Braving the Storm – Adapting to Life with God - Purity 916
Purity 916 12/16/2022 Purity 916 Podcast
Purity 916 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a December Sunrise over Inlet
Community Church comes to us today from a friend who shared this photo on
social media yesterday with the caption: “Red sky at morn, sailors be warned”.
While our friend was taking delight in the gorgeous morning before her, she
also was anticipating a change in the
weather as a winter storm warning is in effect until Saturday, advising that
“Heavy wet snow expected. Storm total snowfall amounts of
8 to 16 inches for the southern Adirondacks, eastern Catskills, Mohawk
and Schoharie Valley and Helderbergs with locally around
two feet possible especially in the high peaks of the eastern
Catskills and southern Adirondacks. Total snow accumulation of 6 to 12 inches
expected for the Lake George Saratoga Region and 4
to 8 inches in northwestern parts of the Capital Region. Winds
gusting as high as 35 mph, especially in higher terrain. Some downed
tree limbs and power outages may occur due to the heavy
wet snow.”
Well, It is Friday and as I write
this, and from what I can tell from trying to peer into the pitch black
darkness from my countryside “office” we don’t have any snow yet but no matter
how much or how little snow or when we will get it between today and tomorrow,
the good news is that I actually had a personal day left at work and decided to
use it rather than running the risk of having to travel to my countryside home
in the midst of a storm.
And while, the possibility of a
power outage does not appeal to me, I don’t have much anxiety about the coming
snow storm.
“As long as the power doesn’t go
out, I will be okay.” May be a mantra
that many will repeat today but the truth is that EVEN IF the power goes out,
we will be okay.
All of history that came before us
testifies to the fact that human beings can survive without electricity! I know
it shocks and disgusts me too. In fact
one of the wonderful amenities at my place “down by the River” is a fully automated
Generac generator system. I jokingly and
seriously told my wife last night that I TRULY must love her because I have
ventured into the “Great White North” of Easton with a storm coming just to be
with her, when I could be secure from the possibility of a power outage at
River House. And I do love her dearly,
so much so that I would be willing to suffer in the dark and cold with her,
than to be at a place with electricity As long as the power outage doesn’t last
too long! Monday comes quick and I may have to abandon ship for my other place if the going gets too tough, doh.
And that’s my right, and that’s
smart.
While there are many negative
situations that can be fall us in life, we are not powerless in terms of the
choices we make and the solutions to problems we can develop and rather than
being consigned to suffering because “it is what it is”, we can rage against
the storm or the “machine” of this world system to be prepared for contingences
and ready to respond if things “go south”.
My place “down by The River” in
Stuyvesant is subject to semi-regular power outages due to the large trees that
line State Route 9J so rather than just sit in the dark at odd times throughout
the year the previous owner of my place installed a generator switch, So if the
power went out they could roll out the portable generator they had and have electricity. Unfortunately, when they moved out the
generator switch remained but they took the portable generator with them.
So when I moved into River House, I
highly suspected that we could expect power outages and within the first few
months of living there in the summer of 2020, the power went out on three or
four separate occasions.
While I contemplated getting a
portable generator like the previous owners, I imagined myself dragging out a
portable generator during a raging blizzard, by myself, and decided that I
wanted to pay the cost to enact a solution that wouldn’t requite me to do anything.
So I ordered the Generac generator to be installed and although it was delayed
because of Covid-19, it was installed and fully operational as my children and
I enjoyed our first winter at our new home in 2020.
So if the going gets too tough, I
might just get going! But this is obviously something I had to plan and pay for
ahead of time, and I got the “full house” option so it cost me much more than
some portable generator would have, but I determined that it was worth it! And
it is.
However there will be situations in
life that we cannot prepare for, because we don’t resources to enact a plan
like this, or we will face things that we could not anticipate and we will just
have to “muddle through somehow”.
