The Essential Oil of Gladness - Purity 721
Purity 721 05/03/2022
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a stunning sunrise breaking through the clouds and blue sky of morning
over the crashing surf on the shores of Vero Beach, Florida comes to us from a
friend who visited the Treasure Shores State Park back on March 14th.
This sight was so stunning it inspired are friend to not only share the photo on
social media but as this short poem to accompany it:
"A brand new day
Bout to begin
With salty air upon your skin
A new sunrise
invokes a feeling
It shines a light
sends darkness reeling
Increasing light
As day commences
A symphony
for all your senses"
I love the sentiments of light casting out the darkness and the hope of a new day that is invoked through my friend’s prose. I also love the sensory focus as our friend’s words indicate that this experience included different aspects that encompassed all of their senses and obviously inspired their imagination.
Well, it’s Tuesday and as the light of a new day will bring us into the second day of the work week, for some of us anyway, I am reflecting on how our walk of faith is all encompassing and how the light that the Lord brings into our life can send the “darkness reeling” regardless of the sights, sounds, or feelings of our present circumstances.
Recently, as I reflected on the amazing journey that the Lord has led me through in my life and how I had certain hopes and expectations that didn’t come true I remarked how I was SO GLAD, that the Lord had His will be done instead of my own.
For example, I had originally planned to try to keep my former house, with its high mortgage, because let’s face it sometimes we would rather suffer through with what’s familiar rather than be forced to do something new. But due to an error in our calculations, that hope was dashed and can I tell you, I am SO GLAD that I had to move on because it resulted in my finding a new home of my own “down by The River” and everyday I look out and see the Hudson, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Lord has brought me here.
Similarly, when I was newly divorced I had considered a couple of relationships with Christian women that I thought may be “wife material”. My loneliness and lack of insight even caused me to be a little obsessed with the idea of being with one particular person to the point that I even had dreams that we would be married and serving the Lord together. But in each instance those hopes and dreams turned out to be false visions as the Lord revealed to me that these women weren’t for me.
For a while I was convinced that my lifestyle of Christian discipleship might require a life of monkhood but then through the Lord’s providence, TammyLyn came into my life out seemingly out of nowhere. Maybe out of the middle of nowhere anyway, as Easton NY is a little off the beaten track. So again, even though my previous interests were dead ends and I was convinced I would be happy all by myself, I was SO GLAD that I was wrong and the Lord brought a Christian woman into my life who could love me for me, and for who I am in Christ, and the man I am trying to be as I seek out my purpose in God’s kingdom.
So yeah, we can
be SO GLAD, over the prayers that aren’t answered sometimes because we don’t
necessarily know what is best for us or what God has planned, or how He works
all things, and I mean all things, as His word tells us, He works all thing
together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His
purpose.
So obviously with those various disappointments in my journey, I didn’t know what the Lord had in store for me and I could have been bitter over my misfortunes.
But you know what? I wasn’t! Why? Because every day, I thanked the Lord for saving me and providing me with what I had. Whether it was sunny and bright or snowy and dark, I put on the garment of praise and experienced the Lord’s presence with me on a continual basis as I prayed for strength, guidance, and to be used by Him for His kingdom cause whatever that would be.
Isaiah 61:3
(NKJV) talks about how the Lord can console us, It says:
3
To
console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes, The oil of joy
for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; That they may
be called trees of righteousness, The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified."
Putting on that “garment of praise” – the act of praising and thanking the Lord every day regardless of seasons or circumstances, will lift that “spirit of heaviness” and will give us “beauty for ashes” and give us joy even in the face of bitter disappointment and traumatic losses.
For the Lord wants to show us that in Him we are never defeated and we are never alone. Standing on our identity in Christ and praising and thanking the Lord gives us the power overcome and when we walk in the Lord’s ways and are firmly rooted in His righteousness, in Christ and in holiness, we glorify the Lord through our faithfulness.
Psalm 45:7
(NKJV) says
7
You
love righteousness and hate wickedness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed
You With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.
Although
this Psalm has messianic themes that point to Jesus, it also points to the fact
that when we choose the Lord’s path of righteousness over the worldly ways of
wickedness, we will be anointed with the oil of gladness” more than our worldly
neighbors who don’t know the hope and joy that come through faith in Jesus
Christ and through the process of growing in the fruit of the Spirt when we walk
in the Spirit.
Walking in the light in the company of our Lord is the Way that leads to an abundant life that will encompass and excite all of our senses and just happens to be the path that leads to life forevermore. SO keep walking and talking with God, and one day regardless of times of trouble or days of disappointment you will be SO GLAD to discover all the things the Lord has been working together for your good.
______________________________________________________________
Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book
for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verse is:
Psalm 147:6
(NLT2)
6
The
LORD supports the humble, but he
brings the wicked down into the dust.
Today’s Bible verse reminds us of the support that the Lord has for the
humble and the dusty demise that awaits the wicked.
In this world, you may have heard the adage that “nice guys finish last”
or “only the good die young” and wonder
what’s the point of trying to do the “right” thing when so many people benefit
from following the world’s ways where the ends justify the means.
Well, today’s verse assures us that we have the Lord’s support when we
remain humble and that the ones who follow the wicked ways of the world will perish.
