May is Mental Health Awareness Month - "Talk Saves Lives" - An Introduction to Suicide Prevention - You Tube Presentation.

 

Hello Everyone,   

For those who don't know May is Mental Health Awareness Month and to recognize it I decided to present the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's presentation "Talk Saves Lives" on YouTube. 

In my long walk through trials and errors on the way to finding Christ and the path of Christian Discipleship, I had struggled with suicide at various times in my life and am fully confident that I have victory over the darkness of suicidal ideation because of my faith in Christ.   

After being born again and set free of my addictions and negative mind states I decided to volunteer for the AFSP back in 2018 and was the Walk Chair for the Out of the Darkness Walk  for Columbia & Greene Counties in Upstate NY in 2018 and 2019 raising funds for the cause of suicide prevention.   

The Lord's call on my life to has lead me other endeavors since then and while I am not an active volunteer for the AFSP currently, I still believe in the cause of suicide prevention and decided to share this presentation.   

“Talk Saves Lives”:  An Introduction to Suicide Prevention shares valuable information about suicide prevention and if my presentation even helps one person or encourages one person to join the cause of suicide prevention the time spent this afternoon putting this amateur presentation together will be well worth it.    

Talk Saves Lives Video Presentation on You Tube

If you would like to share the link to this presentation, here it is : https://youtu.be/mSGt1IWVRns 

I share various posts and resources regarding, depression, suicide prevention, grief, and various other resources from a Christian worldview on mt4christ.org 's desktop site.  See the "labels" to research the areas that interest you.  I have found the all the answers to life are provided in the Christian faith but they sometimes are difficult to discern and apply to our lives.  My sharing my testimony and various resources from Christian counselors and theologians is my attempt to share those answers.   

If you our someone you know are struggling with thoughts of suicide: 

To Reach Help call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1 800 273-TALK (8255), or  text TALK to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741.

You can learn more at afsp.org, or by following us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

If you have any questions about your local chapter, our current initiatives, and how you can get involved, go to afsp.org.

The AFSP presentation correctly points out that faith is a powerful weapon in the battle against suicide and I encourage everyone to seek out the help that you need for your particular situation.  

God Bless You All, 

M.T. Clark 

 

The Compass to Guide You on the Path of Christian Discipleship – The Holy Spirit and our Conscience – Purity 717

 The Compass to Guide You on the Path of Christian Discipleship – The Holy Spirit and our Conscience – Purity 717

Purity 717 04/28/2022    Purity 717 Podcast

Good morning,

Today’s photo of the waters of the Colorado River under a cloudless blue sky near Boulder City Nevada comes to us from a friend who recently took an epic trip throughout the southwest which included a kayak tour of the Colorado that took him  all the way to Emerald Cove. 

Well, It’s Thursday again, and I share this photo of a river “pathway” not to encourage you to take the “yellow brick road” to an Emerald City but to encourage you to take the path less traveled by making the daily decision to walk in the Spirit on the path of Christian Discipleship.

What’s that mean? That means I encourage you to do the Lord’s will for your life that is described in His Word, the Holy Bible, which begins with making Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior and continues with the renewing of your mind with the truth of God’s Word and by applying it’s wisdom to your life, not just on Sunday, but every day,  24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, because the value of our faith, of our relationship with God, is only truly “redeemed” when we choose to live it out continuously.

People on the outside of this Christian life, often question why anyone would want to be Christian.  They see Christianity as a set of rules and restrictions and to be a religion of repression. They are spiritual blind to the truth of God’s word that would show them that God’s commandments are put in place to protect us from the things that would harm us or that is wrong.  

I was reading Jay Adams “Competent to Counsel” yesterday and although it was written over 50 years ago, our society still hasn’t learned anything in terms of how we can have “good mental health”, how we can have peace.   Taking on Freud’s view that man’s problems are caused by too strict a conscience, Freud’s superego, and that we need to reject our conscience’s guilt and to just do what we want to be fulfilled, Adams wrote: 

If Freud’s view were correct, namely, that trouble arises whenever the Id has been repressed by an overstrict conscience or Superego, then really our day ought to be a day of widespread mental health rather than a day of unparalleled numbers of personal problems, for ours is not a day of repression, but of permissiveness.

If there was ever a time in which the lid was off, in which there was wide open rebellion against authority and responsibility, ours is that day.

And yet unprecedented numbers are in trouble.

If Freudianism is true, the most immoral people, or at best the most amoral people, should be the healthiest, whereas in fact the opposite is true.

People in mental institutions and people who come to counseling invariably are people with great moral difficulties.

“Moral difficulties” does not always mean sexual violations; that is only one aspect of it.

Immorality of every sort, irresponsibility toward God and man (i.e., the breaking of God’s commandments) is found most prominently among people with personal problems.^[1]

This was 50 years ago! Do you think we have “let the lid off” anymore since then?  We are a more permissive “tolerant” society than we ever have been, and yet mental health problems have only gotten worse.  

