Memorial Day – The Incredible Value of Life and the Way to Everlasting Life– Purity 743

Memorial Day – The Incredible Value of Life and the Way to Everlasting Life– Purity 743

Purity 743 05/28/2022 Purity 743 Podcast

Good morning,

Today’s photo of sunset over the Saint Sebastian River in Sebastian Florida comes to us from a friend who shared this pic back on April 29^th with the comment: “Fire in the Sky”.  

Well it’s Saturday of Memorial Weekend and even though I have to work today I am still happy for the long weekend and in light of the significance of the holiday that we are celebrating I am by no means complaining.  

I recently saw a cartoon on social media that I am sharing on the blog today that depicts a person filling their gas tank and looking over a cemetery with tombstones emblazoned with epitaphs such as “Normandy”, “Okinawa”, “Pearl Harbor” “Korea” “Viet Nam” “Iraq” and “Afghanistan” and many others, with the character stating “I’m not going to complain about the high cost of anything this weekend.” reminding us all that there have been many who paid the ultimate cost of their lives in the service of our country.   

Credit: Joe Heller

In light of the cost, others have paid for the service to our country, the inflation that we have been experiencing seems like a burden we can bear. The lives paid in service to our country puts our immediate concerns in perspective when we consider the fleeting nature but immense value of our human lives.  Remembering the loss of life that this holiday celebrates helps us to see the big picture.    

Our lives are more important that money and the Lord considered us all worth the cost of the life of His beloved Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  

As we remember the men and women, who died in the service of our country we can have mixed feelings of gratitude, sadness, and fear.  

We can be grateful because their lives were sacrificed for the greater good of our country and in the name of freedom that they fought to win our maintain. 

We can be sad because the lives were ended prematurely and the gift of the individuals who died to our communities and families were also cut short.  

And we may fear for the departed because even though the dead will be given honor this weekend in our country, their lives may have been lived in vain if their souls were not reconciled to God.  This fear can only be quenched with the certainty that God knows all, is merciful, and never gets anything wrong.  

Service to a country in and of itself won’t be honored by God. Noble deeds done for an evil cause are still evil. Evil deeds done in the name of a noble cause still need to be forgiven. Our works as noble as they may be is not what saves us.

While service men and women can be said to have died for our freedom and we should be thankful for their service, only faith in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross will give us  ultimate freedom from sin and death.  Faith in Christ alone will reconcile us to God and save us from His wrath.  Christ frees us from the just penalty of our sin and gives us everlasting life. 

So as much as we honor the departed this weekend, we should always be aware of the big picture and share the good news Jesus to share God’s love and the freedom that will endure for all of eternity.

No matter what country we hail from we will all answer the Lord and we must be right with Him. 

One way we can know the Lord’s character and plans for our lives is through His word. This morning my Bible study covered Psalm 103 and I am sharing it to try to reveal more of that big picture, that looks beyond the nations of this world and focuses on the One who created us in His image and wishes to redeem our lives through the gift of His Son.  

Psalm 103:1-22 (NKJV) says:
¹  Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name!
²  Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits:
³  Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases,
⁴  Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies,
⁵  Who satisfies your mouth with good things, So that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
⁶  The LORD executes righteousness And justice for all who are oppressed.
⁷  He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel.
⁸  The LORD is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy.
⁹  He will not always strive with us, Nor will He keep His anger forever.
¹⁰  He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor punished us according to our iniquities.
¹¹  For as the heavens are high above the earth, So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him;
¹²  As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
¹³  As a father pities his children, So the LORD pities those who fear Him.
¹⁴  For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.
¹⁵  As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
¹⁶  For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, And its place remembers it no more.
¹⁷  But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting On those who fear Him, And His righteousness to children's children,
¹⁸  To such as keep His covenant, And to those who remember His commandments to do them.
¹⁹  The LORD has established His throne in heaven, And His kingdom rules over all.
²⁰  Bless the LORD, you His angels, Who excel in strength, who do His word, Heeding the voice of His word.
²¹  Bless the LORD, all you His hosts, You ministers of His, who do His pleasure.
²²  Bless the LORD, all His works, In all places of His dominion. Bless the LORD, O my soul!

So this weekend remember and honor the sacrifices of those who died for our country but never lose sight of the big picture and seek to Bless the Lord, o my soul, by walking and talking with God every day to stay close to Him and to know His peace and by sharing the good news of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that can set us all free.

