Such a Time as This - Purity 853

Such a Time as This - Purity 853

Purity 853 10/04/2022 Purity 852 Podcast

Good morning,

Today’s photo a streams waterfall, fall foliage, and a sliver of blue sky comes from our a friend who spent the first day of October visiting “The Flume Gorge, at Franconia Notch State Park” in New Hampshire.  I said that I might share more of our friend’s photos and liked this simple waterfall and decided to see where it would lead.   

Well, It’s Tuesday and today I am giving thanks for how the Lord has led my wife, TammyLyn, into her new career as a special education teacher  and how what may have caused others to turn and run has inspired my wife to press into her new role with care, concern, compassion and creativity.

Her first day was yesterday and she reported that there was more than one instance of her students having episodes that needed individual instruction and behavioral coaching. Her students are junior high age but have the mental and emotional capacities of first and second graders and any bump in the road of their regular routine or a conflict to their expectations can result in emotional outbursts and insubordination.

In the aftermath of her first day on the job and in light of these episodes of what I would describe as “meltdowns”, the other staff sheepishly inquired what she thought about her new job choice.  They were pleasantly surprised when TammyLyn assured them that she was excited about her new position and that she didn’t quit easily and had a few ideas of activities she could introduce to the class to keep her students engaged and on task that could possibly help them to reduce their outburst sand help them to learn and grow.   

Where many people would be looking to cut and run, TammyLyn is rushing in to meet needs and to possibly calm the storm.

I am extremely proud of my wife and know that I have been truly blessed to have her as I stand in awe and wonder when I consider her faith and her servant’s heart. Where some may only see a problem to be dealt with and be hardened to find ways to enact measures of control, TammyLyn’s is coming in to share the love of God as a caregiver and teacher who will seek to nourish and encourage her pupils in the ways they should go.   

And I know that TammyLyn’s presence will be calming influence on her co-workers as well, as she will minster to them and lead them to understand the power of love to transform the atmosphere of the places that women of faith walk into.

TammyLyn’s attributes of strength, patience, kindness, intelligence, and creativity are just what her classroom needs and when I consider her path over the last year I can see the Lord’s hand was bringing her to this place at this time, “as if it were meant to be”.  

My wife’s path reminds me of Esther’s story where she “just happened” to be in a position to influence the king of Persia, when her people the Jews, were being faced with persecution and genocide.  In encouraging Esther to be bold and to risk her life by speaking out, her uncle Mordecai wondered:  

Esther 4:14 (NKJV)
¹⁴  … Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"  

Of course being a woman of faith in God, Esther chose to act, surrendering herself to God’s will, by saying: 

Esther 4:16 (NKJV)
¹⁶  "…so I will go to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish!"

Esther stepped out of tradition and what was acceptable to do what was right and because God had brought her to that place at that time. 

And likewise my wife, has been brought to this place and time, and is going in to this special needs classroom to represent the Lord and who she is in Christ, by showing her students and co-worker what God’s love looks like outside of the pages of the Bible and the four walls of a church building.  

Like today’s photo, my wife’s path over the last year has been tumultuous and led to more than one fall, but her faith kept her afloat and now she has risen from the depths to breathe again, to find her purpose to love and serve others in a way that only she can, in a place she didn’t see coming, “for such a time as this.”

 

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

This morning’s meditation verse are:

Psalm 139:13,16-17 (NLT2)
¹³  You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. ….¹⁶  You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
¹⁷  How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!

Today’s Bible verses encourages us because they testify of how intimately the Lord knows us and how He has laid out our paths before us and how His thoughts for us are precious.  

Considering my wife’s path, I just have to encourage everyone to seek the Lord and to come to understand just how much He loves you. He created you. He has a plan for you and He encourages you to follow Him to discover and experience it.   

TammyLyn’s story is a testimony of how we are to remain faithful to trust and follow the Lord even though our paths may be uncertain and circumstances can challenge us.  

If we keep walking in the Spirit, seeking the Lord, His presence, wisdom and ways for living, we start on a path where we invite the Lord in our circumstances and make the decision to see what happens when we trust Him.  

Because We have peace with God through our faith in Christ, we are already victorious and free and when we stay grounded in who we are in Christ, we have peace, love, joy no matter what we face. 

And so when we keep walking and talking with God we enter into the potential to see the impossible happen in our lives. We can see God’s divine favor, His grace, blesses our lives. 