“New research from Boston University School of Public Health reveals that the elevated rate of depression has persisted into 2021, and even worsened, climbing to 32.8 percent and affecting 1 in every 3 American adults.” (https://www.bu.edu/articles/2021/depression-rates-tripled-when-pandemic-first-hit/)

“On average, adjusted for age, the annual U.S. suicide rate increased 30% between 2000 and 2020, from 10.4 to 13.5 suicides per 100,000 people. In 2018, 14.2 people per 100,000 died by suicide, the highest rate recorded in more than 30 years.”  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20adjusted%20for%20age,in%20more%20than%2030%20years.)

Hey guys, as our society has become more permissive morally and less “religious”,   depression and suicide rates have increased.  Letting our freak flag fly has not liberated us to the point where there is an increase in happiness and peace but the subsequent moral no man’s land of “anything goes” has caused confusion, depression, and disillusionment because people are discovering that satisfying our selfish and fleshly desires doesn’t bring satisfaction or peace.  

If we have exercised our “freedom” to do what ever we want, why isn’t society overflowing with happiness?

Well, unfortunately, people are living out the consequences of their sins.  Not only does the pleasure dissipate and negative consequences accompany the choice to sin, our consciences – our hearts- suffer because it knows, even if we deny it to everyone , including ourselves, that the way we are living isn’t right.  

We can lie to ourselves and reject the opinions of others, but our hearts were made with God’s law written on them. Our consciences are God given and it should cause us to turn from the things that are we once knew were wrong.  

As a child, I could see that getting drunk “wasn’t right”.  It made people act strange.  But through the influence of society and my own rebellion, I decided to ignore my conscience and changed my mind and suddenly what was “bad” was “good”.  

But as much as I indulged and as much as I loved my addiction to alcohol and other things, even in the midst of them, I knew these things were wrong.  My experience taught me that, but I knew in my heart that the way I lived was wrong.   I was living in “total freedom”, so where was the peace?   

Well, I’ve learned that there is no peace without God and when we think and behave in ways that our contrary to His truth, we suffer and if we are never reconciled with God through faith in Jesus Christ, our suffering never ends.   

But we know the truth. There is a God. He has revealed to us in our hearts and in His word what is right and what is wrong.  While we can deny Him and His tenants for morality, just like gravity, we are still subject to His moral laws which affect our minds, bodies, and emotions. When we separate ourselves from the One who gave us life and violate His commandments we suffer.   

But there is great news. There is hope.  Christ paid the cost on the cross so we could be forgiven of the violations we have made and when we put our faith in Him we receive a new life that gives us the power to listen to our consciences and gives us the power to overcome the sins that so easily beset us.  

When we come to faith in Christ, our hearts – our consciences, are strengthened by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit and we receive the power to obey the Lord and walk away from the darkness of this world.  

So share the good news and keep walking and talking with God. When we are “in this thing” called Christianity, we have the power of God in us to choose what is right and holy and turn from the  things that tempt us and lead to destruction.  Instead of being hopeless in a cycle of condemnation by sinning and confessing, we can follow the “Compass”  of our Holy Spirit empowered conscience to walk out of depression, out of sin, and into the light of the new abundant life that God always wanted us to experience.     

______________________________________________________________

Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”.

This morning’s meditation verse is:

Psalm 25:9 (NLT2)
⁹  He leads the humble in doing right, teaching them his way.

Today’s Bible verse speaks of how the Lord will lead the humble into doing what is right and how He will teach them His way.  

To believe in God and  the gospel of Jesus Christ, we must be humble.  To believe, we have to admit that there is a higher power than us, who has a holy standard for living that we have violated, and that we are powerless to make things right with Him through our own efforts. We have to be humble to ask for forgiveness. We have to be humble to make Christ our Lord and Savior.  

But when we humble ourselves before God by admitting our sins, and by asking for forgiveness, and by making Christ our Lord,  God will lift us up!

Our humble decision to trust in Christ gives us eternal life but it also gives us the opportunity to live a righteous life by receiving the power to learn God’s ways and to apply them to our lives.  

When we humble ourselves, God will lead us to do what is right. 

When we humble ourselves, He teaches us His way.  

So if things have gone astray or if you are feeling you have lost your way humble yourself by calling on the Lord and asking for His help to show you how you can do what is right. If we are humble, He will lead us and He will teach us His way.

 

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.

 

The Christ-Exalting Paradoxes of Life

A life devoted to making much of Christ is costly. And the cost is both a consequence and a means of making much of him. If we do not embrace the path of joy-laden, painful love, we will waste our lives. If we do not learn with Paul the Christ-exalting paradoxes of life, we will squander our days pursuing bubbles that burst. He lived “as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything” (2 Corinthians 6:10). The Calvary road is costly and painful, but it is not joyless.

When we embrace with joy the cost of following Christ, his worth will shine in the world. The cost itself will become a means of making Christ look great. The apostle Paul had one great passion in life. We have seen him say it several ways: to know nothing but Christ and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2); to boast only in the cross (Galatians 6:14).