 

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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:

John 3:16-17 (NLT2)
¹⁶  “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
¹⁷  God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

Today’s Bible verse is the good news of Jesus Christ and reminds us of God’s mercy. 

The purpose of Christ’s first coming was to pay for our sins on the cross.  Although He was holy Christ didn’t come to judge us but He did implore people to repent and “sin no more” and to believe in Him.

Faith in Christ gives us freedom from sin and death.  We receive eternal life and a new power to turn from our sins in the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.  

In Christ, we are forgiven and we become new creations as we are adopted into God’s royal family when we put our faith in Jesus.

The contemplation of death and judgement fill us with fear but God made a way for us to be saved and we need only seek it and agree with it by confessing Jesus as our Lord and Savior to receive it.  

I was lost but now I am found and I pray that we who have placed in Jesus rejoice over salvation and endeavor to share the love of God by encouraging others to put their faith in Christ.

 

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.

9 - The Majesty of Christ in Missions and Mercy—A Plea to This Generation

God is closing in on some of you. He is like the “Hound of Heaven” who means to make you far happier in some dangerous and dirty work. Missionaries and ministers of mercy don’t come from nowhere. They come from people like you, stunned by the glory of God and stopped in your tracks. Sometimes it happens when you are going in exactly the opposite direction.

How God Caught Adoniram Judson for Burma

That’s the way it was with Adoniram Judson, the first overseas missionary from America, who sailed with his wife at age twenty-three on February 17, 1812. They had been married twelve days. He spent the rest of his life, until 1850, “suffering yet always rejoicing” to bring Burma under the sway of Christ and make the people glad in God forever. But first God had to turn him around, and he did it in a way that so stunned Judson, he never forgot the providence of God in his conversion.

The son of a pastor, he was a brilliant boy. His mother taught him to read in one week when he was three to surprise his father when he came home from a trip. When he was sixteen he entered Rhode Island College (later Brown University) as a sophomore and graduated at the top of his class three years later in 1807.

The Detour from God

What his godly parents did not know was that Adoniram was being lured away from the faith by a fellow student named Jacob Eames who was a Deist. By the time Judson’s college career was finished, he had no Christian faith. He kept this concealed from his parents until his twentieth birthday, August 9, 1808, when he broke their hearts with his announcement that he had no faith and that he wanted to write for the theater and intended to go to New York, which he did six days later on a horse his father gave him as part of his inheritance.

It did not prove to be the life of his dreams. He attached himself to some strolling players and, as he said later, lived “a reckless, vagabond life, finding lodgings where he could, and bilking the landlord where he found opportunity.” The disgust with what he found there was the beginning of several remarkable providences. God was closing in on Adoniram Judson.

He went to visit his Uncle Ephraim in Sheffield but found there instead “a pious young man” who amazed him by being firm in his Christian convictions without being “austere and dictatorial.” Strange that he should find this young man there instead of the uncle he sought.

The Unforgettable Night

The next night he stayed in a small village inn where he had never been before. The innkeeper apologized that his sleep might be interrupted because there was a man critically ill in the next room. Through the night Judson heard comings and goings and low voices and groans and gasps. It bothered him to think that the man next to him may not be prepared to die. He wondered about himself and had terrible thoughts of his own dying. He felt foolish because good Deists weren’t supposed to have these struggles.

When he was leaving in the morning he asked if the man next door was better. “He is dead,” said the innkeeper. Judson was struck with the finality of it all. On his way out he asked, “Do you know who he was?” “Oh yes. Young man from the college in Providence. Name was Eames, Jacob Eames.”

Judson could hardly move. He stayed there for hours pondering death and eternity. If his friend Eames were right, then this was a meaningless event. But Judson could not believe it: “That hell should open in that country inn and snatch Jacob Eames, his dearest friend and guide, from the next bed—this could not, simply could not, be pure coincidence.” God was real. And he was pursuing Adoniram Judson. God knew the man he wanted to reach the Burmese people.^[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), 155–157.

Seeing, Feeling, and Enduring the Wind - The Full Acceptance of the Mystery – Purity 742

 Seeing, Feeling, and Enduring the Wind - The Full Acceptance of the Mystery – Purity 742

Purity 742 05/27/2022  Purity 742 Podcast

Good morning,

Today’s short video, also shared on YouTube, of weeds being moved by the wind as I take my canine companion, Harley for a walk was recorded yesterday as we walked along Waite Road near my country side home. 

The strong wind blowing the weeds, and a recent teaching at my local church on the Holy Spirit,  reminded me of Jesus’ words in

John 3:5-8 (NKJV) where He said:
⁵  … "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. ⁶  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷  Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' ⁸  The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit."   

For those who don’t know, the mysterious statement regarding being “born in the Spirit” is quite simple. Those who put their faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior are born of God (1 John 5:1) , are given eternal life (John 3:16), receive the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38. Rom 8:9 ) and are simultaneously sealed by God (Eph 1:13-14, 4:30).  Every person who makes Jesus their Lord and Savior receives the Holy Spirit when their faith in Him and are guaranteed a place in God’s family and eternal kingdom for all time, for there is nothing that can separate us from His love when we become “born again”, when we become “born of the Spirit”.  

But that is just the beginning folks.  Just like the wind blows in today’s video, after we put our faith in Jesus Christ we will feel and see the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. 

After we come to faith in Christ and decide to follow Him with our lives, we can feel the Holy Spirit in our lives, primarily through the joy of our salvation. When we put our faith in Christ, we have joy because we know that we have been forgiven, we have peace with God, we are made His children, and we need never fear death or God’s wrath again.  If we abide in the truth of who we are in Christ, the joy of our salvation can be a continual well spring of hope and motivation to live the Christian life.

Another way we can feel the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives isn’t warm and fuzzy.  After becoming “born of the Spirit”, we can feel convicted when we think and act in ways that are contrary to God’s way. Even though we have the assurance of our salvation and the forgiveness of our sins, somehow the sins we were very comfortable with before coming to faith in Christ, aren’t as much fun as they used to be and we feel a conviction in our spirit’s to repent. The Holy Spirit will cause us to feel that our sins aren’t “okay” just because they are forgiven.

If we walk in the Spirit, where we attempt to follow Jesus’s example and live according to God’s ways, we will feel the desire to stop doing what used to do and start doing what God’s wisdom shows us we could do.  The Holy Spirit’s conviction can sting but healing and peace is found when we surrender to righteous and holy the life God calls us to live.  

The mystery of our faith lies in the acceptance of who we are in Christ and the surrender to God’s will by rejecting all the world’s various options for living that “seem right to a man” and making the decision to follow the Truth, the Way, and The Life: Jesus Christ.  

Our decision to be a disciple of Christ includes believing the good news but it also includes the progressive seeking of the Lord where we attempt to know Him more and His will for our life by understanding the word of God and the implications it has for our lives.  

The appropriate response to being “born of the Spirit” is to live like it, to walk in the Spirit.  And this walk will confound you at times because like Christ’s words says about the wind in general, the mighty rushing wind of the person of the Holy Spirit blows where he wishes. We might not always know where He is coming from or where He is going to send us to, but His leadings will never contradict the word of God and always lead to our growing in our faith and in our love for God.    

Now in man’s attempt to simplify the mystery of faith, we often try to reduce it to pat slogan like: just do the right thing, all the time. Do the right thing and good things will happen to you. 

While this sentiment is seemingly a good one, it can easily become corrupted as man can become prideful and believe that the blessings they have in life are merely the result of their wise decision to work hard and be a “good person” and it can also lead to a false belief of self sufficiency that determines that they don’t need God, or can decide that their sins are okay, because after all no one is perfect, and they work hard after all.  These sentiments would lead to sin and cause us to suffer which could possibly cause us to stop trusting God.   

Yes, whether it is the product of our own or someone else’s sin or whether it is just an affect of the conditions of a world that has been broken because of sin, there is suffering and death in this world.   

Do good, get good is not an equation that always works and in light of the natural course of a life on the earth, where people get sick, age, and die, if we don’t have an understanding of these things according to God’s wisdom, we may think that we have been given a “raw deal”.  

When the “winds of change and tragedy” blow into our lives, our foundation our faith and our relationship with God will be tested.   

If we don’t have an understanding of who we are in Christ and who God is that can equally explain blessings and the “curses” of a fallen world broken by sin, we will be blown all over the place in our emotions and in our responses.  

If we don’t investigate our faith enough to attempt to understand and accept  paradoxes such as: 

·       (Unless Christ returns first), we will die, yet we will live,

·       We are saints, but yet we can and will sin,

·       We are free from sin, and yet we can still choose to sin

·       We may prosper, but suffering may and probably will come

·       The Lord loves us but the world will hate us  

·       People without faith in Jesus may prosper, while those with faith in Christ may suffer  

·       We can “do everything right” and still not get what we want or suffer loss.