But even if we face negative circumstance
we can still find the strength to endure and actually can maintain or peace and
joy, regardless of the circumstances, when we are walking and talking with
God.
Whether it is snowy or not, whether
I am at our Countryside home or “down by the River”, or whether I am with my
wife or not, I am never alone and always
prepared to trust in God to see me through.
In recent days, I have been
increasingly reminded that our walk of faith on the path of Christian
discipleship is a continuous journey of adaptation. We don’t know what we are going to walk
through in this life but when we are grounded in our identity of who we are in
Christ, know what the word of God says, and maintain a robust relationship and
continuous conversation with the Lord, we will have everything we need for “life
and godliness” and every storm that blows are way.
Now don’t get me wrong, I have not “arrived”
yet. I am not perfect and can still be surprised by how feelings of anger,
anxiety, and threats of depression can blow into my life and take me off my
feet. Things can still happen where I recognize that I am entering into old
reactive patterns that are similar to my “pre-Christ” days, but the good news
is that as I have been following the Lord and have learned through my walk and
education what the answers are for every situation.
No, I am not claiming that I know
it all, and when I tell you the “answer key” for life you will either say “Of
course!”, because you know it too, or you will either think I am insane – “This
guy’s nuts! Walking and talking with God? CUCKOO!” or will thinking I am full
of it because you don’t believe in God, not for real life things, not for life
beyond the four walls of a church building.
The answer of course is to “Trust in
the LORD”. We do this by applying His word to our lives, by obeying His commands
and believing everything it HE says about us.
.
That’s all.
“Do you actually do that?!? I doubt
it!” may be a worldly response to this.
While I have already admitted I am
far from perfect and still am surprised to see old patterns attempt to run
their course, my whole walk with God has
been the ongoing saga of trying to be “real” in my faith walk, to believe and
do what the word of God says and this is the path that I encourage every
Christian to walk because it is the path less traveled but it is also the path
that leads to peace and can continually be taken to lead you back to joy.
The book “Building Bounce” by
Marcus Warner and Stefanie Hinman speaks of developing strategies to “return us
back to joy”. They offer practical
methods of changing our perspective and taking control of our thoughts to
develop emotional resilience and they also offer the advice from a Christian
worldview.
True “Biblical” Christian counselors
know that good mental health comes from “doing what is right”, knowing who we
are in Christ, and how to apply God’s word to our lives.
But you actually have to do it in
order for it to work. We must believe
and do what the word of God says. We must practice what we preach in all the
aspects of our lives and we surrender our will and lives for the better plan
that God has for our lives.
So batten down the hatches if you
are in the storms path or enjoy the nice weather if you are not, but let me
encourage you to follow the Lord so you can be prepared for any contingency
that this life brings and that you can continually find the peace and the joy
that God wants you to live in every day.
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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:
Psalm 34:5 (NLT2)
5 Those who look to him for
help will be radiant with joy; no shadow of shame will darken their faces.
Today’s verse just so happens to line up perfectly with what I was
trying to express! That’s what some would call “coincidence” but after I have
been following the Lord and seen His presence in my life in all kinds of ways,
I prefer to say that’s “tracking with the Spirit!”
IF we look to God for help, by putting our faith in Jesus Christ as
Lord and Savior, we will be radiant with joy! Why? Because we will live! Forever! And we are
forgiven! In Christ we receive the forgiveness of sins and are promised an
eternal place in His kingdom. HELLO! That’s something that should be a
continual source of joy! So don’t lose that “joy of salvation”.
However, the second part of this verse from Psalm 34:5, may depend
on how you choose to live your life.
While faith in Christ, forgives you of your sins, your life
choices could continually bring the darkness of the shadow of shame to your
face if you decide to persist in your sins.
While we will not be sinless, we can sin less. And let’s face it,
while even one sin would be enough to make us guilty of breaking the whole
law, some sins are darker than
others. However, all of them need to be
repented of.