Paul’s Single Passion in Life and Death

He talked about his great passion another way that shows us how the cost of making much of Christ is also the means. He said to the Philippian church, “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:20–21). Here the question is raised and answered: How do you honor Christ by death? How can the cost of losing everything in this world be a means of making much of Jesus? Let’s listen carefully to Paul. Christ has called us live for his glory and to die for his glory. If we know how to die well, we will know how to live well. This text shows both.

Again we see Paul’s single passion in life—“that … Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.” If Christ is not made much of in our lives, they are wasted. We exist to make him appear in the world as what he really is—magnificent. If our life and death do not show the worth and wonder of Jesus, they are wasted. This is why Paul said that his aim in life and death was “that … Christ … be honored.”

Our Shame and Our Treasure

Notice the unusual way he makes this clear in verse 20: “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed.” Stop here just a moment. Shame is that horrible feeling of guilt or failure when you don’t measure up before people whose approval you want very much. It’s what the little child feels in the Christmas program when he forgets his lines, and the tears well up, and the silence seems eternal, and the other kids snicker brutally. I remember these horrible times. Or shame is what a president feels when the secret tapes are finally played, and the foul language and all the deceit emerges, and he stands disgraced and guilty before the people.

What then is the opposite of shame? It’s when the child remembers the lines and hears the applause. It’s when the president governs well and is reelected. The opposite of being shamed is being honored. Yes, usually. But Paul was a very unusual person. And Christians ought to be very unusual people. For Paul, the opposite of being shamed was not his being honored, but Christ’s being honored through him. “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that … Christ will be honored in my body.”

What you love determines what you feel shame about. If you love for men to make much of you, you will feel shame when they don’t. But if you love for men to make much of Christ, then you will feel shame if he is belittled on your account. And Paul loved Christ more than he loved anything or anyone. “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:7–8).

Whenever something is of tremendous value to you, and you cherish its beauty or power or uniqueness, you want to draw others’ attention to it and waken in them the same joy. That is why Paul’s all-consuming goal in life was for Christ to be magnified. Christ was of infinite value to Paul, and so Paul longed for others to see and savor this value. That is what it means to magnify Christ—to show the magnitude of his value.

Doesn’t Death Make Magnifying God Impossible?

But what if someone objected to Paul at this point and said, “Paul, we see how valuable Christ is to you now—how you enjoy his fellowship, how he gives you a fruitful ministry and delivers your life from spiritual shipwreck. But what will all that mean in the hour of death? Where is the value of Christ then? If being a Christian costs you your life, how will that help you make much of Christ? Won’t that rob you of the very life that can magnify him?”

So Paul adds at the end of verse 20 that his eager expectation is that “Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.” Death is a threat to the degree that it frustrates your main goals. Death is fearful to the degree that it threatens to rob you of what you treasure most. But Paul treasured Christ most, and his goal was to magnify Christ. And he saw death not as a frustration of that goal but as an occasion for its fulfillment.

Life and death! They seem like complete opposites—at great enmity with each other. But for Paul—and for all who share his faith—there is a unity, because the same great passion is fulfilled in both—namely, that Christ be magnified in this body—our bodies—whether by life or by death.

In Philippians 1:21, Paul gives a packed summary statement explaining how he is so hopeful that Christ will be magnified in his living and in his dying: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Then in verses 22–26 Paul explains both halves of this statement so we can see in more detail how Christ is magnified by life and by death.

Let’s take these one at a time.^[2]

---------------------------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 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, Amazon Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartradio, and Audible.com. 

These teachings are also available on the MT4Christ247 You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTxjSNstREpuGWuL0bF3U7w/featured

Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and to be encouraged.

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

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^[1] Jay Edward Adams, Competent to Counsel: Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling (Grand Rapids, MI: Ministry Resources Library, 1986), 13.

^[2] John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 63–66.

Talk Saves Lives and Things Get Better - Purity 704

Talk Saves Lives and Things Get Better -  Purity 704                                 

Purity 704  04/13/2022   Purity 704 Podcast

Good morning,

Today’s photo a desert peak in the background of cacti, and some purple and yellow desert fauna underneath a clear blue sky comes to us from a friend who was traveling out west and who captured this sight last Friday at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix Arizona.      

Well, It’s Wednesday and I thought that this desert peak was an adequate photo to  represent reaching the “hump” of the work week and the mention of the city of Phoenix could help us to rise from the ashes and take flight as the bearers of hope as we progress through Holy Week to declare the good news of life everlasting for all those who put their faith in Jesus Christ who rose from the dead.  And even though the desert could be a dry and lifeless place, the green, yellow, and purple colors of the desert fauna in today’s photo shows us that we can survive and thrive even in hostile environments and difficult circumstances.    

The world is a hard place and last night I was reminded that many people are struggling just to survive in it.  I worked part time as a psychiatric technician for a Mobile Crisis Assessment Team for Columbia and Greene Counties and I see that the greatest toll of the consequences of our decadent, drug fueled, confused, and godless society is often paid by the youth, as we had to offer support and counsel last night in two cases that involved children with thoughts of suicide.  

