The Simple Yet Glorious Way – Purity 750
Purity 750 06/05/2022 Purity 750 Podcast
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a roadside tree underneath a clear blue sky
comes to us from yours truly as I captured this scene when I decide to go an
extra half mile while taking my canine friend, Harley, out for a walk back on
the afternoon of May 29th.
I share today’s simple photo because with it being Monday
again, we are “on the road again” and headed into the familiar territory of
another work week where we hope that we have “been there and done that”, that
our journey this week won’t take us anywhere we don’t want to go.
As much as we can claim to be bored by the status quo of our
lives at times, when we encounter sudden changes that we didn’t expect or
welcome, we may find ourselves longing for just a “regular week” of the same
old, same old. But the “status quo” is
somewhat of an illusion of course because no matter how steady our pace through
life can be, change is happening all around us.
As hectic as our lives can be, if we look to our friends,
families, and neighbors, we realize that they are on their own journeys with
their own twist and turns of the “days of their lives” and it can make you
wonder how we all can endure the constant shifts of circumstances in our lives.
From my vantage point, in the last few weeks, I have seen
friends and family, experience accidents, proms, graduations, marriages,
illnesses, surgeries, births, and death! So what may be status quo for you at
the moment is always in the context of sweeping changes as we move forward
through life. With so much going on, it
is hard to keep track of it all, but amazingly, if you are going through this
journey of life with the Lord, somehow you can have peace.
After coming to put my faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and
Savior, my relationship with God has taught me that He is always present and
aware of all the things that are happening in the world and that He is always available
to us to offer His strength, guidance, and love as we walk through this
world.
Quite frankly, the trials and tragedies that I have walked
through personally, and the ones that I have seen others go through, have taught
me that almost anything can happen in our lives and that as long as we are
alive we will be subject to changes, and not all of them will be good.
The trap that the enemy and the world systems set for us is
to seek to find a sense of security and happiness through our own efforts. In learning to deal with the possible
calamities in this world, man can fool themselves into believing that if they “do
everything right” or “are smart”, they will be able to protect themselves from
anything bad happening in their lives.
The truth is that being prepared, working to create safe
environments, and taking steps to establish good health can protect us to some
extent and this fact drives us to try to be self-sufficient all the more. We can see what happens to others who live
foolishly or who weren’t “smart like us”, and we can vow that those things will
never happen to us!
But the truth is, that we can’t control everything and that
we are only secure if we have a relationship with God that will keep us safe
for eternity.
Living in the lap of luxury within the safety of a bunker of
our own design with all our physical needs being met could give us a measure of
peace and security but no matter how pampered and secure we can make ourselves
in this world, there is no peace if it doesn’t include peace with God.
Christ, the Prince of Peace, through His death and
resurrection, made a way for us to have peace with God. We simply have to put our faith in Him. It’s a simple step of faith that reconciles
us to the Lord and gives us eternal security, acceptance, and significance.
And when you have that, you can live in peace in this
constantly changing world, because you know the One who controls it all and the
One who loved you enough to show you that your efforts didn’t hold the key to
your security, God did.
So as much as I hope that this week is free of trouble and drama,
I know that no matter what comes my way, I, with the Lord’s help, will be able
to handle it. There’s nothing that the
Lord and I can’t face.
By keeping in constant contact with the Lord through reaching
out to Him in prayer, reading His word, and through just talking to Him, I know
He is with me and will give me all I need to deal with the situations, yet
unknown, that I will face.
So, saddle up, we got another work week and some of us have
some daunting things to face today and in the week ahead, but let me assure you
that when you keep walking and talking with God, you can walk through whatever will
come your way with peace.
Our task, no matter what they may include, is a simple one:
keep going forward, keep going forward with the Lord.
______________________________________________________________
Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book
for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verse is:
Psalm
73:24 (NLT2)
24
You
guide me with your counsel, leading me to a glorious destiny.
Today’s
Bible verse assures us that God will guide us with His counsel and will lead us
into our glorious destiny.
Okay,
I recently heard a message that was sincere but that may have been a little
over the top depending on how you receive it and what you think you could accomplish
because of it. The speaker was preaching
on the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives and how His presence
gives us power and wisdom to be more than “mere men”.