So reflect on the awesomeness of God as Creator and Sovereign King, and marvel over that fact that His thoughts are precious and numerous when they consider you. 

 

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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 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Discipleship”, also known as “The Cost of Discipleship”

As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to purchase Bonhoeffer’s books for your own private study and to support his work.  This resource is available on many websites for less than $20.00.

Chapter Five

Discipleship and the Individual – Continues

 

So people called by Jesus learn that they had lived an illusion in their relationship to the world. The illusion is immediacy. It has blocked faith and obedience. Now they know that there can be no unmediated relationships, even in the most intimate ties of their lives, in the blood ties to father and mother, to children, brothers and sisters, in marital love, in historical responsibilities. Ever since Jesus called, there are no longer natural, historical, or experiential unmediated relationships for his disciples. Christ the mediator stands between son and father, between husband and wife, between individual and nation, whether they can recognize him or not. There is no way from us to others than the path through Christ, his word, and our following him. Immediacy is a delusion.

But because any delusion which hides truth from us must be hated, immediacy to the natural given things in life must also be hated, for the sake of Jesus Christ, the mediator. Anytime a community hinders us from coming before Christ as a single individual, anytime a community lays claim to immediacy, it must be hated for Christ’s sake. For every unmediated natural relationship, knowingly or unknowingly, is an expression of hatred toward Christ, the mediator, especially if this relationship wants to assume a Christian identity.

Theology makes a serious mistake whenever it uses Jesus’ mediation between God and human persons to justify immediate relationships in life. This mistake says, “If Christ is the mediator, then by being so he bore the sins of all our unmediated relationships to the world and justified us in them. Jesus is our mediator with God, so that with a clean conscience we can again relate directly to the world, to the world which crucified Christ.” That brings love of God and love of the world down to a common denominator. The break with the given circumstances of the world is presented here as a “legalistic” misunderstanding of God’s grace, which is said to spare us from precisely such a break. Jesus’ words on hatred toward what is unmediated now are twisted into an obvious, joyful Yes to the “God-given realities” of this world. The justification of the sinner again^[9] turns into the justification of the sin.^[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] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, ed. Martin Kuske et al., trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, vol. 4, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 94–95.

Praying for Sinners, Pleading for Saints - Purity 852

 

Praying for Sinners, Pleading for Saints - Purity 852

Purity 852 10/04/2022 Purity 852 Podcast

Good morning,

Today’s photo of Blues Skies and the beginnings of the changing colors of Autumn surrounding an outcropping of a rock covered by the waters of a flowing stream comes to us from a friend who spent the first day of October visiting “The Flume Gorge, at Franconia Notch State Park” in New Hampshire.  Our friend shared a bunch of photos during their visit, so we may be revisiting this State Park again as there were other scenes worth sharing, but I liked this one for its simple beauty that testifies to the fact that Fall has descended upon us and the evidence will increase as the days pass.   

And that’s life isn’t it? We get small indications of the future in the present but depending on our ability to live apart from the distractions of this world we may or may not see the signs of the times and only in hindsight can declare that we “knew” what was coming.   

Well it’s Monday, again and even though it is back to work and back to reality, I am rejoicing today because the work we may complain about is something that some of us are not blessed with or able to perform at all.  What we may complain about may be something that someone else would relish being able to do or is something that someone else’s family desperately needs.   

Some of the sick, disabled, infirmed, or aged would gladly trade places with us this morning if it meant that they had the strength and ability to do what we take for granted. 

Some of the unemployed would also trade places with us if it meant they would be able to change their financial circumstances and provide for the needs of their family.  

This subject hits close to home because since 2022 began my wife, TammyLyn, has gone through 4 jobs changes and even though she was willing and able to work and has even done odd jobs, part time work, and did independent work, all of her combined efforts were not enough to adequately provide for the unforeseen inflation and unexpected expenses that came her way in 2022. But throughout it all TammyLyn has not lost her hope and continued to do all she could to persevere and trusted the Lord to guide her path, and today she starts work at her fourth, and prayerfully last new job, this year.    

She has been faithful and God has been faithful to bless her with this new career opportunity and with her family and friends that have helped her along the way.   So thank God. It’s Monday and we all get to go to work!

In examining TammyLyn’s path, we could ask: Why God? But even with all the turmoil along the way, the final results seem to indicate that God has been working all of what TammyLyn has experienced together for good.  This final job and the stability that may provide seems like an answer to prayer, and it is,  even though the process of its fulfillment was not anything that we could have anticipated and certainly not anything we asked for!   

