All the Feels – Surrendering our Hearts to God and Living in Hope – Purity 667

All the Feels – Surrendering our Hearts to
God and Living in Hope – Purity 667

Purity
667 03/01/2022  Purity 667 Podcast

Good
morning,

Today’s photo of the pier at
Ballast Point Park in Tampa Florida comes to us from yours truly as my wife and
I made a “point” to see one last site before we got on the plane back home last
Thursday. It’s a simple photo but I like the way that although the pier was “warped”
by the wind and the waves, it still stands strong and leads to the “house” at
the end of the pier.     

Well it is March 1^st, and I don’t
know about you, but I take great delight as we begin a new month that will
prayerfully lead us from winter to spring and will take us from the white hues
of winter to the vibrant greens of spring as we move towards and beyond St.
Patrick’s Day on the 17^th.  No
matter what we may encounter from now until the first day of spring on the 20^th
in terms of weather, I will be “keeping the faith” that spring is coming!

Our trip to Tampa was a great relief to our
bodies, minds, and spirits and from the first day we were there I was
significantly affected by the increased sunshine and was positively marveling
over the vibrant almost surreal blue skies and the vibrant greens of the vegetation
we saw in Florida.

I felt so happy at our change in latitude
it was almost traumatic as it seemed that we had been rescued and delivered to
the promised land after enduring through, an admittedly mild but, still somewhat
relatively dark and dismal season of winter days.   The winter has been mild and pleasant really
for the most part but the stark contrast of the Florida sunshine showed us the
glory of the sunshine that we have been missing.

The transition had a joy that was akin to
salvation and while I could remember those bright days with despair now that
they are gone now and \ we are back in the great white north, I will choose to use
them to fuel my hope for seeing that sunshine return to transform our winter
wonderland into the lush green beautiful landscape that we are used to in the
spring and summers seasons.      

Similarly, in the spiritual realm we can
periodically lose the joy of our salvation and our walk, as we plod through
life and deal with difficult situations and people.  The blessings of God may seem less evident at
times and there can be periods where our prayers seem to go unanswered and
where instead of feeling like we have God’s favor we feel that we are being
punished for our faith.   

The good news is that God will never leave
us or forsake us, but the bad news is that 
indicates that when we feel God is distant from us, we may have wandered
away from Him, have forgotten who we are in Christ, or failed to seek His
presence.   

When I was an emotional wreck over the joy
of the Florida sunshine on that first day in Tampa, I could have forgotten
about the One who created it. I could have given glory to the great state of Florida,
but I didn’t. The reason that I was so overcome by the goodness of my circumstances
was because I constantly seek the Lord’s presence and try to live my life in
the context of God.  

The sun was nice, and the skies were a
brilliant blue but the joy of it was exponentially more because I remembered
how long it had been since I was on vacation, I remembered the difficult days
that I had walked through in recent years to come to this place. I remembered
the joy of being set free of the darkness of my past. I remembered the joy of
meeting the woman who would become my wife and how we passionately fell in love
with one another with God at the center of our relationship. And I stood in awe
of how not only was I standing in a “good place”, but I was also standing there
with her as my wife, and in the company God over it all! 

The moments of my life are filled with
peace and joy because I walk with the Lord moment to moment and after walking
with Him for so long my memories of my life are an ongoing testimony of the
goodness of God and His presence in my life through every twist and turn. 

As I have walked with the Lord and left
behind the sinful ways of the world, the Lord not only transferred me from death
to life and changed my character, He has also changed my heart of stone to heart
of flesh that has made me sensitive to experience the rich tapestry of emotions
for what they are: a response to what God has provided and what He is revealing
to us as we walk with Him.   

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, a traditional
day to return to the Lord as we enter the season that leads up the to
celebration of the Resurrection of Christ. While I am known not to be too big
on the traditions of men, any season that calls us to seek the Lord and draw
close to Him in prayer and repentance is something I can support because I
encourage Christians to draw close to, to seek, and to follow the Lord
24/7. 

But even when we intended to follow the
Lord and are pretty faithful to pursuing His will for our lives, we still need
reminders of how good God is and to be thankful for all that He has done.

When we wake up to our state of “spiritual
staleness”, that can naturally happen even to the most faithful disciple, we
discover that God didn’t go anywhere.  He
is still on the throne. He still loves us, and He is still available to
us.    

Our lives can be pretty good as we keep on
keeping on in our walk of faith but when we come to these new seasons of refreshing,
we can see that we have been carrying burdens on our souls that we weren’t
meant to carry.   When we wake up and
surrender to the Lord once again, we discover that His burden is light and that
the cloud we were walking under was of our own making as we tried to push our own
agenda in our lives, or we tried to do things in our own strength and ended up walking
alone as we went our own way.   

