Suddenly Mourning – Draw Close to God
Purity 484 07/30/2021 Purity 484 Podcast
Good morning
Today’s photo come to us from our friend Shane Onufrock who enjoyed this
sunset while on vacation at Ocracoke Island in North Carolina on Tuesday with his
dog PJ. I normally don’t share the names
of my friends in my daily posts but in this case I make an exception. Unfortunately, this is one of the last photos
that Shane will take of PJ, as the Onufrock’s beloved four-footed family member
was lost to a tragic accident on Wednesday.
Shane expressed how much the shock and pain of this loss has rocked his
family with the simple lament “God this hurts so much.”
I share my friend’s love of his dog and the pain of his loss in hopes
that you will join me in praying for comfort and peace for Shane and his family
in the wake of this tragic and devastating loss. As a Christian, I know that God hears our
prayers and I know that He can provided us with comfort, peace, and strength to
walk through the dark valleys of life.
I also know that in times of mourning, the best gifts we can give to
those who are suffering is our presence and care. We should avoid
philosophizing a meaning to the loss and instead just be present and available for
our friends who are suffering by listening and offering to help in whatever way
we can.
The cup of suffering will pass to us all at one time or another and the
best thing we can do is to foster a deep relationship with God through faith in
Jesus Christ and to develop caring friendships of substance that won’t cut and
run when the going gets tough.
Christ Himself knew the pain of loss and wept. God understands our pain
and offers us the peace that goes beyond understanding and the strength to walk
through to brighter days that are in the distance beyond the shadows of mourning.
So, be kind to one another, show your appreciation to your friends, your
family, and yes even to your pets. The
relationships we cherish in our lives and the love that we have are a gift from
God and when walk with Him He can ease our pain when we suffer loss and give us
hope for the days ahead and the eternal life that we will share with Him where
there will be no more pain, no more tears, no more sorrow, and no more death.
This morning’s meditation verse is:
1 Corinthians 6:20 (NKJV)
20 For you were bought at a price;
therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.
Today’s verse reminds Christians that we belong to God and
that our lives are to be a living sacrifice to give Him glory.
The preceding verses in this section of scripture remind us of
the spiritual reality that we are temples of the indwelling presence of the
Holy Spirit, and we are not to use our bodies for sexual sin.
In light
of our modern society’s liberal views on sex, the biblical guidelines for
keeping all sexual activity in the approved confines of marriage has taken a
major blow as even professing Christians are involved in sexual relationship or
who regularly practice masturbation with no serious conviction or intention to
stop their sexual sin.
Those
outside the faith generally agree that if the activity is consensual there is
nothing wrong with sex or masturbation. Christian’s who practice the same sexual activity
outside of marriage hold similar views and either dismiss the word of God’s commands
to flee sexual immorality or merely lean on the grace of God to cover their
multitude of sins with a licentious attitude and the self-admonition that they
are powerless to change and they believe sexual purity is impossible.
However
celibacy is possible. Humorously, a Google search of “Is celibacy
possible?” will reveal a good deal of negative articles that question whether
celibacy is bad for your physical and mental health but if you scroll through a
few of those you will find material that states that people do indeed practice celibacy
and recommend it. And I am actually one
of them, although if the right Christian woman would come along I would make
her my wife and that change pretty quick.
Listen,
before coming to Christ, I had sex that wasn’t under a marriage covenant and
masturbated. No matter how thrilling and
pleasurable those experiences were, there was always a measure of guilt and
shame that followed, usually right after giving in to sexual temptation. Why do we feel guilt and shame if we “can do
whatever we want”?
For all
mankind, any guilt and shame that we feel in regard to sex outside of marriage
is part of our make-up that beyond society’s standards and rules, which are
slipping more and every day, God has given each of us a conscience that tells
us in our hearts what is right and wrong.
However, we can deaden our conscience with repeated sin.
For the
Christian, we are spiritual made a live with the Holy Spirit’s indwelling
presence upon salvation, so we usually feel a higher degree of sensitivity to
sin because the Holy Spirit is convicting us to drive us to repentance because
our sin is no longer compatible with who we are in Christ.
However,
even the Christian can “quench the Spirit” or “grieve the Holy Spirit” with
repeated sin.
From my
own experience as a carnal Christian in the early years of my faith, I can tell
you that we can be spiritually blinded to the severity or meaning of our sins
and still be convinced that we have “surrendered all to God”.
But the
good news is that if we choose to seek the Lord and deepen our relationship
with Him, the Holy Spirit will give us revelations of our spiritual state and
draw us and empower us to repentance.
Today’s
verse reminds us that when we made Christ our Lord and Savior we belong to Him now.
We have been bought and paid for by the blood of Christ.
Today’s
verse also makes it clear that we are to give our bodies & spirits to the Lord
to glorify Him.
How do we
glorify the Lord with our bodies?
We
glorify Him by not giving our bodies as instruments of unrighteousness.
We
glorify Him by turning from our sexual sins and any sins that involve the use
of our bodies.
But hear
me when I say this, you will struggle mightily to obey the “rules” of not
sinning on your own.
Our repentance
comes through faith by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We not
only have to believe that God set us free from sin and death when we became His,
we also have to live according to that belief.
The best way to live according to our faith is by having a daily
spiritual practice in which we draw close to God by reading His word, by
maintaining a continuous conversation of prayer with God throughout the day,
and by choosing to live according to God’s ways rather than the ways of the
world.
Our
victory comes from knowing we are bought and paid for by God, that we are His
children now, and by choosing to commune with the Lord to live the life that He
has prepared for us.
As
always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I always share insights from
prominent Christian counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with
their walk.
Today we continue with Dr. Neil Anderson’s Victory
Over the Darkness, continuing Chapter 9.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes
and encourage all to purchase Dr. Anderson’s books for your own private study
and to support his work. If you need this title you can find it online at several
sites for less than $15.00:
Renewing
the Mind
Do we have to remain victims of these mental strongholds
for the rest of our lives? Absolutely not! If we have been trained wrong, can
we be retrained? If we have learned to believe a lie, can we now choose to
believe the truth? If we have programmed our computers wrong, can they be reprogrammed?
Absolutely, but we have to want to renew our minds. How? Our lives are
transformed as we renew our minds through the hearing of God's Word, Bible
studies, personal discipleship and Christ-centered counseling (see Romans 12:2).
Because some of these strongholds are thoughts raised against the knowledge of
God (see 2 Cor.
10:5), learning to know God as a loving Father and yourself as His accepted
child is a starting place.
More is going on in your mind than
prior negative conditioning. You are not just up against the world system in
which you were raised and the resultant flesh patterns you have chosen to
adopt. You are also up against the devil who is scheming to fill your mind with
thoughts that are opposed to God's plan for you.
In addition to previous thoughts that
formed mental strongholds, we have the present-day responsibility to manage our
thoughts according to 2 Cor. 10:5:
"We are taking every thought [noema] captive to the obedience of
Christ." Why do these thoughts need to be taken captive? Because they are
contrary to God's ways and they may be the enemy's thoughts.
Notice how Paul uses the word
"thoughts" (noema) in 2 Corinthians in relation to Satan's activity.
In 2 Cor.
3:14; and 2 Cor.
4:4, Paul reveals that Satan is behind the spiritual hardness and blindness
of unbelievers: "But their minds [noema] were hardened.†.†.†. The god of
this world has blinded the minds [noema] of the unbelieving."
Paul also states that Satan is
deceiving and dividing believers: "I am afraid, lest as the serpent
deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds [noema] should be led astray from
the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ" (2 Cor. 11:3).
We are not ignorant of his [Satan's] schemes [noema]" (2 Cor. 2:11).
Satan's strategy is to introduce his
thoughts and ideas into your mind and deceive you into believing they are
yours. It happened to King David. Satan "moved David to number
Israel" (1 Chron.
21:1), an act God had forbidden, and David acted on Satan's idea. Did Satan
manifest himself to David and audibly say, "I want you to number
Israel"? I doubt it. David was a godly man and he wouldn't have obeyed
Satan. What if Satan slipped the idea into David's mind in first-person
singular? What if the thought came to David as, "I need to know how large
my army is; I think I'll count the troops"? These were David's thoughts;
at least he thought they were, but that isn't what Scripture says.
If Satan can place a thought in your
mind—and he can—it isn't much more of a trick for him to make you think it is
your idea. If you knew it was Satan, you would reject the thought, wouldn't
you? When he disguises his suggestions as your thoughts and ideas, however, you
are more likely to accept them. That is his primary deception.
I doubt that Judas initially realized
it was Satan's idea to betray Jesus, but Scripture clearly reveals it was.
"And during supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas
Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him" (John 13:2). Judas
probably thought he was prompting Jesus to deliver Israel from the Romans. The
fact that Judas was a thief was what made him vulnerable to Satan.
Ananias and Sapphira might have
thought it was their idea to withhold some of their offering while getting the
strokes and attention from others who believed they had given everything. If
they knew it was Satan's idea, they probably wouldn't have done it, but
Scripture clearly reveals the source of their thoughts. "Peter said,
'Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to
keep back some of the price of the land?'" (Acts 5:3).
One of our Talbot students brought
Tina to me for counseling. Tina was experiencing tremendous emotional
difficulty as the result of an incredible background. As a child and teenager,
she had witnessed sacrificial and ritual abuse and had repeatedly been violated
sexually by her father, her brother and her brother's friend. She watched as
her little pet puppy dog was sacrificed as a burnt offering in satanic worship.
Her hope for escaping her background
was to enter the field of psychology. She finished her master's degree and
tried to enroll in a doctoral program, but her personal life was in shambles.
I shared with Tina that Jesus Christ
could set her free if she would open her life to Him. "Would you like to
make that decision for Christ?" I asked.
She shook her head. "I'll do it
later."
Having heard Tina's story, I was
suspicious of what was going on in her mind. "Tina, are you hearing
opposing thoughts to what I have been saying? They could be threatening you or
me."
"Yes," Tina answered, her
face blanched with shock and amazement.
"You're being told a lie, Tina,
and Satan is the father of lies." I shared with her further from God's
Word, and within 10 minutes she gave her heart to Christ.
If Satan can get you to believe a lie,
you can lose some element of control in your life. Suppose I was devious and
persuaded you to believe a lie. Would believing that lie have some effect on
your life? Suppose I started a rumor that your spouse was unfaithful; and you
heard it. Would believing that lie affect how you felt about your husband and
how you related to him? Therefore, if you fail to take every thought captive to
the obedience of Christ, you may be allowing Satan to influence your life in a
negative direction.
Victory Over the Darkness: Realizing the Power of Your Identity in Christ.
---------------------------more tomorrow------------------------
God bless
you all!
Join our “Victory
over the Darkness” or “The Bondage Breaker” series of Discipleship Classes via
the mt4christ247 podcast!
at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, You can also find it on Apple podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154). The mt4christ247 podcast is also available on Google Podcasts,
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