Purity 341 02/12/2021 Purity 341 Podcast
Good morning!
Today’s photo of a late January sunrise comes from a friend who lives in
the Chatham area of Columbia County in upstate New York.
As the sun rises on Valentine’s weekend, I pray that all my friends take
time to appreciate all the love in their lives.
While the focus of Valentine’s Day is romantic love between spouses,
life partners, and lovers, it is important to remember that the love we
experience on earth goes beyond the amorous love between couples. And if this season finds you not involved in
an amorous relationship its important to remember the love you do have.
The first love that we experience is the love of our family who cared
for us when we couldn’t care for ourselves. Our family lovingly taught us a lot
about how to live and love in this world.
While biological ties don’t necessarily guarantee a relationship, the
term family is only used with those we love.
The next love we get to experience is the love of friendship. As we have
gone through this life, we have made many acquaintances but the people we call
friends are the ones we love. They are the
ones that remain in our hearts no matter the time, distance, or
circumstances.
The list of loves would be incomplete without mentioning the love we can
have for our pets. The loving
relationship we can have with our pets shouldn’t be dismissed because the care
and affection that we give is never without meaning.
All of these loves that we know are a reflection of the love of God for
scripture tells us that God is love. Take
time this weekend to show your love and appreciation for all the loves in your
life and when you do, thank God for lovingly providing you with this life and
all the love that you have known.
While lovers, spouses, family, friends, and even our pets can disappoint
or even leave us, the word of God tells us that God will never leave us or forsake
us. So even though Valentine’s Day can
be a lonely day for some, please know that with God you are never alone, and
you are always loved.
This morning’s meditation
verses are:
Galatians
5:22-23 (NKJV)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, self-control.
Against such there is no law.
As we try to live life in the Spirit, it is
important to remember that the first fruit of the spirit is love!
When we put our faith Jesus Christ, we have
a revelation of the love of God for the first time. We are forgiven for our
sins and accepted by God because of God’s love for us.
Our salvation should be the product of our discovering
that we are loved by God and that naturally leads to the next fruit of the Spirit:
joy!
When I realized I was forgiven of everything
I’ve ever done or would do and that I was given eternal life. I was filled with
joy!
When I realized that I no longer had to fear
death and that life had a meaning and a purpose that was define by the kingdom
of God, I had the next fruit of the Spirit: peace.
After that though I would say that the
cultivation of the rest of the fruit of the Spirit is dependent upon our
willingness to follow God’s ways for our lives.
They can grow quite naturally out of the
revelation of our relationship with God and the incredible blessings that we
have been given but they may be hindered by the conditioning that we have
learned from the world’s ways.
We may have learned to cut corners or do
things that are acceptable by the world’s standards but fall short of
righteousness. We may be consumed with
fleshly or material desires. We may be
shallow or selfish. We may just be
totally ignorant of how a Christian should live.
That’s why the word of God instructs us to not
be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind
and that our hearts of stone need to be changed to hearts of flesh.
The world did a number on us, but Christ has
overcome the world and when we seek God and His wisdom and ways for our life,
we can progressively experience all the fruit of the Spirit. So Follow the love that led you to life everlasting,
and you will be a living expression of the fruit of the Spirit.
I invite all to mt4chritst.org where I always share
insights from prominent Christian counselors to assist my brothers and sisters
in Christ with their walk.
Today we will continue to share from Dr. June Hunt’s Biblical Counseling
Keys on “Self-Worth: Discovering Your God-given Worth”.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes
and encourage all to purchase Dr. Hunt’s books for your own private study and
to support her work:
F. Accept 7 Steps to Self-Acceptance
For years Dorie concealed a secret. She thought people would not believe her
if she told the sordid truth. After Dorie left the orphanage at age 13, she
went into the first of many foster homes in which she suffered merciless verbal
and emotional abuse, as well as physical and sexual abuse. She confided,
“There was nothing I could do to stop him from violating my body. He warned
me that if I ever told anyone he would kill me.” Dorie believed him.
At a later home, her rollaway bed was placed in a hallway where strange men
passed by in the night. Her foster mother gave these men permission to perform
immoral acts on Dorie, and she was repeatedly forced to participate in their
perversions. As a result, she believed she could never be clean and whole
again.
Dorie later said, “[God] gave the grace to bear my trials. It was He
who chose me to belong to Him; He knew the first day of my life, as well as all
the days in between. He knew that some day that dirty little girl would stand
before thousands of people and tell them that God is faithful.”
Although Dorie van Stone experienced the depths of degradation and disgrace
at the hands of those with the hardest of hearts, the Lord raised His choice
servant up to bring hope to multitudes of people in America, on the mission
field, and around the globe. The Bible says …
“Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will
restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me
up.”
(Psalm 71:20)
It is possible for you to acquire a positive self-image and to learn to
value yourself as God values you. In order to do that, God wants you to accept
the following seven truths about yourself.
- I
accept God’s Word that I was created in His image.
“God
created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and
female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).
- I
accept myself as acceptable to Christ.
“Accept
one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to
God” (Romans 15:7).
- I
accept what I cannot change about myself.
“Who
are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to the
one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ Does not the potter have
the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special
purposes and some for common use?”
(Romans 9:20-21).
- I
accept the fact that I will make mistakes.
“Not
that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but
I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.
But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is
ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me
heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians
3:12-14).
- I
accept criticism and the responsibility for failure.
“I
acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will
confess my transgressions to the Lord.’
And you forgave the guilt of my sin” (Psalm
32:5).
- I
accept the fact that I will not be liked or loved by everyone.
“If
the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. … If they
persecuted me, they will persecute you also” (John 15:18, 20).
- I
accept the unchangeable circumstances in my life.
“…
I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances” (Philippians 4:11).
Biblical Counseling Keys – Biblical Counseling Keys – Biblical Counseling Keys:
Self-Worth: Discover Your God-Given Worth.
—————————–more
tomorrow ————————-
God bless
you all!
Join our “Victory
over the Darkness” or “The Bondage Breaker” 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.
Email me
at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and to be
encouraged.
Encouragement for the Path of Christian
Discipleship
Leave a Reply