But now it’s time to go back home and to
enter His rest once again. It’s a new month, It’s a new day, and even though we
may have some more grey days before we see the vibrant greens of spring, we can
walk in hope because we know that the Lord is with us and that every step
forward on the path of Christian discipleship is a step closer to where the
Lord is leading us and is a step we can someday recall as a time when the Lord
came beside us on our journey from here to there.  

So keep walking and talking with God. Lay
your burdens down and pick your head up as you don’t want to miss a thing as
you get to see the goodness of God in the world of the living as He takes you further
into a life where the fruit of the Spirit grows, and peace and joy abound.

  

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

This morning’s meditation verses are:

Luke 12:31-32 (NLT2)
³¹  Seek the Kingdom of God
above all else, and he will give you everything you need.
³²  “So don’t be afraid,
little flock. For it gives your Father great happiness to give you the Kingdom.

Today’s Bible verses provide “the instruction”
for our Christian life and the assurance to follow it.    

As I have shared in the past, if there was
one thing I would tell Christians to do to experience their freedom in Christ and
the fruit of the Spirit in their lives, it is to “seek the Lord”.  

To ‘seek the kingdom of God above all else”
can seem to be a cryptic or mysterious instruction but as today’s verses
indicate the result of following that instruction is receiving “everything you
need” and that we need not fear pursuing it because God, our heavenly Father,
is happy to give it to us.    

Now hear this: this is not the prosperity
gospel! Following the Lord and seeking the Kingdom of God will not give you “everything
you want”. The promise in these verses is that you will receive everything you
need. 

And as someone who has sought the kingdom of
God by trying to learn as much as I can about God, His wisdom and His ways, and
by trying to shape my life to live according to what I learned, I can tell you
that the journey can be challenging as we need to discover just what it is that
we “need” and how that understanding can be hard to come by as our minds need
to be renewed to understand that some of the things that we “want” are not good
for us or simply are not a part of God’s plan for our lives.  

I recently marveled over my journey and how
some of my prayers for “good things” didn’t come true and I am not talking
about just receiving riches or other material things.

I prayed prayers for healing. I prayed prayers
for people to come to Christ. I prayed prayers for relationships to be
strengthened. I prayed prayers for churches to succeed. I prayed prayers for
ministries to succeed. I prayed prayers for revival.  All of these “good” prayers didn’t come to
pass. And now I have come to understand that God knows three things that we don’t.

God knows our situations perfectly. God knows
what we need. And God knows His plan.   

While we certainly can know our situations pretty
well and have an idea about what we think we need, we don’t have perfect
knowledge and we certainly don’t know God’s plan.   

So we are to trust God and to “seek His
kingdom” to take us where His will will be done.   We can do that by following Him and seeing
where His sovereign plan will take us.  

I had no idea of where God was going to take
me since I started walking with Him over ten years ago, but I can tell you that
it has all led to good and I have consistently received everything I needed
along the way even though I may have thought otherwise as I walked it out.  

God knows everything perfectly. He has a plan,
and He assures us that if we seek His kingdom will receive everything we need.  So trust Him and seek the kingdom of God
above all else.

 

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

Today we continue sharing from June Hunt’s
Codependency: Balancing an Unbalanced Relationship.

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

B. Key Passage to Read and Reread

Notice two thoughts in this passage that seem to be in opposition to one
another.

“If someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore
him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each
other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If
anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one
should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without
comparing himself to somebody else, for each one should carry his own load.”
(Galatians 6:1-5)

Does Scripture Contradict Itself?

Verse 2 says, “Carry each other’s burdens,” and verse 5
says, “Each one should carry his own load.” Since these two
clear-cut directives seem contradictory to each other, which one is true? When
you carefully analyze what is being said, there is no contradiction.

• Verse
  1—Gently encourage another person to change from negative behavior, but
  beware of your own temptation.
• Verse
  2—The Greek word for “burden” is baros, which means “weight,” implying a load
  or something that is pressing heavily. When you help carry what is too
  heavy for someone else to bear alone, your caring response fulfills the
  law of Christ.
• Verse
  5—The Greek word for “load” is phortion,
  which means “something carried.” Clearly, when you carry what
  others should carry, you are not wise. You are not called by God to
  relieve others of their rightful responsibilities.

Conclusion: Those who are codependent try to get their needs met by carrying
loads that others should be carrying. To move out of a codependent
relationship, both individuals need to quit trying to be the other person’s
“all-in-all” and instead encourage each other to take
responsibility for their own lives and to live dependency on the strength of
God.

Biblical Counseling Keys: Codependency: Balancing an
Unbalanced Relationship.

—————————more tomorrow————————

Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage Breaker”,
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(https://feed.podbean.com/tammalyn78/feed.xml)

Encouragement for the Path of Christian
Discipleship