In one case, a child was living in an environment where substance abuse, domestic squabbles, and drug dealing where the soup du jour of everyday life. This neglect of this home environment and pressures to conform to the images and pressures on social media had caused a twelve year old girl to tearfully admit to school officials that they had a specific plan to take their life and had been virtually starving themselves without their parent’s knowledge.    

In another case, a male teenager’s confusion over their gender identity and other life pressures that come from school and a family separated by divorce had caused them to google “how to make a noose” and to watch videos on YouTube that demonstrated how one could take their life by hanging.    

But luckily, talk saves lives and these two children’s plans were discovered and they were being supported by school staff, mental health professionals, and family members to get the help they needed in crisis.  

I spoke to the male teenager’s parent to assure them that being present and showing loving concern for their son and to utilize the network of support that was available to them was the way to keep their child safe and to help them through this difficult period.  Knowing that there is a problem is the first step in solving it and now that the darkness of this young man’s depression had been exposed to the light, his family, friends, and concerned teachers and mental health professionals can give him the support he needs.   

And in the other case, I checked in with this twelve year old girl to make sure she was eating and was doing ok after revealing her secret pain.  I asked the standard questions about suicidal ideation and making sure she had a safety plan in place to make sure she had means to cope and to seek help if her thoughts turned dark but then I was just sort of at a loss for what to say.  Not surprisingly, she wasn’t very talkative and there was a big silence as I struggled to think of what to say to this young girl to give her assurance and hope.   

What does a 50 year old stranger have to say to someone in her position?  

Honestly for a moment I was at a complete loss as to what to say but then I was moved to assure her that things could get better by sharing a bit of my story with her.  

I confessed to her that while I didn’t know what it was like to be in her shoes, I could relate to her difficulties of being a middle schooler with thoughts of suicide.  I shared how I was an overweight kid and how I didn’t really have any good friends during those middle school years and how I had suffered from depression and thoughts of taking my life. I confessed that my father had guns and that I had a vague plan of taking my life with one of them.  I confessed that I didn’t go through with it because I was afraid to die and I only wanted to not feel so bad anymore.  I had made vague statements of killing myself and my parents had chastised me for having those thoughts and even though their concern wasn’t a hallmark moment their words were enough to stop those thoughts of suicide and help me past my crisis. 

 I also shared about the difficulties of growing up in the midst of Covid-19 and shared the story of how my son struggled with purpose when the pandemic shut down his dream of starring in the spring musical and in person meetings causing him to need to complete his graduating requirement via zoom sessions of summer school.   But I shared that even though He struggled with depression and purposelessness for a season, things got better. He enrolled in college and ended up with a starring roll in last autumn’s production of Little Women at Hudson Valley Community college.  

My basic meandering message was intended to assure this young girl that things could and would get better if she just did what she needed to do each day to learn and to grow into the person she wanted to be, regardless of the difficulties at home or in the world.  

My conversation showed me that there was a purpose to my pain. Now that I survived it, all these years later I could share about overcoming it, and I could share my son’s story too, and use them to give someone hope to overcome their crisis.   

The Lord calls us to represent His kingdom on earth by loving our neighbors as ourselves and in these two instances I feel that my simple presence, advice, and testimony was used by the Lord to show these hurting people the love He has for us even though I didn’t specifically mention God.  God gave us life and wants us to live.  He recognizes the difficulties of a world that is broken by sin but He calls us to follow Him to overcome it and He uses us to help others to see the goodness of life and the way out of the darkness.   

So remind yourself, that although you may be struggling that you are not alone.  Others have been through similar struggles and some are suffering through worse situations right now. But none of it is without a purpose. These situations should draw us to seek the meaning, purpose, and comfort that comes from God and our going through trials should cause us to develop patience and empathy for others.  

When we suffer and survive, we can rise from the ashes and use our testimony to show others that there is a reason to live and a means to make it through. So celebrate your life today by thanking God for bringing you through all your trials and for giving you the opportunity today to rejoice and to possibly one day use your story to show someone else that there is hope.      

To paraphrase from Brandon Lake and Elevation Worship’s song “Grave into Gardens” Our Lord is “the God of the mountain and the God of the valley, and there’s not a place that His mercy and grace won’t find us again.  So keep walking and talking with God and reach out to others to let them know that life is worth living and if they way the way of goodness and righteousness they too can overcome even the darkest night of the soul.

______________________________________________________________

Today’s Bible verses comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”.

This morning’s meditation verses are:

Luke 6:38 (NLT2)
³⁸  Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.”

Today’s verse are the words of Jesus that tell us to give and we will receive and He assures us that we will receive far more than we give.  

Is Jesus some prosperity gospel preacher who is telling us to “sow a seed” to receive an abundance of wealth.  

I don’t think so.  Jesus didn’t live in luxury.   No, to discern the meaning of a verse in the Bible we should always consider the context.  And if we look at the preceding verse we learn that Christ was talking about not judging people and forgiving them.   

So when Christ says to give here, we could easily make the case that Christ is saying to liberally give forgiveness to others. 

Did your pastor not teach you that?  

Look at the immediate context and the following verses.  Nothing about tithes and offerings. Nothing about wealth and prosperity.   Just a whole lot on forgiveness, not judging others, and being more concerned with our personal sin than others.   

So take that, press it down, shake it all about, and let the humility of forgiving others and conforming yourself to the image of Christ by repenting of your personal failures and sins run over in your life. 

We have to know that Christ calls us to follow Him. He doesn’t call us to spend money to earn money.  He calls us to give of ourselves to His kingdom by forgiving others and by becoming more like Him.  

Know His word and question anyone who would use this verse to motivate you to give financially with the vague promise of material or spiritual blessings.   Our faith calls us to follow Jesus not to play some giving slot machine of spirirual or financial materialism.  

God wants us to give ourselves to Him and to others.  So ante up and invest yourself into sanctifying yourself and serving others by showing them the love of God here on earth as it is in heaven and you will receive far more than you will ever give.   

 

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.

The Man with Long Hair and Knickers

But God was graciously posting compelling warnings along the way. In the fall of 1965 Francis Schaeffer delivered a week of lectures at Wheaton College that in 1968 became the book, The God Who Is There. The title shows the stunning simplicity of the thesis. God is there. Not in here, defined and shaped by my own desires. God is out there. Objective. Absolute Reality (which Schaeffer pronounced something like “Reawity”). All that looks like reality to us is dependent on God. There is creation and Creator, nothing more. And creation gets all its meaning and purpose from God.

Here was an absolutely compelling road sign. Stay on the road of objective truth. This will be the way to avoid wasting your life. Stay on the road that your fiery evangelist father was on. Don’t forsake the plaque on your kitchen wall. Here was weighty intellectual confirmation that life would be wasted in the grasslands of existentialism. Stay on the road. There is Truth. There is a Point and Purpose and Essence to it all. Keep searching. You will find it.

I suppose there is no point lamenting that one must spend his college years learning the obvious—that there is Truth, that there is objective being and objective value. Like a fish going to school to learn that there is water, or a bird that there is air, or a worm that there is dirt. But it seems that, for the last two hundred years or so, this has been the main point of good education. And its opposite is the essence of bad education. So I don’t lament the years I spent learning the obvious.

The Man Who Taught Me to See

Indeed, I thank God for professors and writers who devoted tremendous creative energies to render credible the existence of trees and water and souls and love and God. C. S. Lewis, who died the same day as John F. Kennedy in 1963 and who taught English at Oxford, walked up over the horizon of my little brown path in 1964 with such blazing brightness that it is hard to overstate the impact he had on my life.

Someone introduced me to Lewis my freshman year with the book, Mere Christianity. For the next five or six years I was almost never without a Lewis book near at hand. I think that without his influence I would not have lived my life with as much joy or usefulness as I have. There are reasons for this.

He has made me wary of chronological snobbery. That is, he showed me that newness is no virtue and oldness is no vice. Truth and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valuable for being modern. This has freed me from the tyranny of novelty and opened for me the wisdom of the ages. To this day I get most of my soul-food from centuries ago. I thank God for Lewis’s compelling demonstration of the obvious.

He demonstrated for me and convinced me that rigorous, precise, penetrating logic is not opposed to deep, soul-stirring feeling and vivid, lively—even playful—imagination. He was a “romantic rationalist.” He combined things that almost everybody today assumes are mutually exclusive: rationalism and poetry, cool logic and warm feeling, disciplined prose and free imagination. In shattering these old stereotypes, he freed me to think hard and to write poetry, to argue for the resurrection and compose hymns to Christ, to smash an argument and hug a friend, to demand a definition and use a metaphor.

Lewis gave me an intense sense of the “realness” of things. The preciousness of this is hard to communicate. To wake up in the morning and be aware of the firmness of the mattress, the warmth of the sun’s rays, the sound of the clock ticking, the sheer being of things (“quiddity” as he calls it). He helped me become alive to life. He helped me see what is there in the world—things that, if we didn’t have, we would pay a million dollars to have, but having them, ignore. He made me more alive to beauty. He put my soul on notice that there are daily wonders that will waken worship if I open my eyes. He shook my dozing soul and threw the cold water of reality in my face, so that life and God and heaven and hell broke into my world with glory and horror.

He exposed the sophisticated intellectual opposition to objective being and objective value for the naked folly that it was. The philosophical king of my generation had no clothes on, and the writer of children’s books from Oxford had the courage to say so.

You can’t go on “seeing through” things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to “see through” first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To “see through” all things is the same as not to see.

Oh, how much more could be said about the world as C. S. Lewis saw it and the way he spoke. He has his flaws, some of them serious. But I will never cease to thank God for this remarkable man who came onto my path at the perfect moment.

A Fiancée Is a Stubbornly Objective Fact

There was another force that solidified my unwavering belief in the unbending existence of objective reality. Her name was Noël Henry. I fell in love with her in the summer of 1966. Way too soon probably. But it has turned out okay; I still love her. Nothing sobers a wandering philosophical imagination like the thought of having a wife and children to support.