Which brings up the question of prayer and the mystery of how it works or how we should pray, or the thing that’s on my mind this morning, who we should pray for or what we should pray for.  

I have shared enough of my testimony on this blog and podcast to reveal that I did not always walk by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit. I was not always a born again Christian. And even after I put my faith in Jesus Christ, I didn’t repent of all my sins until the Holy Spirit convicted me and led me to repentance. The victory and freedom I have may have been given to me the moment I put my faith in Jesus, but it didn’t manifest in my experience until I made a decision to believe what God said about who I am in Christ and to live like it.    

At first, I rejoiced over my salvation and thought that God’s grace was truly amazing because there was simply no way I was going to change who I was in terms of my brokenness. I was a drunk. That’s who God saved and that’s what God was going to have to deal with.  Or so I thought. 

But as my heart grew to want to follow the Lord and be authentic in my faith, I increasingly was drawn to turn from my worldly ways and leave them behind for good. And God was faithful to give me the strength and wisdom to accomplish what I had considered impossible.  

But here’s the crux of my question this morning, I was a “carnal” Christian for something like 5 years, with little or no indication that I would repent of my fleshly ways.   If you knew what I was up to in the five years before I went into recovery, you may have even doubted if I was a Christian at all!  Although I went to church, served, and even got a an Associates degree in Biblical studies, I still had secret sins that I felt powerless to overcome.  

So, knowing all that, that I tried to live a Christian life, but was failing in major ways, would you have prayed for me if I asked for prayer?   

While I made a profession of faith in Christ, I still had sin in my life – some pretty blatant sins that are on the “do these and you go to hell list” in

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (NKJV) which says:
⁹  Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites,
¹⁰  nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

So knowing what the word of God says, would you have prayed for me, or anyone else, who does things on this list, if they asked you for prayer?  

I am part of the prayer team at my local church and yesterday our pastor started a series on prayer and at the end of the message he called on the congregation to come up to ask the prayer team and other members of the church leadership to pray for whatever needs they had.  

The prayer team is available to do this each week at our church but yesterday because the emphasis was on “invinting God into your circumstances” through prayer, we had easily double if not three or four times as many prayer requests than we normally do.  

The Holy Spirit was moving for sure and I enthusiastically followed His lead and prayed for several people and their various requests. One after another came up and on a couple of occasions, before I began to pray for their requests, I got the indication that the person standing before me had some pretty obvious sins in their life that needed repenting of, but they weren’t asking for prayer for that. 

So what do you do? Do you sermonize and tell the people that have come forth asking God for help in their lives to repent because you “just know” they are living in sin?  

What would have I said to my former self, if I asked for prayer?  

Well I don’t know if I get these things right, but in the moment,  I did not get an indication from the Holy Spirit that I was to do anything other than to minister to the people before me and to prayer for what they asked for to and encourage them to trust in and follow the Lord, and to leave the results up to God.  

In the moment, that’s what I did and I felt that my prayers and words of guidance and encouragement were what the Lord led me to say.

But afterwards…  you wonder should I have done that? Should I have remained silent about their sin?   

As far as scripture goes, we can easily make a case for judgment or mercy in this situation because the word of God contains lots of wisdom on both. 

Several verses indicate that repentance is something that comes from God, and remembering those, I decided to trust that God would draw them to repentance and I would seek to show love and understanding and come along side these “sinners” in prayer and continue to follow the Lord who would show them the way to go.  

Only God knows the hearts of men, and as a former “carnal” Christian, I know in my situation the only one who could have made me to want to repent of my sins is God.  I was a big rebel and only His authority, grace, and love could guide me to where I am today.  

So even though I have some conflicts in how I feel about “praying for sinners”, I know that I was once lost and it was through a lot of prayer that things changed. 

So I will pray for sinners, but if you ask for counsel I will undoubtedly confront you with the word of God and direct you to repent, as Nouthetic or Biblical counselors are instructed to do. 

But we all have to start somewhere, and the prayers of a righteous person are said to accomplish much, and so we trust the Lord to do what is right, good, and holy and to grant what is His will and will be done for the glory of His kingdom. 

So keep walking and talking with God, pray, and follow where He leads you knowing that nobody’s perfect but Jesus, but His path leads us to be more and more like Him. So keep walking and pray.

_____________________________________________

As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.