The
presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives can indeed cause us to do what we
would have thought of as impossible before coming to Christ but His presence in
us does not make us “supermen” and we shouldn’t just expect that the Holy Spirit
will give us divine wisdom and insights to guide us or miraculous powers to
effect changes in our lives.
The
speaker’s enthusiasm that “we can do the same things that Jesus could do” wasn’t
qualified, because after all, “all things are possible with God”, and they are,
but in order to have a balanced walk of faith that won’t lead us into error, we
should understand that the Lord has provided His word to guide us in wisdom and
that He can give us strength when we ask for it in prayer to do things we
wouldn’t normally do.
I
fear that sometimes the emphasis on “having faith” in some messages is viewed
as a magical power and that if we are close to God in our relationship with Him,
He will give us the desires of our hearts and we will just receive divine
wisdom and be able to perform miraculous things.
The
problem is that scripture, history, and reality doesn’t really bear that
out. Believe me, I have laid hands on
people with “great faith” and prayed for healing only to see them go on to get
worse and die! So, trust me when I say
that there are somethings that Jesus could do that, we may not be able to
accomplish.
Through
my maturation as a disciple of Jesus Christ and as a student of the word of
God, I have discovered that those who make bold claims of having “little god”
like abilities of creative power through their speaking the word or by being “more
than human” in some way, could be said to have taken verses out of context or
have read meaning into Bible passages rather than having accurately drawn the
meaning out of the scriptures.
Every
saint, that has gone before us in church history, has shown there ‘mere
humanity” because they failed to perform miracles like Jesus did and have died.
So
if God hasn’t “spoken to you” in an audible voice or given you the power to
perform the miracles that Jesus was able to do, you shouldn’t necessarily lose
your faith.
These
over the top messages that sort of indicate you should, I believe are well intentioned
but could be a little reckless, and could do more harm than good if an immature
believer should lose faith when they don’t “claim what they name”.
Today’s
verse for instance could be “misused” to indicate that the Lord will guide you
through life like the disembodied voice of Obie Won Kenobi, ( “Run, Luke Run!”)
on the way to a life filled with abundance and prosperity.
But
although the Holy Spirit may give us intuitions to act on faith at different
times in our faith walk, the word of God
is the primary source that you want to consult for His counsel. The Word is filled with advice on godly
living that we should apply to our lives. His word will guide us. So read it, know
it, and apply it to your life situations.
As
for the glorious destiny? Eternity spent in the Lord’s presence will be pretty
glorious and given the fact that Christ said that we could expect to be persecuted
for our faith, we shouldn’t necessarily expect a suffering free existence here
on earth.
So
seek the Lord’s counsel in His word, and through prayer, and rejoice that your
destiny is guaranteed to be glorious when you go to be with God or when Christ
returns to rule and reign on the earth.
We
can do a lot of what Christ did while He was on the earth: like live a holy
life, love those who hate us, and serve others.
As
for miracles, we can ask, but the Lord’s will will be done on earth. and we are
called to follow Christ regardless of whether we can call on signs and wonders
to happen in our midst.
The
sign and wonder that will amaze everyone is our faithfulness. So go out there
and amaze the masses by faithfully living as a disciple of Jesus Christ with a
life that will demonstrate that the fruit of the Spirit are growing in your
life.
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.
What Is Our Situation
in the World Today?
The challenges of world
evangelization are still very great. We are in a better position to know the
scope and nature of the task than ever before. Patrick Johnstone writes, “For
the first time in history we have a reasonably complete listing of the world’s
peoples and the extent to which they have been evangelized.” There are various
groups that do research to help the church know what people groups around the
world have been embraced by a Christian church or mission agency.24
Johnstone’s book gives a good summary of the situation at the turn of our
century.
One
way to describe the situation is to say that about 1.2–1.4 billion people have
never had a chance to hear the Gospel; that is, they live in cultures where the
preaching of the Gospel in understandable ways is not accessible. Other
analysts estimate the number of unevangelized somewhat higher. For example, the
“Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission 2002” by David Barrett and Todd
Johnson reports that there are 1,645,685,000 unevangelized people in the world.
That means 26.5 percent of the world’s population live in people groups that do
not have indigenous evangelizing churches.27 About 95 percent of
these live in what has been called the 10/40 window (between latitudes 10 and
40 degrees north of the equator and between the Atlantic and the Pacific
Oceans). This is the great challenge of our day.