We were married in December 1968. It is a good thing to do one’s thinking in relation to real people. From that moment on, every thought has been a thought in relationship. Nothing is merely an idea, but an idea that bears on my wife, then later, on my five children. I thank God for the parable of Christ and the church that I have been obliged to live these thirty-five years. There are lessons in life—the unwasted life—that I would probably never have learned without this relationship (just as there are lessons in lifelong singleness that will probably be learned no other way).

I Bless You, Mono, for My Life

In the fall of 1966 God was closing in with an ever narrowing path for my life. When he made his next decisive move, Noël wondered where I had gone. The fall semester had started, and I did not show up in classes or in chapel. Finally she found me, flat on my back with mononucleosis in the health center, where I lay for three weeks. The life plan that I was so sure of four months earlier unraveled in my fevered hands.

In May I had felt a joyful confidence that my life would be most useful as a medical doctor. I loved biology; I loved the idea of healing people. I loved knowing, at last, what I was doing in college. So I quickly took general chemistry in summer school so I could catch up and take organic chemistry that fall.

Now with mono, I had missed three weeks of organic chemistry. There was no catching up. But even more important, Harold John Ockenga, then pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, was preaching in chapel each morning during the spiritual emphasis week. I was listening on WETN, the college radio station. Never had I heard exposition of the Scriptures like this. Suddenly all the glorious objectivity of Reality centered for me on the Word of God. I lay there feeling as if I had awakened from a dream, and knew, now that I was awake, what I was to do.

Noël came to visit, and I said, “What would you think if I didn’t pursue a medical career but instead went to seminary?” As with every other time I’ve asked that kind of question through the years, the answer was, “If that’s where God leads you, that’s where I’ll go.” From that moment on I have never doubted that my calling in life is to be a minister of the Word of God.^[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 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, Amazon Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartradio, and Audible.com. 

These teachings are also available on the MT4Christ247 You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTxjSNstREpuGWuL0bF3U7w/featured

Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and to be encouraged.

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] John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 18–22.

Take My Life - Eyes on the Sky to Die? –Purity 685

Take My Life  -  Eyes on the Sky to Die? –Purity 685

Purity 685 03/22/2022  Purity 685 Podcast

Good morning,

Today’s photo of the view of the sky and several palm trees comes to us from a friend’s recent visit to Florida’s Treasure Coast.  I am sure the view of the ocean must have been nice that day, but our friend had the presence of mind to look up and realized that the vertical view was worthy of capturing too.    

Well, Happy Tuesday, while I am rejoicing this morning over the fact that, if the Lord wills it, I will be reunited with my wife this evening at our countryside home because I have Wednesday off from my “day job” I have to admit that I am feeling the after affects of being “on the go” and working nearly 16 hours yesterday.  With that lament you may suspect that it was a “bad day” but on the contrary while the day was long and filled with activity none of it took my peace away. 

My secret, of course, is that I “prayed without ceasing” by keeping a running dialog with the Lord through out the day to ask Him to go before me, to be with me, to show me the way to go and to inquire of why somethings had to be the way they were.  I also thanked Him for being there, for showing me what I needed to see, and for directing my path to see some wonderful sights and to be used to give some people comfort.  

Through my job with the phone company, I was able to resolve a few people’s telecommunications problems. I fixed ‘em all, and I also got to see a whole lot of real estate of up State New York as my tasks sent me far and wide under yesterday’s blue skies. Throughout the day, I thanked God for the bright although windy spring day and for the resolvable problems I encountered along the way.   

Those days are not typical in my line of business, so I was thankful and it was with a overall attitude of satisfaction and peace that I went into my second job as a psych tech for mobile crisis assessment team.  When you are helping people in crisis, you have to put your problems aside, so I was happy that I didn’t have any when I started my shift at MCAT.  

I was reminded last night that not all conversations with God are as jovial as mine were throughout the day.  Last night, our team was dispatched to assess a young woman who had made suicidal statements and she admitted to us that because of the stress in her life she had been continually asking God to take her life. 

Faced with the stress of broken relationships, financial hardship, the responsibility of raising her young children, this young woman had made inquires to friends to take care of her kids “when she was gone” causing her mother to request the assessment.  The good news is that she wasn’t alone, her mother had made the right call, and now she can have a network of support to help her with her problems.  

As vastly different as I am from this young woman, I could really relate to her story because there were times in my life when the stresses of having to transition to adulthood and rise to the challenges of supporting my family and raising young children had brought me to the brink of suicide. 

That stress of being a “grown up in the real world” is rough and I remember how my feelings of inadequacy filled me with hopelessness that filled my youth with destructive behaviors and a pretty consistent death wish. 

The wish to not “grow up” is not just for “toys ‘r us kids” as the stress of “adulting” can cause us to call on God to enact a “final solution” that will end our pain and send us to heaven.   These life responsibilities don’t end and if we don’t learn to manage our stress and come into harmony with the realities of life these “death wishes” can be a cyclical phenomenon that can repeat throughout our lives.  

The world’s answer to focus on our careers or families can work when things are running smoothly but it can be the cause of the loss of our hope if things in those areas go awry.  The failure of the American dream to work in our lives can cause us to shout out to heaven to end it all.   

