Waiting For A Harvest - Purity 811
Purity 811 08/16/2022 Purity 811 Podcast
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a beautiful cloud formation and
blue skies over a thriving cornfield comes to us from yours truly as I captured
this scene, and many others, while walking down Waite Road in Easton NY.
While I thought of many things I want to say this
morning, I first have to say that the irony of my wife living on “Waite” Road
hasn’t been lost on me and sometimes I’m reminded at just how “funny” God can
be in terms of where He puts us in our lives.
For those who didn’t know, TammyLyn and I were both
previously married and we were both pretty sure that we would never get married
again but the Lord brought us together and I truly believe that. In
contemplating our friendship and my growing affection for TammyLyn, I got a
sudden realization that “There is no other!” and despite my initial fears and
doubts that figured that it would take about 10 to 15 years for things to
settle with our children and living situations in our individual lives, I
answered my hearts call to make TammyLyn my wife, NOW!, with the understanding
that there would be things to adjust to and some time before we could be together
in one household. So as much as we are
one, as man and wife, we have two households and it will take some time before
we are united in one. So we wait on Waite
Rd. Ha ha.
But we also live and love. We are doing this thing.
Waiting is a big part of our faith life as
Christians, and life in general. In life we will have various trials and times
of uncertainty and waiting will come to everyone whether you have God in your
life or not. But believe me, as someone who spent most of their life doing things my way and waiting on things with
fear, anger, depression, or anxiety, it is much better to be waiting with
someone who not only cares but who is always present, and who is powerful and
can work all things together for your good. That’s right, that’s God.
Although I share a photo of a cornfield today to
represent the fact that we have to wait until the time is right to reap a
harvest from our faithfulness, I tend to think of our faith as a walk. The
demands of our lives generally require us to work and be stewards of the things
that God has entrusted to us as we wait.
Although, we can think of waiting as sitting around,
and I can actually sit and wait when necessary, but because of the demands of
life and because of my personality perhaps, and maybe a lack of patience, I
tend to choose to do things with my “waiting time”.
When I was on a vacation mission trip in Africa, a
few years back the team discovered that the pace of life in Zambia and Zimbabwe
was not the same in the United States. Resources were not as abundant and the
people didn’t seem to have the sense of urgency that our team had to “get ‘er
done”. So many times we found ourselves
waiting.
And I will never forget, what one of our leaders
would invariably say in those in between moments of waiting, He would say: “Surely,
there is SOMETHING we can do!”
While my interior questioner of authority and union
worker, still tenses up at the thought of “busy work” for the sake of “busy
work”, I myself when am faced with times of waiting will seek to do SOMETHING
with the time, rather than just sitting there.
Recently, I found myself waiting for My wife and
step kids as they were shopping at a Target that had a mini StarBucks. I’m not
really a Starbucks guy but I figured that maybe I would sit in the seating area
there but I discovered that people had left a mess on the vacated tables, as if
there were waiters or busboys that would pick up after them. The two Starbucks employees who were working
were swamped and were stuck behind the counter so there was no way that they
were going to be able to clear the tables any time soon.
So as I stood there waiting, the urge to DO WHAT”S
RIGHT or to SURLEY DO SOMETHING, overcame me and suddenly, I found myself
throwing out used coffee cups, food wrappers, and napkins and wiping up spills
to clean up someone else’s mess. The tables
were eventually cleaned and I had a seat for a short time before my family was
ready to leave.
While we could look at our phones, read, or listen
to music in our waiting times, as I have continued to walk in the Spirit, I
have discovered this increasing motivation to “do good works” from time to
time. And even though I may feel that
these things aren’t required or may make me feel awkward, I never regret doing
them.
Because the world is a mess and because our individual
situations aren’t perfect, the simple truth is there is SURELY SOMETHING WE CAN
DO, so if you get an intuition to do something good or to put things in order
when you find yourself waiting, do it. These little things very well could be,
and probably are, the “good works that God has prepared for you to walk into.
Ephesians 2:10 (NKJV)
10 For we are His
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand that we should walk in them.
Sorry guys, the word says it. So more that “just believing”, we should also be seeking those things that the Lord has prepared for us to do.
That “goodness” fruit of the Spirit can be expressed in action. So in times of waiting, think about “killing the time” by doing what’s right, by doing what’s productive, or doing things selflessly for others.
While all human beings will have to wait in life, we might want to consider to answer the call to be “Christians doing” something: to build up our faith, to draw closer to God, or to be His hands and feet to do good works to make the world a slightly better place.
I often think of the Christian faith as being called to walk into the dessert sometimes. To trust the Lord with our very lives and to go in a direction that seems unorthodox and unfruitful. But if you have walked with the Lord and have seen the amazing things He has done that I have, you know that even if He calls you to experience a path of suffering and heartache, it will always be for a purpose and in the end the dessert that you have walked through will be remembered as the pathway that led to an abundant harvest of peace, provision, and joy.
So whether you are waiting on something or are perfectly content with where you are right now, keep walking and talking with God. He has places for you to go, people to meet, and things to do. The question is will you accept His invitations to seek out what He has for you when He suggests that surely there is something for you to do.
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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 40:1 (NLT2)
1 I waited patiently for the LORD to help me, and he turned to me and
heard my cry.
Today’s verse reminds us that when we wait patiently for the Lord
to help us, He will hear our cry.
The implication here is that not only does the Lord hear our cry,
but He listens to our call for help and actually helps us.
As someone who has cried out to God on several occasions and who
has walked in the Spirit for a few years I have to tell you a few things that
will perhaps help the maturity of your faith.
· We don’t know God’s Will.
· God is not a genie in a bottle.
· We don’t get everything we want.
· We can and will suffer in this life, even as Christians.
Although my purpose in writing the blog and doing the
podcast is to encourage people to follow Jesus Christ, these things may not be
very encouraging.
But as someone who avoided the “church” for most of my life, I can
tell you one of the reasons why is because of the disappointments over “unanswered
prayers”.
Also, in light of the unanswered prayers, I found the
encouragements of Christians to “just believe” or to “claim your miracle” as
further reason to doubt the legitimacy of the church that seemed to be just “hoping
and a praying” in blind faith, that looked a lot like religious extremism or
utter lunacy that denied the cold harsh realities of the world. The more
insistent a Christian’s plea to “just pray and believe”, the more I felt that I
“religion” was akin to madness.
Obviously I hadn’t encountered God’s grace in my life yet and
thought that I could figure out the
world with my intelligence and reason alone.
Prayer was unscientific! Things just don’t happen! My haughty unanswered
prayers or open challenges to God to show Himself proved His non-existance!
Plus, if I believed in God – I would have to dogood, and I knew in my heart of
hearts that I wasn’t any good. I thought bad things and liked breaking rules
and getting away with things.
But as “smart” as I was, emotionally I was a mess: angry,
depressed, anxious and I had unsatiable appetites for the things of the flesh
and felt absolutely hopeless when I contemplated my death. I felt guilt. I knew
I did wrong and if there was a God there would be hell to pay.
But when faced with the challenge of successfully completing pole
climbing school for my job, I prayed. I called out to God and even though pride
failed to recognize it at first, He answered my prayer and set on a course that
would lead to me putting my faith in Jesus.
God works in mysterious ways to say the least.
But my point is not that God will answer all your prayers, my
point is that He does hear our cries and even though we may not be able to
receive “our miracle”, the miracle is that we know Him at all.
So even though we don’t know His Will and thus can’t push God’s
hand to do what we want and can’t pray perfectly for it to be done in our lives,
we have to realize that He knows better and that in our salvation, He has
already given us everything we will ever need.
So cry out to the Lord and ask. He will hear you and listen. While I can’t tell will give you whatever you want, I do know because His word says it, He already has, and will work all things together for your good.
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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 Clinton E. Arnold’s
“Powers of Darkness”
As always, I share this information for educational purposes and
encourage all to purchase Clinton Arnold’s books for your own private
study and to support his work. This resource is available on many
websites for less than $20.00.
13
Reality or Myth?
In common parlance the
word myth conveys the idea of
unreality, a story with no factual basis involving human and superhuman
characters having no objective reality. We might say the land of Oz, the wizard
and the wicked witch of the West are mythical because they are imaginary
creations having no verifiable existence. This fact does not imply that the
story has no meaning for us; it certainly does. We can all identify with
Dorothy’s fear of the wicked witch and her desire to return home.
Many would say evil
spirits are mythical in a similar sense. They are imaginary superhuman
characters from a story that has meaning for us, but they should not be
perceived as actual beings possessing a real existence.
In contrast the
apostle Paul never showed any sign of doubt regarding the real existence of the
principalities and powers. He saw them as angelic beings belonging to Satan’s
kingdom. Their aim is to lead humanity away from God through direct influence
on individuals as well as through wielding control over the world religions and
various other structures of our existence.
We cannot forget,
however, that Paul was a man of his times. He lived in a culture, indeed in an
era, that affirmed the existence of the spirit world. It would never have
occurred to a person living in the first century to ask whether or not these
forces were real. People living then were more concerned with how to deal with
the influence of the powers.
Belief in the real
existence of these powers continued through virtually the entire history of the
church, including the Reformation. Martin Luther, like all his contemporaries,
had no doubt about the terrible power of the devil and his hosts of darkness,
as is evident from his classic hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and his many
writings.
The Modern World
View
The
Copernican overthrow of the dominant Ptolemaic view of an earth-centered
universe was the catalyst for a new scientific spirit that swept through Europe
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—an age known as the Enlightenment.
The advances made in the sciences were astounding. They were made possible
through the development of a scientific method based on reason, observation and
experiment.
The thinkers of this
age began to apply this scientific method, not only to science and technology,
but also to the humanities. The enthusiasm for the method produced a distrust
of authority and tradition in all matters of intellectual inquiry. This, of
course, included the traditions of the church and the authority of Scripture.
Consequently, many of the Enlightenment scholars rejected religion, with the
majority becoming deists and some even espousing atheism.
The period brought
about a deep-seated and lasting change in the way we perceive reality in the
West. The new supremacy of a materialistic and rationalistic world view now
called into question the reality of the miraculous and supernatural, even that
which was recorded in Scripture. The references to demons and angels now became
regarded as “myth,” perhaps important for conveying theological truth but
devoid of any historical substance. We continue to live in the shadow of the
Enlightenment. This is why in educational institutions all throughout the West
the idea of the actual existence of evil spirits is disavowed.[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 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]
Clinton E. Arnold, Powers of Darkness:
Principalities & Powers in Paul’s Letters (Downers Grove,
IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 1992), 169–170.