So walking in the Spirit may lead to feelings of great joy and victory as we experience the fruit of the Spirit in our lives but it  can also seem to at times to be like we are walking against the winds of a hostile world of suffering and death, against the winds of adversity, and against those constantly blowing winds of change.  

But the Lord is over and above those winds. He calms the storms. And regardless of the sufferings and loss that we will encounter in our walk through life on this earth, if we walk with Him we will endure and be able to know His peace no matter what storms come our way.    

So accept the word of God and obey what it says to know God more and to grow into the person He calls you to be.  While much of our faith can seem mysterious, when we seek the Lord and accept the truth of who He is, who we are in Christ, and what He says about the ways things work we will discover that we can always trust that Lord will “get it right” and that He “will do what’s right”.  

So keep walking and talking with God, He will show you the way the wind blows and how we can endure it and be carried along by it to the place He wants us to go.       

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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:

1 Timothy 2:5 (NLT2)
⁵  For there is only one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity—the man Christ Jesus.

Today’s Bible verse plainly declares the truth that there is one mediator between God and Man: Jesus Christ.  

Enough said?  

I hope so. The exclusivity of Christ to save is a challenge for the world to accept because of the spiritual blindness that we suffer from before we are graced with a revelation of the truth of the gospel by the Holy Spirit.  In truth, The Lord saves us. We can’t save ourselves. In our own wisdom we would never choose to follow the Lord. Our salvation is a gift from God.  

We can’t convince or argue anyone into God’s kingdom.  

But imagine if we could, would we choose it?  While our faith is logical when we understand that it is the truth, when you are on the outside looking in it is “foolishness” to those who are perishing.  

The idea of a free gift, by itself is a hard pill for some people to swallow as their experience has taught them that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”.

The idea of substitutionary atonement through blood sacrifice would probably send us screaming and running for the exits. We have to explain how this works to Christians so it is no surprise that those outside of the faith choose to reject it.  

But course of human history contains a man know as Jesus Christ of Nazareth who influenced the course of global history, that not only established the way we number our days with the “year of our Lord” but who also influenced people to change the way they live their individual lives and cause some to champion righteous causes that establish institutions that established law and order and compassionate services to societies.

There is great evidence in the word of God, archaeology, and in the testimonies of individuals lives to validate the truth of Jesus Christ as the one Mediator who can reconcile mankind to God and I pray that Lord uses some of it to open the eyes of the spiritual blind and welcome more into His kingdom today.  

So let people know that they need to be reconciled to God and tell them of the Way that God makes it possible.  While it can seem complicated explaining the gospel to someone, rest assured that when you speak of it, you are telling the truth and if God wills it, it will be heard and accepted.  

Our mission on earth is tell others of the love, mercy, and grace that God has given us through the revelation of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. So be bold, tell the truth in love and leave results up to God.

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.

5. We make much of Christ in our secular work by earning money with the desire to use our money to make others glad in God.

Everything I said in Chapter 7 assumed that we had money to use in a radical way to show that Christ and not money is our Treasure. But money does not grow on trees; we work for it. We provide some service or make some product that others will pay for. So my point here is that, as we work, we should dream of how to use our excess money to make others glad in God. Of course, we should use all our money to make others glad in God, in the sense that our whole life has this aim. But the point here is that our secular work can become a great God-exalting blessing to the world if we aim to take the earnings we don’t need for ourselves (and we need far less than we think) and meet the needs of others in the name of Jesus.

The Able-Bodied Earners Help the Victims of Loss

God clearly tells us that we should work to provide the needs of those who can’t meet their own needs. It’s true that everyone should work if he can, and that, in general, if you work you will have what you need. “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread” (Proverbs 12:11). But this general rule is not absolute. Drought may strike your farm; thieves may steal what you’ve earned; disability may end your earning power. All that is part of the curse that sin brought into the world. But God, in his mercy, wills that the work of the able-bodied supply the needs of the helpless, especially in hard times. 

Three passages of Scripture make this plain. In 1 Timothy 5:8 Paul speaks to children and grandchildren regarding the aged widows: “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” In Acts 20:35 Paul refers to his own manual labor and then says, “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ” Then in Ephesians 4:28 Paul doesn’t settle for saying, “Don’t steal, work!” He says, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” You can steal to have. Or you can work to have. Or you can work to have to give. When the third option comes from joy in God’s goodness, it makes him look great in the world.

6. We make much of Christ in our secular work by treating the web of relationships it creates as a gift of God to be loved by sharing the Gospel and by practical deeds of help.

I put this last not because it is least important but because some who put it first never say anything else about the importance of secular work. I have made this mistake myself. Personal evangelism is so important that it is easy to think of it as the only important thing in life. But we have seen that the Bible puts a lot of emphasis on adorning the Gospel, not merely saying the Gospel. But now I want to say that speaking the good news of Christ is part of why God put you in your job. He has woven you into the fabric of others’ lives so that you will tell them the Gospel. Without this, all our adorning behavior may lack the one thing that could make it life-giving.

The Christian’s calling includes making his or her mouth a fountain of life. “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life” (Proverbs 10:11). The link with eternal life is faith in Jesus Christ. No nice feelings about you as a good employee will save anyone. People must know the Gospel, which is the power of God unto eternal life (Romans 1:16). “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).

The early church was a “gospelling” band of people. They spoke the Gospel. When the believers were driven out of Jerusalem because of persecution after Stephen’s martyrdom, they “went about preaching the word”—literally, “evangelizing or gospelling the word” (Acts 8:4). The Gospel was on their lips in all their new relationships. Their self-identity was “proclaimers”: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). Freely they had received. Freely they gave.

They were moved by the words of Jesus concerning the value of a single human life: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life?” (Mark 8:36–37). They felt the weight of what C. S. Lewis spoke twenty centuries later when he pondered the relationship between winning one soul to Christ, on the one hand, and the value of his own vocation as an Oxford scholar of English Literature on the other hand:

The Christian will take literature a little less seriously than the cultured Pagan.… The unbeliever is always apt to make a kind of religion of his aesthetic experiences … and he commonly wishes to maintain his superiority to the great mass of mankind who turn to books for mere recreation. But the Christian knows from the outset that the salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world: and as for superiority, he knows that the vulgar since they include most of the poor probably include most of the superiors.

The point is not that Lewis quit his work and became a full-time evangelist, nor that you should. The point is that he saw the meaning of his work in proper perspective and knew that more than one thing gave it significance. To each of the five ways that we have mentioned above, Lewis would add that his vocation created a web of relationships in which he could speak the Gospel. Once when he was criticized for oversimplifying the Gospel, he responded to his critic:

[He] would be a more helpful critic if he advised a cure as well as asserting many diseases. How does he himself do such work? What methods, and with what success, does he employ when he is trying to convert the great mass of storekeepers, lawyers, realtors, morticians, policemen and artisans who surround him in his own city?

Perhaps one other thing should be mentioned in regard to the relationships created by where we live and work. For many of you the move toward missions and deeds of mercy will not be a move away from your work but with your work to another, more needy, less-reached part of the world. Christians should seriously ask not only what their vocation is, but where it should be lived out. We should not assume that teachers and carpenters and computer programmers and managers and CPAs and doctors and pilots should do their work in America. That very vocation may be better used in a country that is otherwise hard to get into, or in a place where poverty makes access to the Gospel difficult. In this way the web of relationships created by our work is not only strategic but intentional.

Conclusion

In conclusion, secular work is not a waste when we make much of Christ from 8 to 5. God’s will in this age is that his people be scattered like salt and light in all legitimate vocations. His aim is to be known, because knowing him is life and joy. He does not call us out of the world. He does not remove the need to work. He does not destroy society and culture. Through his scattered saints he spreads a passion for his supremacy in all things for the joy of all peoples. If you work like the world, you will waste your life, no matter how rich you get. But if your work creates a web of redemptive relationships and becomes an adornment for the Gospel of the glory of Christ, your satisfaction will last forever and God will be exalted in your joy.^[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

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^[1] John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 150–154.

Overcoming the Worldview of Doom and the Culture of Fear – The Path of the Cross – Purity 741

 Overcoming the Worldview of Doom and the Culture of Fear – The Path of the Cross – Purity 741

Purity 741 05/26/2022  Purity 741 Podcast

Good morning,

Today’s photo of cumulous cloud filled blue skies over Waite road comes to us from yours truly as I captured this scene Sunday afternoon on the return trip to my countryside home while out walking my off camera canine companion, Harley.  Harley enthusiastically begs to be taken for walks and when the weather is pleasant I try to remember to bring my phone so I can grab some photos to document the beauty of God’s creation. Harley’s enthusiasm often causes me to grab some random shots on the go and I often don’t really know what I am capturing until after the fact. 

Although I have grabbed and shared lots of photos on Waite Road, I believe this was the only time I happened to capture the cross like utility pole that borders this section of our path. And today it has helped me collect my scattered thoughts on the importance of walking on the path of Christian Discipleship in maintaining our peace and joy in life.  

If you haven’t noticed, the overall orientation of the news creates a culture of fear. The news adage of “if it bleeds, it leads” points to the fact that while there is an unlimited amount of current events and facts that could be reported, the hard truth is that the news stories that involve violence or that prey on our anxieties are the ones that get the highest ratings and thus will be the ones that are focused on and repeatedly told. 

I am sharing a link to a Deborah Serani article on Psychology Today.com from 2011, that provides some insight into how watching the news  “could undermine our physical and mental health.” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/two-takes-depression/201106/if-it-bleeds-it-leads-understanding-fear-based-media).  Serani’s article states that:  

“It's been said that fear-based media has become a staple of popular culture. The distressing fall-out from this trend is that children and adults who are exposed to media are more likely than others to

· Feel that their neighborhoods and communities are unsafe

· Believe that crime rates are rising

· Overestimate their odds of becoming a victim

· Consider the world to be a dangerous place”  

Serani, in 2011 mind you, advocated that:

“News media needs to return to a sense of proportion, conscience, and, most important, truth-telling.”

So how do you think we did in the 11 years since this article was written? 

Not so good, as the news industry has increasingly been crafted to not only lead with what bleeds but has been politicized to cater to a network’s political audience.  The view of current events now depends on the source you receive the reports from.  This has caused a general distrust of the media and their “fake news”.   

This phenomenon and our increasingly contradictory post Christian society that denies the wisdom of common sense and Biblical morality had me thinking of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, and phrases like “double think” which Orwell’s novel described as:

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, … (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink).  

“Doublethink” is the soup du jour in our society as it stresses “Coexistence” and “Diversity” which not only recognizes the existence of differing views, religions, and lifestyles but attempts to suspend discernment by subtly implying that all the various options in these aspects of our lives are equally valid, and thus true. 

While our relativistic society pushes “individual truth”, “what’s true for me is true for me, what’s true for you, is true for you.”, logic and reason insist things that contradict one another can not both be true. Sometimes we need to recognize the truth that opposing views can’t both be right. 

But in our politically correct society that seems to be able to “tolerate” all views except Biblical Christianity, the cardinal sin, if they were indeed allowed to categorize something as “sin”, would be to tell someone: “You’re wrong.”  

As appealing as it would be to go around telling everyone they are wrong, as Christians we have to be wise and discerning in how we “speak the truth in love”.

The Lord will use the word of God to convict people of their sin and bring them to faith in Christ.  Our arguments won’t do that. Our being a jerk won’t do that.

So what are we supposed to do?

Well we are supposed to live as disciples of Christ. We are to walk on the “Path of the Cross”, that’s what I got from today’s photo, by rejecting the world’s narrative of the state of reality and focusing on the truth of God’s word and by applying God’s wisdom to our lives.  

Limit your exposure to the news  and pick up the word of God and live by it.

Jesus Christ attested to the ability of God’s word to change us and of It’s truth in: 

John 17:17 (NKJV)
¹⁷  Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.

So while the world is trying to “tell you the news” and some may be advocating for changes to our world through governmental means because of the bad news that is constantly before us,  and are, as John Mayer sang about, are “Waiting on the World to Change”, the Lord is directing us to be changed by applying His Truth to our lives by making Jesus our Lord Savior and by following in His Ways.

To overcome the world, we have to overcome the lies of the world by recognizing the truth that “all roads do not lead to heaven”, that all beliefs, lifestyles, and behaviors are not all  equally valid, and to know that what some call acceptable, legal, or good are actually evil according to the word of God.   

The good news is that salvation comes through faith in Christ alone, but with that good news comes some really bad news.  

The bad news is that we can’t change the world. We can’t convince everyone of the truth of God’s word. And We can’t save everyone and establish God’s kingdom on the earth.

If we could there would be no need for Christ to return and God’s word assures us that He is coming back and that things will get worse before He does.     

But don’t forget the hope of the gospel, we can be used by God to bring some into His kingdom before He comes back to judge and rule the earth.  And in spite of the culture of fear that is proliferated all around us, we can still experience peace and joy in this strange new world regardless of the circumstances when we focus on the Lord and walk in the Spirit. 

Our faith is a faith of hope. We have hope in Christ and in His return, but we also have the hope that we can experience the fruit of the Spirit in our lives when we make the decision to repent of the world’s ways and turn to God’s ways.

We also have the hope that God has prepared us for good works, to have a purpose on this earth: to help people and to be used to show them the truth of God’s word and the “good news” that Christ overcame the world and that through Him they can be given rest and peace in the here and now and eternal life with Him forever.

So focus on the good news and keep walking and talking with God. It’s not all doom and gloom out there, but to know peace and joy in a world that focuses on the fearful aspects of our experience, we need to know the peace that goes beyond all understanding by being reconciled to God by the Prince of Peace, and to be in harmony with Him by continually walking in His ways.

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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:

John 14:6 (NLT2)
⁶  Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.

Today’s Bible verse is Christ telling us that He is the only way to God the Father.  

Here Christ makes it abundantly clear that there is one way to be reconciled to God, Him.  Christ is the truth that has to affect our lives.  Christ is the way to eternal life and the way to life and life more abundantly.  

There is no peace without peace with God and Christ’s death on the cross for our sins brings it to all who put their faith in Him.  

Of all the many options in this world, Jesus is the One way to peace with God and life everlasting.  That may seem narrow but Christ said in:

Matthew 7:13-14 (NKJV) to
¹³  "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.
¹⁴  Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

It's not easy to come to faith in Christ. In fact apart from God’s grace and the conviction of the Holy Spirit, it’s impossible! But if he has revealed to you the truth of who Jesus is, we simply must accept Him as our Lord and Savior and make the hard choice to experience the Life He has for us by living according to 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.

4. We make much of Christ in our secular work by earning enough money to keep us from depending on others, while focusing on the helpfulness of our work rather than financial rewards.

God intended from the beginning that satisfying work would provide for our needs. God worked at the beginning (Genesis 2:2), and the humans he created in his image would work. Before sin entered the world, that work would be without futility and frustration. It would unite beautifully with God’s abundant provision to meet every need. It would make the earth subject to man’s material needs without ruining the earth (Genesis 1:28). At the beginning, the homestead of man was a garden of fruit trees, not a hard field to be plowed and planted. “Out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Genesis 2:9). Not only that, “a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden” (verse 10).

Happy Work Before the Fall; Then Sweating and Fretting

In this all-supplying paradise God said, at first, “there was no man to work the ground” (verse 5). Then he made man from the ground, and, in his creation, Adam became a son working with his Father in the stewardship of creation. The essence of work was not sustenance of life. God gave himself as the sustainer. Man was free, not from work, but in work, to be creative without the anxiety of providing food and clothing.

What changed with the entrance of sin into the world was not that man had to work, but that work became hard with the futility and frustration of the fallen creation. The Lord said to Adam:

Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, “You shall not eat of it,” cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground. (Genesis 3:17–19, emphasis added)

When man and woman chose to be self-reliant and rejected God’s fatherly guidance and provision, God subjected them to the very thing they chose: self-reliance. From now on, he says, if you eat, it will be because you toil and sweat. So they were driven from the garden of happy work to the ground of anxious toil. The curse under which we live today is not that we must work. The curse is that, in our work, we struggle with weariness and frustration and calamities and anxiety. And all this is doubly burdensome because now by this very toil we must keep ourselves alive. “In toil you shall eat of the ground.… In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.”

Christ Took the Curse on Himself, and We Are Being Freed

But hasn’t Christ come to lift the curse from his people? Yes. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’ ” (Galatians 3:13). However, the curse is not lifted totally all at once. God saves us in stages. Christ delivered a mortal blow to evil when he died for sin and rose again. But not every enemy is yet put under his feet. For example, death is part of the curse we still experience. Christ conquered death for his people, but only partly now. We still die, but the “sting” of death, the hopelessness of death, is removed because our sins are forgiven in Christ and he is risen (1 Corinthians 15:54–55)!

Similarly, we must still work hard to provide for our needs. Christ says, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.… Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:25, 32–33). He says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He says, “Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58). In other words, God does not want his children to be burdened with the frustration and futility and depressing weariness of work. That much of the curse he aims to lift from us even in this age.

Paradise Is Not Here Yet

But just as death will be a reality to the end of this age, so must we work in this fallen age against many obstacles that often make work hard. Not yet may we return to paradise and pick fruit in someone else’s garden. That’s the mistake they made at Thessalonica. Some were quitting their jobs and being idle because they thought that Christ would come very soon. Paradise was at hand. So Paul wrote to them, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some of you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living” (2 Thessalonians 3:10–12). Able-bodied people who choose to live in idleness and eat the fruit of another’s sweat are in rebellion against God’s design. If we can, we should earn our own living.