So while this young woman’s dreams have seemed to have failed her and she had been asking God to take her life, I know that God used her mother and the Mobile Crisis Assessment Team to save it. 

Sometimes our problems can seem so big that we can’t see a way past them or don’t think we have the strength or capabilities to overcome them but the Lord wants us to live. He gave us life with the purpose to know Him, to love Him, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  

So last night the mental health agency that was created to help the neighbors of our local community answered a cry for help that was sent in God’s direction and even though this woman’s struggles aren’t over, we left her with the hope that comes from knowing you are not alone and that there are others that will help you in your time of need.      

So I don’t know where you are today, but it is possible that you are in a season where the stress is high and you have thoughts that tell you it would just be better to die.  But I am here to tell you that those thoughts are a lie, your death won’t make things better for the ones you leave behind. God created you and placed you where you are in life for a purpose: to love those around you.  

So instead of asking the Lord to take your life to make you die, I would like to encourage you to ask the Lord to take your life to make you live.  

Focusing on the world can be pretty depressing and we can instinctively call on God to take us out of it, but He is the one who put us in it and He knows that if you walk with Him you can find the meaning and purpose to your life and live in the peace that goes beyond all understanding that He has for you.  

So look to the sky and tell the Lord that you know in your heart that He is there. Say a prayer to Him and ask Jesus to be your Lord and Savior so you can be at peace with the Lord and enjoy the new eternal and abundant life that the Lord wants you to have.   

Be real and honest in your decision to let the Lord “take your life” and to use it for His glory.  When we trust in God we can overcome “the impossible” and we can face each new day with hope because we know that we are not alone because He will never leave us or forsake us and that some how and in some way, the Lord will help us in our struggles because our hearts instinctively reach out to Him in our darkest hours.  

So keep walking and talking with God. I know for a fact that if you do, He will see you through.  He will lead you out of the darkness and into the hope for today and tomorrow.  And if you keep walking with Him, one day you will reach out and show another lost soul the way into His mercy, grace, and peace.

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If you are interested in taking an online course with Freedom in Christ Ministries below you will find the course options for our Spring Session. The classes will meet for 1.5-2 hours once a week for 12 weeks starting the first full week of April. Our prayer is that you will be able to set aside time for one of these wonderful courses. They truly are life changing!

 

Spring registration is now open! We are offering these times.

1.     Women’s Group, Starting Wednesday, April 6 at 10:00 AM EDT.

2.     Women’s Group, Starting Friday, April 8 at 10:30 AM EDT.

3.     Men’s Group, Starting Tuesday, April 5 at 7:00 PM EDT.

4.     Men's Group, Starting Thursday, April 7 at 6:30 PM EDT.

5.     CO-ED SPANISH SPEAKING Group, Starting Tuesday, April 5 at 7:00 PM EDT.

6.     CO-ED Group, Starting Thursday, April 7 at 7:00 PM EDT.

 

If you are interested in taking the Freedom in Christ Course, please click the Sign-up Form link below to register for your desired course time.

Sign-up Form

 

We encourage you to order your books now through the FICM online Bookstore at Freedominchrist.com. You will need the Freedom in Christ Course Participant’s Guide and The Steps to Freedom in Christ booklet. 

 

For the SPANISH participant's book click here. For the SPANISH Steps to Freedom click here or search SPG004-1 in the bookstore search bar.

                       

All materials and shipping should cost you no more than $25.

 

Once registration has closed, you will receive an introduction email confirming your course time and giving you additional information about your instructor and how the course works.

  

Sign up and order your books today! Class registration will close on Sunday, March 27

______________________________________________________________________

 

Today’s Bible verse come to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”.

This morning’s meditation verse is :

James 1:4 (NKJV)
⁴  But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing..

Today’s Bible verse encourages us to grow in patience to the point where we can see that the Lord has given us all we need.  

Okay, this verse is speaking to the church, meaning you who are in a relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ.  I remind us all of that because the practice of patience in that context is the only way we will experience being “perfect and complete”. 

Colossians 2:10 tells us we are “complete in Him”, meaning Jesus.  Sorry Jerry Maguire, only Jesus completes us.   

Christ makes us complete, but we don’t always realize that. Our situation on earth can make us feel far from perfect and can make us feel that we lack a whole lot of things. 

But when we go through trials and we patiently lean on the Lord for His strength and wisdom, we can experience “patience’s perfect work” of coming to the realization that we are undoubtedly a Christian, because of our committed trust in Him through the hard times that would want to cause us to go into despair, and that means that we have all the promises of God.

Our patience in our trials, that is born of our faith in God, can give us the “perfect and complete” understanding that we are indeed members of God’s royal family and that means that we lack nothing!

Our faith in Christ and our perseverance in trusting in Him. even during the hard times, shows we really are “in Christ” and it is only through Him that we could be “perfect and complete”.  

Today’s verse is pointing to our growing into mature Christians that have the assurance of our salvation and the assurance of our continuous and unbreakable relationship with God, and because of that relationship, we are complete, perfect, and lack nothing.  