And I suggest, that you deal with the darker sins first: your adultery,
you fornication – your sexual immorality, your lies, your drunkenness, your
theft, your cursing, and your hate of your fellow man – are all pretty dark
areas that you can take on first.
But even if somehow these works of the flesh aren’t a part of your
story, there is still work to do, because if there is something that you are
doing or aren’t doing that brings you shame, God will reveal it to you if you
decide to follow Him.
So as today’s verse go to God for help and ask Him what you need
to know and what you need to do.
While I can’t tell you specifics for your individual life and
purpose, I can tell you that God’s word, the Bible, has plenty in it to help
you to learn what God wants you to know.
God wants you never to feel ashamed again and He can help you to
experience that life of joy and peace when you decide to keep on walking and
talking with Him.
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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
Eleven
The
Visible Church-Community, continues
The slave Onesimus
had run away from his Christian master, Philemon, inflicting much harm on him.
Now, after Onesimus has been baptized, Philemon is asked to “receive him back
forever” (Philemon 15), “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved
brother … both in the flesh and in the Lord” (Philemon 16). In specifically
calling Onesimus a brother “according to the flesh,” Paul issues a warning
against the dangerous misunderstanding of those “privileged”[37]
Christians who think having community with Christians of lesser status and
legal standing is acceptable in worship, but not to be practiced outside that
context. Instead, Paul calls Onesimus Philemon’s “brother according to the
flesh”! And he instructs Philemon to receive his slave back like a brother,
even as if he were Paul himself (v. 17), and in brotherly love to ignore the
harm Onesimus inflicted on him (v. 18). Paul asks Philemon to do all this
voluntarily, although, if need be, he would also not hesitate to issue it as a
command (vv. 8–14). Besides, Paul is confident that Philemon will go beyond
what is requested of him (v. 21). Onesimus is Philemon’s “brother according to
the flesh” because he is baptized. Even though Onesimus might remain a slave of
his master Philemon, everything in their relationship with each other has
radically changed. And the basis for that change? The free master and the slave
have become members of the body of Christ. Their community with each other now
embodies, like a small cell, the very life of the body of Christ, that is, the
church-community. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed
your-slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one
in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:27f.; Col. 3:11). Within the church-community, one no
longer sees others as free or slave, as man or woman, but only as members of
Christ’s body. To be sure, this does not mean that a slave would no longer be a
slave or a man cease to be a man. But this is a far cry from continuing to
address everyone within the church-community with a view to their status as Jew
or Greek, free or slave. This is precisely what should no longer happen. We see
each other exclusively as members of the body of Christ, that is, as all being
one in him. Jew and Greek, free and slave, man and woman now have community
with each other because they are all part of the church-community of the body
of Christ. They are in Christ wherever they live, speak, or interact with one
another, and there the church-community is a reality. This fact determines and
transforms their community with each other in a decisive way. The wife obeys
her husband “in the Lord,” slaves really serve God in serving their masters,
and masters know that they too have a Lord in heaven (Col. 3:18–4:1). But they
are now all brothers and sisters, “both in the flesh and in the Lord.”[39]
The church-community
has, therefore, a very real impact on the life of the world. It gains space for
Christ. For whatever is “in Christ” is no longer under the dominion of the
world, of sin, or of the law. Within this newly created community, all the laws
of this world have lost their binding force. This sphere in which brothers and
sisters are loved with Christian love is subject to Christ; it is no longer
subject to the world. The church-community can never consent to any
restrictions of its service of love and compassion toward other human beings.
For wherever there is a brother or sister, there Christ’s own body is present;
and wherever Christ’s body is present, his church-community is also always
present, which means I must also be present there.
All who belong to the
body of Christ have been freed from and called out of the world. They must
become visible to the world not only through the communal bond evident in the
church-community’s order and worship, but also through the new communal life
among brothers and sisters in Christ.