Today we continue sharing from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Discipleship”, also known as “The Cost of Discipleship”

As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to purchase Bonhoeffer’s books for your own private study and to support his work.  This resource is available on many websites for less than $20.00.

Chapter Five

Discipleship and the Individual – Continues

This breaking with the immediacy [Unmittelbarkeit] of the world is nothing other than recognizing Christ as the Son of God, the mediator. It is never an arbitrary act, in which a person loosens his or her ties to the world for the sake of some ideal, exchanging a lesser ideal for a greater one. That would again be enthusiasm, high-handedness, even a return immediacy to the world. Only the disciples’ recognition that the deed is done, namely, that Christ is the mediator, separates them from the world of people and things. Jesus’ call, to the extent that it is understood not as an ideal, but as the word of the mediator, brings about this accomplished break with the world in me. If it were only a matter of weighing ideals against each other, then by all means a balance should be sought, which then could turn to the advantage of a Christian ideal, but this should never be one-sided. From the point of view of idealism, or from the perspective of “responsibilities” of life, it would be inexcusable to radically debase the natural orders of life by confronting them with a Christian ideal of life. Instead, much would have to be said on behalf of the contrary evaluation—especially from the point of view of a Christian idealism, a Christian ethic of responsibility or ethic of conscience! But the issue here is not at all about ideals, values, responsibilities. Instead, it is about accomplished facts and recognizing them, and therefore about the person of the mediator himself, who has come to stand between us and the world. That is why there must be a break with the immediacies of life; that is why a person called must become an individual before the mediator.^[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] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, ed. Martin Kuske et al., trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, vol. 4, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 94.

Bible Study with the Cincotti's - Something's Wrong with my Mirror? - 10/02/2022

 

Today's Bible Study, Authored by Arthur Cincotti. 10/2/2022

Listen to our Bible Study Discussion at: Something's Wrong with My Mirror? Podcast

Or watch the Video Zoom Session of our Study on YouTube: Something's Wrong with My Mirror? om YouTube

Something’s Wrong with my Mirror??

 

The Christian faith is replete with paradoxes.

         You have to die in order to truly live

         In order to be greatest you must become servant to all

         We only love God because He first loved us.

         Get out of financial bondage, give more.

         Seek first the kingdom of God… all else will be added to you

 

Perhaps the biggest paradoxical notion is that, as if it were some sort of self help program, when we become a Christian we will get better.

 

First and foremost this submits the idea that “better” is the goal.

The truth is that holiness is the goal. I Pet. 1:15

 

Indeed, the surrounding verses in I Pet. 1 encourage us toward repentance and good works, but Gods’ standard for fellowship with Him is holiness.

         This understanding perpetuates the doctrine of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. We could never strive to be good enough to merit fellowship with God.

 

The problem is that, with careful, and honest self observation, we seem to get worse.

As we seek to “bring every thought into captivity,” (II Cor. 10:5)      we realize the monumental need to.

As we seek to do, “good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in,” (Eph 2:10) they seem fewer and far       between.

As we aim to live for Christ, (Gal. 2:20) the need to daily pray, “forgive me my trespasses” and “lead me not into temptation      becomes more pressing.

 

The apostle Paul likewise seemed to express this backward regress.

In Gal. 1:1, his earliest known letter, he calls himself, “an apostle...”

In I Cor. 15:9 he is suddenly, “the least of the apostles, who am not worthy        to be called an apostle.”

In Eph. 3:8 he has slipped to, “less than the least of all the saints.”

By I Tim 1:15 he considers himself, “chief of sinners”.

 

Did he get worse???

 

The truth is that as we draw nearer to Christ, and glimpse His holiness, we are undone, and sense that even our greatest works are as filthy rags. Is. 64:6

 

Yet, in I Cor. 4:4, Paul says, “For I know of nothing against myself”. Has he forgotten that he persecuted the church, (Phil. 3:6) or that “I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man…”?

No, because, as he goes on to say, “but I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of out Lord was exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.” I Tim. 1:13,14

 

“We see now in a mirror, dimly” I Cor. 13:12. I liken this, sometimes, to glimpsing an image in a kaleidoscope, but then it vanishes. We sense for a moment that we know God, as if we have touched the hem of His garment, but then that moment is gone.

 

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” II Cor. 3:18. This is a process. As we hold our lives up to the mirror of Gods’ word we may feel convicted. That’s a good thing. We may feel as though we haven’t changed much, but His promise is that, “we are being transformed…”

 

“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror: for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was” Js. 1:23 We mustn’t depart from the mirror of God’s word in fear or neglect, but we should write it on the tablet of our hearts.

