the preaching of
God’s Word, they were strangers to the faith that cometh thereby (Rom. 10:17).
These nations were not only ignorant of God Himself, but of the way to please
Him, of the true manner of acceptance with Him, and the means of arriving at
the everlasting enjoyment of Himself.
Now if God had willed
their salvation, would He not have vouchsafed them the means of salvation?
Would He not have given them all things necessary to that end? But it is an
undeniable matter of fact that He did not.
If, then, Deity can, consistently, with His justice, mercy, and benevolence,
deny to some the means of grace, and shut them up in gross darkness and
unbelief (because of the sins of their forefathers, generations before), why
should it be deemed incompatible with His perfections to exclude some persons,
many, from grace itself, and from that eternal life which is connected with it?
seeing that He is Lord and sovereign Disposer both of the end to which the
means lead, and the means which lead to that end?[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
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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
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Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship
