The Myth of “The One” - Purity 868
Purity 868 10/21/2022 Purity 868 Podcast
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a circular ripple on Hiawassee Lake
from the vantage point of the Hanging Dog Recreational Area in Murphy North
Carolina comes to us from a friend who posted this scene on social media back
on October 12th with the following poem:
“Sunlight starts the day anew
A lifetime I have searched for you
Eyes like the ocean
Reflect sky blue
Hair like the sun
With a golden hue
I've searched in the desert
I've searched by the sea
I came to the mountains
Where you might be
Now I sit by the water
With a mountain view
Watching ripples on the water
Fade away like you
Waterfalls turn into streams
And day turns into night
I’ll only see you in my dreams
Where I will hold you tight.”
Well it's Friday again, Thank God, and while our friend’s poem touches the heart
as it portrays the reality that life can sometimes be the desperate but
fruitless search for loves lost, but fondly remembered, I am thanking the Lord
for showing me His love and for bringing me the love of my who just happens to
have “Hair like the sun.” because I can well remember several times in my life
that I was obsessed over gaining the love of someone I desired or was lamenting
over the loves I had lost.
Before I was shown the truth of the gospel of Jesus
Christ, I thought that was the meaning of life: finding your “soul mate”. With that romantic world view, the world was
a cold and lonely, albeit beautiful, place. But all the splendor of the world
or the good things of life, were rendered meaningless without “THE ONE” who was
somewhere out there with whom only a man could enjoy the other fruits of life
with.
But after a many broken relationships where I had hoped
to find fulfillment, and in the midst of a troubled marriage where I couldn’t seem
to make a “happy life” or a “happy wife” no matter how much I tried to appease
and surrender to another’s will, the Lord revealed to me the truth about the
meaning of life and death by opening my eyes to the BIG PICTURE that included
the creation of the universe, , the God who authored it, the history and
purpose of man, what went wrong, and how we can be made right because of Jesus Christ!
Everything I had tried to find meaning or
satisfaction had failed me and in a moment of divine grace and clarity, I saw
that everything that I had heard about Jesus Christ was true but I also saw the
truth that being right with God wasn’t about me “doing everything right” it was
about simply putting our faith in Jesus and surrendering to His Lordship and I
discovered that it wasn’t about God’s desire to dominate or control us. Life
was about the Creator trying to save His creation and it was motivated by
love.
God made us in His image and without Him, we suffer
a feeling of inadequacy, that something is missing. We each instinctively know this but the
world, the flesh, and the devil come in and offer us alternatives that they
promise will “complete us”. One of those
lies is of “The ONE” – the myth that there is one perfect person out there that
will complete you and make you happy.
But that myth is short sighted. Even if there is someone out there that is
perfectly compatible with you who can support and love you all the days of your
life, they don’t answer the question of death.
To be focused on the search of “THE ONE” is to be blinded of the reality
of your spiritual separation from God.
Other myths out their do the same thing: The myths
that life is:
· “ALL ABOUT FAMILY” or
· “Having ENOUGH MONEY” or
· “BEING HAPPY” or
· “BEING TRUE TO YOURSELF” or
· “BEING THE BOSS OF MY LIFE” or
· “BEING SMART” or
· “BEING HEALTHY” or
· “BEING SUCCESSFUL” or
· “BEING LOVED”
Equally all fail
us. They all ignore the LORD, as if He
was somehow not important? I mean how could we be so deceived to think that the
One who gave us life is just some minor portion of our lives that can be given
homage once a week or a couple of times a year? How can we think we can find
the “meaning”, purpose, or a good strategy for life if we haven’t considered
the One who made us?
But I know we can, because
most of my life that’s what I did. My life philosophy was a composite of all
the above myths and even though I was able to support myself financially and
have a family and some fun in life if I am honest there was always that sense
of absurdity or lack of satisfaction when I looked at my life and thought: “This
is IT?”
When those myths
are your focus, the spiritual issues are either a sidebar to your life, that we
will just have to hope for the best, or we deny the spiritual altogether and
say “Yeah, this is it!” as in we blink out of existence, thus we better
selfishly live it up!
But God wants us to
know that this world and our ideas of it are not “IT”. The idea of “The ONE” – or a soul mate is not
IT. Or at least not the way we thought
it was.
Because there is
ONE who can fulfill us. One that can make us right. And that ONE is Jesus
Christ and God sent Him to tell us the truth and to pay for our sins that separate
us from God. Christ answers all the
questions of meaning and purpose.
We are made in the image of God. Creation was
broken by man’s sin and rebellion. SO God, out of His love for us sent Jesus to
reconcile us to Him and it is only through Him that we can find peace.
Just like we
thought that the world was a pretty cold and lonely place that lacked the
ability without our perfect = “soul mate” -
We discover that the reason why we have never been satisfied is because
that only One that can complete us is Christ alone!
And the wonderful
news is that when we put our faith in Jesus, we can truly live. Through Christ we overcome death and sin, and
have the power to enjoy our lives in his acceptance, security, and significance.
In Christ we “become
somebody”, we are adopted as royal ambassadors to the kingdom of God. We
receive the knowledge of the wisdom of how to live and have peace with
God.
In Christ we need
not fear, for God is with us and for us, forever.
In Christ we are
loved by God and have the mission to live out His purpose for us.
Before Christ, I
considered my self to be a Jack Kerouac searcher for meaning, good times, and
love as I tried to make sense of the world with just the things of the world. I
would wax on philosophically and poetically about all the wisdom I had gathered
from my wild experiences of life. But although
I considered myself somewhat Kerouacian, I didn’t know JACK!
In all my
wanderings I dismissed the Bible, forsook the fellowship of the saints, and it
was only through the grace of God, and a gospel radio message, that the Lord
led me to the truth.
So, don’t lament
about the past, the Christian disciple’s orientation is to be forward looking
and to keep our eyes on Christ, to follow Him with the way we live our lives,
to meditate on the word of God, and to enjoy His presence in prayer and as we
walk through this world.
So keep walking and
talking with God, IT turns out that JESUS is THE ONE we should have been
looking for all along. And when we know His love, we can discover the new life
He has for us and if the Lord wills it He will lead us into relationships with
others, maybe even a spouse, that we can share our lives with, lives that are
defined by the fruit of the Spirit because no matter what we do, our
relationship with God will be the center of our existence and will provide us
with the meaning, purpose, and love that we were always searching for.
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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 51:17 (NLT2)
17 The sacrifice you desire
is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart,
O God.
Today’s Bible versesdescribes our condition when we give up those
myths and lies of the world and finally repent and surrender to the Lord.
The spirit of broken man is the spirit of rebellion and self-sufficiency.
We try to live independently from God and forge our own destinies, as if we
could control anything in an ultimate sense.
Or we will try to please God with “good works” thinking if we just
perform the right “sacrifice”, God will accept us.
But today’s verse indicates the God desires us to submit to Him
and repent. Our surrender to the Lordship of Christ not our sacrifice is the
only thing that God wants or will accept.
So remember what God desires and give Him wants by living a life
that is repentant and surrendered to His will.
___________________________________________
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.
Chapter Six
The
Sermon on the Mount
Matthew
5
On
the “Extraordinary”
of Christian Life
The Righteousness of Christ continues
Jesus, the Son of
God, who alone stands in full communion with God, renews the validity of the
law by coming to fulfill the law of the Old Covenant. Because he was the only
One who did that, he alone could truly teach the law and how it is fulfilled.
The disciples would know and understand this when he told it to them, because
they knew who he was. The Jews could not understand it as long as they did not
believe him. That was why they had to reject his teaching of the law as
blasphemy against God or, rather, against God’s law. Thus, for the sake of
God’s true law, Jesus had to suffer at the hands of the advocates of the false
law. Jesus died on the cross as a blasphemer, as a transgressor of the law,
because he put into force the true law against the misunderstood, false law.
The fulfillment of
the law, about which Jesus speaks, could therefore come about only through his
being nailed to the cross as a sinner. He himself, as the crucified one, is the
perfect fulfillment of the law.
This means that Jesus
Christ and only he fulfills the law, because he alone lives in perfect
communion with God. He himself steps between his disciples and the law, but the
law does not come between him and his disciples. The disciples’ path to the law
leads through the cross of Christ. Because Jesus points the disciples to the
law, which he alone fulfills, he thus binds them anew to himself. He had to
reject lawless allegiance apart from God’s law, because this would be
enthusiasm, and, therefore, would mean a disrupture of all bonds instead of
being bound to him. The disciples’ anxiety, however, that being bound to the
law might separate them from Jesus was dispelled. Such anxiety could only arise
from misunderstanding the law, which did, in fact, cut the Jews off from God.
Instead of this, it became clear that true adherence to Jesus is granted only
together with adherence to God’s law.
But if Jesus stands
between his disciples and the law, it is not to release them from fulfilling
the law. Instead, it is to enforce his demand that the law be fulfilled. The
disciples’ adherence to him requires the same obedience of them. Also,
fulfilling the law to the iota does not cancel that iota for the disciples from
then on. It is fulfilled; that is all. But that fulfillment is precisely what
really makes the law valid, so that now anyone who does and teaches these
commandments will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. “Do and teach”—it would be possible to
think of a teaching of the law which dispenses with doing it by explaining that
the purpose of the law would be merely to let us know that its fulfillment is
impossible. Such a teaching cannot claim to be based on Jesus. The law demands
to be done, just as surely as he himself did it. Those who in discipleship
follow Jesus, who fulfilled the law, do and teach the law in their following.
Only those who do the law can remain in the community of Jesus.
It is not the law
which distinguishes the disciples from the Jews. Instead, it is ‘better
righteousness’. The righteousness of the disciples “towers over” the scribes.
It surpasses them; it is something extraordinary and distinctive. This is the
first time that the concept of περισσεύειν appears, which will
assume so much importance in verse 47. We must ask, what did the righteousness
of the Pharisees consist of? What does the righteousness of the disciples
consist of? The Pharisees certainly never succumbed to the antiscriptural
fallacy of believing that the law should be taught, but not done. The Pharisees
intended to be doers of the law. Their righteousness consisted of their
immediate, literal obedience to what was commanded in the law. Their
righteousness was their action. The goal of their righteousness was complete
conformity of their action to what was commanded in the law. Nonetheless, a
remnant always remained, which had to be covered by forgiveness. Their
righteousness always remained incomplete. The righteousness of the disciples
could also consist solely of their doing the law. No one who did not keep the
law could be called righteous. But the disciples’ action surpasses that of the
Pharisees in that it really is perfect righteousness, as opposed to the
imperfect righteousness of the Pharisees. How can this be? The superiority of
the disciples’ righteousness is that Jesus stands between them and the law—he,
who has completely fulfilled the law, and in whose community they live. Instead
of a law not yet fulfilled, the disciples confronted a law which had already
been fulfilled. Before they even began to obey the law, it was already
fulfilled; its demands were already satisfied. The righteousness required by
the law is already there; it is the righteousness of Jesus, who went to the
cross for the sake of the law. But because that righteousness is not only a
good deed to be performed, but complete, true, and personal communion with God,
Jesus not only has righteousness, he is righteousness personified. He is the
disciples’ righteousness. In calling his disciples, Jesus granted them
participation in himself; he gave them community with him; he let them
participate in his own righteousness; he granted them his own righteousness.
The disciples’ righteousness is the righteousness of Christ. Jesus begins his
talk about ‘better righteousness’ by referring to his fulfillment of the law in
order to make this point. The righteousness of Christ is really also the
disciples’ righteousness. In a strict sense, it remains righteousness freely
granted, granted through the call to discipleship. It is that righteousness
which consists precisely in following him. It is that righteousness which
received the promise of the kingdom of heaven in the Beatitudes. The disciples’
righteousness is righteousness under the cross. It is the righteousness of the
poor, the mournful, the hungry, the meek, the peacemakers, and the
persecuted—for the sake of the call of Jesus. It is the visible righteousness
of those who in following him become the light of the world and the city on a
hill—for the sake of the call of Jesus. The disciples’ righteousness is
“better” than that of the Pharisees in that it rests solely on the call into
the community of Jesus, who alone has fulfilled the law. The disciples’
righteousness really is righteousness, because they themselves now truly do the
will of God and fulfill the law. The righteousness of Christ should not just be
taught, but done. Otherwise, it is no
better than the law which is merely taught, but not obeyed. Everything which
will be said next should be understood in light of this doing of the
righteousness of Christ by the disciples. In a word, this means to follow him.
It is genuine, simple obedience in faith in the righteousness of Christ. The
righteousness of Christ is the new law, the law of Christ.[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
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My wife,
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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), 117–120.