How then do Christians make much of Christ in working “to earn their own living”? First, by conforming willingly to God’s design for this age. It is an act of obedience that honors his authority. Second, by removing stumbling blocks from unbelievers who would regard the lazy dependence of Christians on others as an evidence that our God is not worthy of following. “Work with your hands … so that you may live properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one” (1 Thessalonians 4:11–12). We honor God by earning our living because this clears the way for non-Christians to see Christ for who he really is. Aimless, unproductive Christians contradict the creative, purposeful, powerful, merciful God we love. They waste their lives.

Do Not Labor for the Food That Perishes

Third, we make much of God by earning our own living when we focus not on financial profit but on the benefit our product or service brings to society. This is paradoxical. I am saying, yes, we should earn enough money to meet our needs. But, no, we should not make that the primary focus of why we work. One of the most striking things Jesus ever said was, “Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you” (John 6:27). Do not labor for the food that perishes! “The food that perishes” simply means all ordinary food and provision. So this is striking! It seems to say the exact opposite of what I am saying. What does he mean?

We know from all we have seen so far that Jesus does not mean it is wrong to earn your own living and eat your own bread. Evidently then, he means that when we work for the food that perishes, there should be a significant sense in which we are not working for that food, but for something more. In other words, don’t focus on mere material things in your work. Don’t labor merely with a view to the perishable things you can buy with your earnings. Work with an eye not mainly to your money, but your usefulness. Work with a view to benefiting people with what you make or do.

Christ has lifted the curse of work. He has replaced anxious toil with trust in God’s promise to supply our needs (Philippians 4:19) and has thus awakened in us a different passion in our work. We turn with joy to the call of Jesus: Seek the kingdom of God first and his righteousness, and the food that perishes will be added to you. So don’t labor for the food that perishes. Labor to love people and honor God. Think of new ways that your work can bless people. Stop thinking mainly of profitability, and think mainly of how helpful your product or service can become.

Do Your Business Dealings but Stay Free from Them

How do you get up in the morning and go to work not for the food that perishes—not mainly for the profit? This is really a spiritual discovery, attained through much prayer and longing. My words of explanation won’t make it happen. But maybe the Holy Spirit will use these words to advance your quest. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7:30–31 that since we live in a time of great urgency, “those who buy [should buy] as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it.” I think this is another way of saying, yes, labor, but do not labor for the food that perishes. Go ahead and purchase, but act as though you have no goods. Do your business dealings, but stay free from them. The financial outcome of these dealings is not your life.

Say You Are a Stockbroker

Suppose you are a Christian stockbroker and have watched the market tumble. What it means to you not to labor for the food that perishes is that your true life is not jeopardized. Your peace and joy are not destroyed. Your resolve to do the best you can for your clients remains the same—even if you advise them to get out of the market and use their money a different way for God’s glory. You are not working for the food that perishes. Your goal is to enjoy Christ’s being exalted in the way you work. Jesus said, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.… My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:32–34). None of us in our vocations should aim mainly at the food that perishes—leave that to the Lord. We should aim instead to do the will of him who sent us. And his will is that we treasure him above all else and live like it.

The Christian stockbroker will say in the face of a falling market, “The main food I want from this job is still there. I am hungry above all to pass this test of faith and have a deep restfulness in the goodness and power of Christ. I am hungry to enjoy his name being esteemed as others see my demeanor and my integrity and give Christ glory.” And to that end he labors for the food that endures to eternal life. He labors, rising early for prayer and meditation and holding Christ near to his heart all day. In that security he thinks of the good of others and serves them. That is a wonder, not a wasted life.

Jesus calls us to be aliens and exiles in the world. Not by taking us out of the world, but by changing, at the root, how we view the world and how we do our work in it. If we simply work to earn a living—if we labor for the bread that perishes—we will waste our lives. But if we labor with the sweet assurance that God will supply all our needs—that Christ died to purchase every undeserved blessing—then all our labor will be a labor of love and a boasting only in the cross.^[1]

---------------------------more tomorrow------------------------

Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage Breaker”, "Freedom in Christ" series of Discipleship Classes via the mt4christ247 podcast!

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Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship

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^[1] John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 144–150.