So rejoice because the Lord has called you to walk with Him forever and every step we take in His direction that we make is another leap into the complete peace that He has for us and that He wants us to know perfectly.   

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 June Hunt’s Overeating: Freedom from Food Fixation.  

As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to purchase June Hunt’s  books for your own private study and to support his work.  This resource is available on many websites for less than $5.00.

III. CAUSES

Food … can function like a drug.

Food can be eaten in an attempt to numb us from pain, thereby turning necessary sustenance into a form of solace. The term “comfort food” identifies its role in our lives … to console.

But it’s pacifying ability isn’t permanent—the “fix” is only fleeting—because only a short time after eating, we can find ourselves rummaging through cupboards and cabinets, raiding the refrigerator … again. As with drugs, food can become an addiction, consuming our thoughts … preoccupying us with when and where we’ll get the chance to eat again.

Jesus instead offers food for both the soul and the spirit that will deeply satisfy, thereby minimizing the fixation on our physical appetites. He calls Himself “the bread of life,” the only One who can provide lasting spiritual sustenance and can shift our focus from what’s in the fridge to what’s in His Word. To be totally filled, to have your thirst fully quenched, heed Jesus’ words.…

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

(John 6:35)

In reality, no snack food can create an obsession. (Manufacturers only wish they could make that claim.) The causes for compulsive overeating are much more complex and deep-rooted. Compulsive eating for many people is not based on physical hunger, but on emotional hunger, a craving for the love and gratification they missed during their childhood.

As you search for the truth about your past and see within your heart the truth about your present, honest answers can be the first step toward healing, as confirmed by Scripture.…

“You desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place.”

(Psalm 51:6)

A. What Are Situational Setups for Overeating?

Cultural trends from country to country can lead to situational setups for overeating.

In Egypt, considered the 5th most overweight nation in the world, cultural taboos inhibit women from exercising or playing sports. So rather than reaching for a tennis racket, Egyptian women may be more prone to reach for another plate of food. Obesity among Egyptian women is particularly high.

And a study in New Zealand concluded that children who spent the greatest amount of time watching television were at a far higher risk for developing adult obesity than children who viewed little television. A sedentary lifestyle can be a situational setup for overeating … and can become your “master,” when instead God wants to be your Master.…

“If you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

(Genesis 4:7)

Other setups include …

•     Childhood Circumstances

—   Overweight parents (modeling poor eating patterns)

—   Rejection (using food to mask emotional pain)

—   Sexual abuse (gaining weight to appear unattractive and to insulate inner self)

—   Verbal/emotional abuse (eating to soothe poor self-image)

—   Deprivation (turning to food as a source of security)

•     Physical Dynamics

—   Less active lifestyle (discontinuing student P.E. classes, changing jobs, retirement, becoming physically disabled)

—   Childbirth (gaining weight during pregnancy)

—   Hormonal changes with aging (lessening of metabolism affecting the rate the body burns fat)

—   Underactive thyroid gland (having a hypothyroid condition that decreases production of fat burning hormones)

—   Medications that cause weight gain (taking steroids, certain antidepressants, or hormones)

—   Genetic factors or chemical imbalances in the brain

—   Abnormal functioning of hypothalamus region of the brain, which controls appetite

•     Emotional State

—   Depression (eating for emotional comfort)

—   Grief (relying on food to replace feelings of emptiness)

—   Anxiety (focusing on food to calm the nerves)

—   Loneliness (looking to food to compensate for lack of companionship)

—   Current abuse (feeling out of control except for being able to choose food to eat)

—   Substituting one bad habit for another (replacing smoking with overeating)

•     Relational Patterns

—   Business engagements (conducting business meetings over a meal)

—   Social gatherings (fellowshipping around food)

—   Busy schedule (eating out or on the go rather than cooking healthily at home)

—   Boredom (preparing and eating meals to help pass the time)

—   Celebrating (using food as a reward)

•     Decision Making

—   Weak impulse control (not saying no to the enjoyment of excess food)

—   Poor judgment (not considering size of portions)

—   Family, peer, and cultural pressure (not wanting to “hurt people’s feelings”)

—   Consumption of too much alcohol (not limiting the high calorie content of alcohol)

—   Conclusion of a diet (not realizing healthy eating is a way of life)

—   Substituting one bad habit for another (replacing smoking with overeating)

Whatever situations from the past served to set you up to be an overeater, you are no longer living in the past and you have the power to break the hold those situations have on you today. Even if your circumstances haven’t changed, you have. You are no longer a child but an adult. You are no longer powerless but powerful. You are no longer unable to choose for yourself but free to exercise your will. You can walk in freedom from overeating.…

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

(Galatians 5:1)^[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 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, Amazon Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartradio, and Audible.com. 

These teachings are also available on the MT4Christ247 You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTxjSNstREpuGWuL0bF3U7w/featured

Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and to be encouraged.

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] June Hunt, Biblical Counseling Keys on Overeating: Freedom from Food Fixation (Dallas, TX: Hope For The Heart, 2008), 19–21.