Johnstone
puts it in hopeful historical perspective:
Stepping back we see a remarkable pattern
emerging of the 200 years growth [of the church] as it gathered momentum—1700s
the North Atlantic, 1800s the Pacific, 1960s Africa, 1970s Latin America, 1980s
East Asia, 1990s Eurasia. This one and a half times encirclement of the globe
now leaves us with the challenge of the 10/40 Window area. Central and South
Asia and the Middle East are the remaining major areas of challenge. Where will
the breakthroughs of the … first decade of the … [new] millennium come? Will it
be among Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists? These are the final unpenetrated
bastions of the enemy’s hold on the souls of men. The rising tide of the gospel
is lapping ever higher round this area, and we are even having foretastes of
what that breakthrough might mean. Would that I had the space and the freedom
to tell of amazing things going on in these seemingly impenetrable ideological
fortresses.
God Issues a Call to This Generation: Listen!
There is a call on this
generation to obey the risen Christ and make disciples of all the unreached
peoples of the world. I am praying that God will raise up hundreds of thousands
of young people and “finishers” (people finishing one career and ready to pursue
a second in Christian ministry). I pray that this divine call will rise in your
heart with joy and not guilt. I pray that it will be confirmed with the
necessary gifts, and a compelling desire, and the confirmation of your church,
and the tokens of providence. Fan into flame every flicker of desire by reading
biographies, and meditating on Scripture, and studying the unreached peoples,
and praying for passion, and conversing with mission veterans. Don’t run from
the call. Pursue it.
Let
your mind dwell on the lostness of perishing individuals, but also on whole
people groups that do not have any access to the Gospel. This was Paul’s great
ambition: “to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named”
(Romans 15:20). There will always be unconverted people to win where the church
is already established. That is not the unique task of frontier missions.
Frontier missions does what Paul aimed to do: Plant the church where there is
now no possibility of ministry. This is the great need of the hour, not only
for missionaries who go to serve the established church in other countries
(which is a great need, especially in leadership development), but also for
missionaries who go to peoples and places where there is no church to serve.
The Day of Missions Is Not Over
Don’t think the days of
foreign missionaries are over, as if nationals can finish the work. There are
hundreds of peoples and millions of people where there are no Christian
nationals to do same-culture evangelism. A culture must be crossed. To be sure,
it may be crossed by a non-Westerner, since God is growing his church faster in
the non-Western world. That would be wonderful. I have no desire to limit the
joy of love. Besides, it may be that highly trained but tentative Western
specialists will not be as fruitful as simpler, bold missionaries. Regarding
missions to Muslims Patrick Johnstone says, “Often the best missionaries are
the ones who have studied little more than the basics of Islamics but have a
passion for sharing Christ. In their boldness for Jesus, they plunge into
witnessing to Muslims, where an Islamist would fear to go.”30 But
make no mistake. A culture will have to be crossed, and that’s what missions
is. Missions, not same-culture evangelism by nationals, will finish the Great
Commission.
So
“pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his
harvest” (Matthew 9:38), and ask him if you should be one. Expect this prayer
to change you. When Jesus told his disciples to pray it, the next thing that
happened was that he appointed twelve to be his apostles and sent them out.
Pray for harvesters, and you may become one. God often wakens desire, and gives
gifts, and opens doors when we are praying and pondering real possibilities and
real needs. Get a copy of the amazing world prayer guide called Operation World, and pray and read and
ponder your way through the nations day by day. Think about the people in
places like
• Libya
with its six million people and perhaps ten indigenous believers.
• Bhutan,
a hermit Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, cut off from Christian witness for
millennia with only a handful of indigenous believers among its two and a half
million people.
• The
Maldives, off the southwest coast of India, and one of the most closed
countries on earth.
• North
Korea, “a pariah nation gradually starving to death under its crazed
Communist leadership,” with no open witness or church life for fifty years.
• Saudi
Arabia, the headquarters of Islam where Saudi believers, if found, are
executed.
• India,
perhaps the greatest challenge of all, with its vast Ganges plains that contain
“the greatest concentration of unevangelized people in the world. For instance,
the number of people in Uttar Pradesh in North India is about 180,000,000 and
the Christian percentage is 0.1% and falling.”
• Turkey,
the secular, mainly Muslim state with an ongoing Christian witness in only
fifteen of its 100 provinces.[1]
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