Where the world
despises other members of the Christian family, Christians will love and serve
them. If the world does violence to them, Christians will help them and provide
them relief. Where the world subjects them to dishonor and insult, Christians
will sacrifice their own honor in exchange for their disgrace. Where the world
seeks gain, Christians will renounce it; where it exploits, they will let go;
where it oppresses, they will stoop down and lift up the oppressed. Where the
world denies justice, Christians will practice compassion; where it hides
behind lies, they will speak out for those who cannot speak, and testify for
the truth. For the sake of brothers or sisters—be they Jew or Greek, slave or
free,[42] strong or weak, of noble or of common birth—Christians
will renounce all community with the world, for they serve the community of the
body of Jesus Christ. Being a part of this community, Christians cannot remain
hidden from the world. They have been
called out of the world and follow Christ.
However, “Let each of you remain in the condition
[Beruf] in which you were called. Were you a slave when called? Do not be
concerned about it. Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present
condition now more than ever” (i.e., by remaining a slave!). “For whoever was
called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as
whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ. You were bought with a
price; do not become slaves of human masters. In whatever condition you were called,
brothers and sisters, there remain with God” (1 Cor. 7:20–24). Does all this
not sound very different from that first time Jesus called the disciples to
follow him? Then the disciples had to leave everything behind to follow Jesus.
Now we are told: let each of you remain in the condition in which you were
called! How are we to reconcile the contradiction? Only by recognizing that the
sole point both in the call of Jesus and in the exhortation of the apostles is
to bring those that are called into the community of the body of Jesus Christ.
The first disciples had to come with Jesus in order to stay in bodily community
with him. But now, through word and sacrament, the body of Christ is no longer
confined to a single geographical location. The risen and exalted Christ has
closed in on the world, in fact the body of Christ—in the form of the
church-community—has broken into the very midst of the world itself. Those who
are baptized are baptized into the body of Christ. Christ has come to them,
taken their life into his own, and thus robbed the world of its possession.
Those who are baptized as slaves still remain slaves. But they are now already
part of the community of the body of Jesus Christ. As slaves they have already
been rescued from the world and become freed persons of Christ. Thus slaves may
remain slaves! As members of Christ’s community they have gained the kind of
freedom which no rebellion or revolution could have brought them or could ever
bring them. Paul’s exhortation to the slaves to remain slaves is most certainly
not intended to tie them closer to the world, to fasten their life to this
world even further by adding a “religious anchor,” or to make them better and
more loyal citizens of this world! His statements are certainly not a justification
or a Christian apology for a shadowy social order.[47] The
exhortation is valid not because vocations in the world are so excellently
ordered and divinely instituted that this order must not be overturned. Rather,
it is valid because of the fact that Jesus Christ already has brought about an
upheaval of the whole world by liberating both slave and free. Would a
revolution which simply overturned the existing order of society not obscure
the awareness of God’s new ordering of all things through Jesus Christ, and the
establishment of his church-community? Moreover, would every such attempt not
actually hinder and delay the abolition of the entire world order and the
dawning of God’s realm? The exhortation is also most certainly not based on the
idea that the fulfillment of our secular vocation as such would already be
identical with living the Christian life. Rather, by renouncing rebellion
against the forms of order of this world, Christians express most convincingly
that they expect nothing from the world but everything from Christ and his
coming realm. That is why slaves are to remain slaves! Because this world is
not in need of reform, but ripe to be demolished—that is why slaves are to
remain slaves! They have God’s promise of something far better! Is it not both
judgment enough on the world and comfort enough for slaves to know that the Son
of God took “the form of a slave” (Phil. 2:5) when he came to this earth? And
Christians who were called as slaves—do they not, in their very existence as
slaves in the world, already have enough distance from the world to naturally
prevent them from loving, desiring, or even worrying about it? Therefore,
slaves ought to suffer not as a consequence of being rebellious but as members
of the church-community and the body of Christ! That is how the world is
getting ripe for its demise.[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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These teachings are also available on the
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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
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
[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), 235–239.