All the money, power, and posssions that
we can accumulate through legitimate or illegitimate means will mean nothing
when the Lord calls us to answer for our lives.
Those who humble themselves, admit their sin, and surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ will be forgiven and welcomed into God’s kingdom but those who are wise in their own sight and think that their status in the world, their good works, or their worldly power and influence will deliver them into a state of grace will be sorely mistaken. As the Lord Jesus says of those who haven’t humbled themselves to His Lordship:
Matthew 7:23 (NKJV)
23 And then I
will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice
lawlessness!'
So acknowledge the authority of the Lord and humbly follow His ways. When we do that He will support us but when we
cut corners or do things our way, we will be exposed for our wickedness and
brough down lower than the dust.
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.
5 - Risk Is Right—Better to Lose Your Life
Than to Waste It
If
our single, all-embracing passion is to make much of Christ in life and death,
and if the life that magnifies him most is the life of costly love, then life
is risk, and risk is right. To run from it is to waste your life.
What Is Risk?
I define risk very simply
as an action that exposes you to the possibility of loss or injury. If you take
a risk you can lose money, you can lose face, you can lose your health or even
your life. And what’s worse, if you take a risk, you may endanger other people
and not just yourself. Their lives may be at stake. Will a wise and loving
person, then, ever take a risk? Is it wise to expose yourself to loss? Is it
loving to endanger others? Is losing life the same as wasting it?
It
depends. Of course you can throw your life away in a hundred sinful ways and
die as a result. In that case, losing life and wasting it would be the same.
But losing life is not always the same as wasting it. What if the circumstances
are such that not taking a risk will
result in loss and injury? It may not be wise to play it safe. And what if a
successful risk would bring great benefit to many people, and its failure would
bring harm only to yourself? It may not be loving to choose comfort or security
when something great may be achieved for the cause of Christ and for the good
of others.
Risk Is Woven into the Fabric of Our Finite Lives
Why is there such a thing
as risk? Because there is such a thing as ignorance. If there were no ignorance
there would be no risk. Risk is possible because we don’t know how things will
turn out. This means that God can take no risks. He knows the outcome of all
his choices before they happen. This is what it means to be God over against
all the gods of the nations (Isaiah 41:23; 42:8–9; 44:6–8; 45:21; 46:8–11;
48:3). And since he knows the outcome of all his actions before they happen, he
plans accordingly. His omniscience rules out the very possibility of taking
risks.
But
not so with us. We are not God; we are ignorant. We don’t know what will happen
tomorrow. God does not tell us in detail what he intends to do tomorrow or five
years from now. Evidently God intends for us to live and act in ignorance and
in uncertainty about the outcome of our actions.
He
says to us, for example, in James 4:13–15:
Come
now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and
spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what
tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a
little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we
will live and do this or that.”
You
don’t know if your heart will stop before you finish reading this page. You
don’t know if some oncoming driver will swerve out of his lane and hit you
head-on in the next week, or if the food in the restaurant may have some deadly
virus in it, or if a stroke may paralyze you before the week is out, or if some
man with a rifle will shoot you at the shopping center. We are not God. We do
not know about tomorrow.
Exploding the Myth of Safety
Therefore risk is woven
into the fabric of our finite lives. We cannot avoid risk even if we want to.
Ignorance and uncertainty about tomorrow is our native air. All of our plans
for tomorrow’s activities can be shattered by a thousand unknowns whether we stay
at home under the covers or ride the freeways. One of my aims is to explode the
myth of safety and to somehow deliver you from the enchantment of security.
Because it’s a mirage. It doesn’t exist. Every direction you turn there are
unknowns and things beyond your control.
The
tragic hypocrisy is that the enchantment of security lets us take risks every
day for ourselves but paralyzes us from taking risks for others on the Calvary
road of love. We are deluded and think that it may jeopardize a security that
in fact does not even exist. The way I hope to explode the myth of safety and
to disenchant you with the mirage of security is simply to go to the Bible and
show that it is right to risk for the cause of Christ, and not to is to waste
your life.
“May the Lord Do What Seems Good to Him”
Consider the context of 2
Samuel 10. The Amalekites had shamed the messengers of Israel and made
themselves odious in the sight of David. To protect themselves they had hired
the Syrians to fight with them against the Israelites. Joab, the commander of
Israel’s forces, found himself surrounded with Amalekites on one side and
Syrians on the other. So he divided his troops, put his brother Abishai in
charge of one troop of fighters, and led the other himself.
In
verse 11 they pledged to help each other. Then comes this great word in verse
12: “Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people, and for the
cities of our God, and may the Lord
do what seems good to him.” What do these last words mean, “May the Lord do what seems good to him”? It
means that Joab had made a strategic decision for the cities of God, and he did
not know how it would turn out. He had no special revelation from God on this
issue. He had to make a decision on the basis of sanctified wisdom. He had to
risk or run. He did not know how it would turn out. So he made his decision,
and he handed the results over to God. And this was right.[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
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My
wife, TammyLyn, also offers Christian encouragement via her Facebook Group:
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Seek, and Knock on Podbean (https://feed.podbean.com/tammalyn78/feed.xml)
Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship
[1]
John Piper, Don’t Waste Your
Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 79–82.