 

                     “Your word, I have hidden in my heart,

                     That I might not sin against You. Ps. 119:11

-----Join us for another Bible Study Next Week -------

or

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

The Sun Still Rises - Purity 851

The Sun Still Rises - Purity 851

Purity 851 10/01/2022 Purity 851 Podcast

Good morning,

Today’s original artwork, which I am entitling “The Sun Still Rises”, is of the sun rising over the horizon shining on a solitary tree on a hill, illuminating the sky and landscape with all the colors of the rainbow, comes to us from “across the pond”  as this is the latest creation of the artist, the poet, and our friend in the UK, Philip Hand. Philip shared it with me just this morning along with a Bible verse to encourage and inspire me in my walk.  Philip shared:

Philippians 4:8 (KJV)
⁸  Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Think on these things, indeed.  In this world that often points to the things that are wrong, our brother Philip is reminding us of what the Apostle Paul told us, the Church, to do through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit: think on the things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and good.  

When we encounter negative interactions with others or disappointing circumstances in the world the enemy would love for us to focus on the bad things in life and to forget about just how blessed we are, even in the midst of a disastrous situation like Hurricane Ian, that has now reportedly been responsible for the deaths of 23 persons in Florida, landed in South Carolina  yesterday as a Post Tropical Cyclone, category 1 storm, and will continue to affect the weather as it will continue to move north today through North Carolina and into Virginia by mid-day today and is even may result in significant rainfalls in my neck of the woods, New York today and tomorrow.

So today we pray for the lives lost and affected by the damages of this latest storm to rage up the east coast of our country, and we will be wise to consider its course as it weakens in regards to our activities this weekend, but we also continue to praise the Lord and think on the things  that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and good.  

The spirit of loving our neighbors is being seen in the relief efforts that are rushing in to restore power and order to the devastated areas hit by Hurricane Ian and in the concern that we have for our friends and loved ones that were in it’s path, as we rejoice over every new report from friends reporting that they are “safe” on social media.   The love of God is being manifest in us when we see people love and care for one another in storms like Ian.

I’m calling Philip’s latest piece, “The Sun Also Rises” because I am reminded of Solomon’s contemplations of the hard realities of life in the book of Ecclesiastes and even though he expressed how much of life was “vanity” or chasing after the wind, He came to the conclusion that while we were to fear God and obey His commandments because everything we do will be judged by Him, he also encouraged us to enjoy our lives recognizing that all we have is a gift from the Lord and that to follow the Lord’s ways for living was to demonstrate  an understanding of the highest wisdom.  

But Philip’s piece also reminds me of  Jerimiah’s passages in Lamentation, another “heavy” book in the Bible that acknowledges the reality of sufferings and afflictions in life.  After admitting to the suffering, Jerimiah speaks of the hope that comes from contemplating the Lord in our lives. 

Lamentations 3:21-24 (NKJV)
²¹  This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope.
²²  Through the LORD'S mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not.
²³  They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.
²⁴  "The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "Therefore I hope in Him!"

 

So that’s the deal, when we think of “these things” that are listed in Philippians, if we keep thinking, whatever “true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and good” things our minds can come up with we will discover that they all point to the ultimate “true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and good” One, the Lord God all mighty!  And that our peace and our hope is found in Him because His mercies are new every morning and great is His faithfulness!

In his comments to me this morning, my friend Philip said that he feels peaceful when he is drawing but when he sought to share the “product of his peace”, he also felt moved to share encouragement from the word of God by including Philippians 4:8 when he shared his artwork.  

I told Philip that his story (his artwork, his finding peace of mind from negative mind states through it and his faith in Jesus Christ) is an ongoing testimony of the goodness of God and how the gifts that we receive from Him can be used to touch the hearts of others.   

So wherever you find yourself in the world this weekend,  whether you are walking in victory or struggling to find peace in a storm, let me encourage you to think upon those things that the Lord directed us to think about and to find your hope in Him. When we walk and talk with the Lord, we will discover the peace in the storm, and we will praise Him for His goodness, mercy, grace, faithfulness, and love.

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

This morning’s meditation verse i:

Romans 7:4 (NLT2)
⁴  So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God.

Today’s Bible verse encourages us that we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God because we have died to the power of the laws of sin and death when we died with, and was raised to life anew with Christ.   

As I have shared previously in other blog posts, when we consider Bible verses like today’s verse and

Romans 8:2 (NKJV) which says
²  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

We should understand the word “law” as “authority”.  Instead of some lifeless legal code, we should understand the “authority” or power under which we once lived and how that has dramatically changed when we have put our faith in Jesus Christ and receive a new and eternal spiritual life.   

So by the “authority of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”, The Lord now declares you to be free from the “authority of sin and death”!

Death’s authority would render us dead in our trespasses and sins and make us subject to God’s wrath!  

But the authority of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus gives us peace with God and new life in God’s kingdom as His adopted children.  

The authority of sin would make us incapable of saying “NO!” to sin and powerless to change our sinful habits and lead us to despair and hopelessness.  

But the authority of The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets us free from sin’s authority by giving us a new identity in Christ and giving us the power to say “No! to sin, not as an act of will, but as an act of faith as we align our thoughts and behaviors with our new identity in Christ and draw upon the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome of worldly ways for a new life in the Spirit of Christ Jesus.  

Well that’s great! So what happens next now that I have this freedom from the “law” since I have died, and been resurrected, with Christ?  

As today’s verse tells us, we discover our new purpose as a child of God, we produce a harvest of good deeds for God.  

In Christ we have been set free and given a new life.  We have received power over the “authority” of sin and death and we also receive our purpose: to do good deeds for the glory of God, because of who we are in Christ and because of our love for our Father. 

We receive everything in Christ: a new identity, power, freedom, victory, purpose here on earth and with God in His kingdom forever. 

It’s the first day of October 2022, so let’s go out there and reap a harvest of good deeds for the glory of God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit who have given us freedom, power, and life everlasting.    

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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 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Discipleship”, also known as “The Cost of Discipleship”

As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to purchase Bonhoeffer’s books for your own private study and to support his work.  This resource is available on many websites for less than $20.00.

Chapter Five

Discipleship and the Individual

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).

Jesus’ call to discipleship makes the disciple into a single individual. Whether disciples want to or not, they have to make a decision; each has to decide alone. It is not their own choice to desire to be single individuals. Instead, Christ makes everyone he calls into an individual. Each is called alone. Each must follow alone. Out of fear of such aloneness, a human being seeks safety in the people and things around them. Individuals suddenly discover all their responsibilities and cling to them. Under their cover, they want to make their decision, but they do not want to stand up alone in front of Jesus, to have to decide with only Jesus in view. But at that moment neither father nor mother, neither spouse nor child, neither nation nor history cover a person being called. Christ intends to make the human being lonely. As individuals they should see nothing except him who called them.

Jesus’ call itself already breaks the ties with the naturally given surroundings in which a person lives. It is not the disciple who breaks them; Christ himself broke them as soon as he called. Christ has untied the person’s immediate connections with the world and bound the person immediately to himself. No one can follow Christ without recognizing and affirming that that break is already complete. Not the caprice of a self-willed life, but Christ himself leads the disciple to such a break.

Why must that be so? Why can there not be an unbroken growth, a series of slow sanctifying steps out of the natural orders into the community of Christ? What sort of annoying power comes here between human persons and the God-given orders of their natural lives? Is not such a break legalistic “methodism”? Is it not the same as that unhappy contempt for God’s good gifts, which has nothing in common with the “freedom of the Christian”?^[5] It is true, there is something which comes between persons called by Christ and the given circumstances of their natural lives. But it is not someone unhappily contemptuous of life; it is not some law of piety. Instead, it is life and the gospel itself; it is Christ himself. In becoming human, he put himself between me and the given circumstances of the world. I cannot go back. He is in the middle. He has deprived those whom he has called of every immediate connection to those given realities. He wants to be the medium; everything should happen only through him. He stands not only between me and God, he also stands between me and the world, between me and other people and things. He is the mediator, not only between God and human persons, but also between person and person, and between person and reality. Because the whole world was created by him and for him (John 1:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:2), he is the sole mediator in the world. Since Christ there has been no more unmediated relationship for the human person, neither to God nor to the world. Christ intends to be the mediator. To be sure, there are plenty of other gods which offer immediate access and, in fact, the world tries by all means to relate to persons immediately. But herein lies precisely its hostility to Christ, the mediator. Other gods and the world want to tear away from Christ what he deprived them of, namely, the ability to relate immediately to human persons.^[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] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, ed. Martin Kuske et al., trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, vol. 4, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 92–94.