Am I Going the Right Way, Lord? A Simple Walk of Faith – Purity
714
Purity 714 04/24/2022
Good morning,
Today’s photo of view of the lake on the shores of the World Golf
Hall of Fame comes to us from a friend who is a “saddlebag preacher” who took a
ride on his iron horse with his wife to St. Augustine Florida over the
weekend. I share it because of it’s simple
beauty and the calm easy feeling it brings.
Well, It’s Monday again and although we will have to gear up for
another work week it is my prayer that the last week in April will be peaceful,
calm, and easy for all of my friends. I recently
received news of more friend’s and loved ones with possible life threatening health
concerns which causes me to pray for their healing but to also take stock in my
own life and appreciate where the Lord has brought me thus far, even though it’s
a Monday.
A life walking in the Spirit is never boring as my days are
filled from morning to night with the normal activities of life that require
the work that will support myself and my family and with a constant preoccupation
with my relationship with God which is made fruitful through spiritual
disciplines and acts of service and worship.
This blog and my podcast are merely a way of giving God glory and is my attempt
to encourage people to draw close to God to reap the wonders of His love that
come from a life of Christian Discipleship.
Christ called us to pick up our crosses and to follow Him and it is my
intention to encourage people to do that by sharing with them what I have
learned along the way about how exactly we are to do that!
After being saved by a gospel radio message, that was my
question: Now what? How do I do
this?
The simply advice new believers in Christ usually receive
include:
·
Join a Bible believing, Bible preaching local church
community
·
Read the Bible
·
Pray
That’s about it. If
you get a word from a true Christian that wants you to remain in the faith,
they will encourage you to “repent” by turning from your sins and the ways of
the world to follow the Lord’s principles for living that can be gleaned from
scripture. In a new believer resource I
received from Billy Graham’s ministry, they gave this advice and offered the
assurance that new believer’s are actually forgiven by sharing:
1 John 1:9 (NKJV)
9 If we confess our sins, He
is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.
That’s very comforting, because even though I put my faith
in Christ I was still very sinful and needed to know that “I was still in this
thing”. I needed to know that I was still a Christian even if I stumbled,
because that’s all I did in my early days of my faith.
But God’s word was true. I did all of the above and kept
seeking the Lord’s will for my life, and amazingly through the years, a lot of
the “unrighteousness” that I entered the kingdom with, has been cleansed!
But the journey continues and I am still trying to progress
and mature in my faith and to seek my purpose in God’s kingdom. I have kept “walking and talking with God” and
He has blessed the journey every step of the way.
But in 2021 and in the beginning of 2022, the old familiar pathway
of Christian Discipleship took a new turn and lead to exciting and new
territories. As thrilling as the new
opportunities and relationships that developed in 2021, it was a daunting
change of direction and I was left wondering at times “where all this is
leading to”, “where am I going” and “am I on the right path.”
The thing about a walk of faith is that it requires you to
step out in faith because you don’t always know, with any degree of certainty,
that you are doing what the Lord wants or if you are just doing things your
way.
2021 included the beginning of a new ministry and a
friendship that would be significantly changed by the years end. The Community
Freedom Ministry, Community Freedom, that I began at Rock Solid Church in February
was concluded by the fall of 2021 when the opportunity arose for me to facilitate
a Men’s Freedom Discipleship Course Online for Freedom in Christ Ministries.
And my relationship with Rock Solid Church, where I had
been worshiping and serving the Lord in various capacities since 2011 or so,
changed because a friendship with one of my discipleship students developed
into love and marriage causing us me to join my spouse to worship the Lord
together at Starpoint church in Clifton Park.
So I got a new ministry, a new wife, and new church all in
the space of a year’s time. While I was fairly certain about all of these moves
and new relationships, to be honest, I could have really been making colossal
blunders in each of these areas because I didn’t have perfect knowledge and
could have put my trust where I shouldn’t have.
But I am happy to report that as we enter into the last week
of April, that I didn’t make any mistakes because the Lord has blessed me in
all of these areas and I have great peace over my decision to follow the Lord’s
call to “go” where I believe He was leading me to go.
My wife, TammyLyn, has been the greatest blessing I have
ever had in my life. I have never been loved and cared for by anyone the way
she loves me. She is true in here faith and character and we are deeply
committed to love one another and worship and serve the Lord together until He
calls us home.
The ministry with Freedom in Christ ministries has blessed
me perhaps more than the men that I have encouraged and helped to resolve their
personal and spiritual conflicts, experience their freedom in Christ, and mature
in their faith. I have matured in my
view of my purpose and am less task or goal oriented in my approach to ministry
and have accepted the fact that I am only to encourage and help others where I
can, and it is up to them and their relationship with God to give them the
freedom and peace they are looking for. God
brings the increase not me. I am to be faithful to serve and to leave the
results up to Him.
And as for the new church? I had a lot of positive
interactions with small groups and the services at Starpoint Church before I
made the decision to make it my church home but wasn’t 100% sure if the level
of worship would be comparable to what I was used to. But as I have been regularly attending
services since the beginning of the year, I was pleasantly surprised to see
that Pastor Roscoe Lily’s commitment to teach the truth of the gospel of Jesus
Christ and to encourage people to live out their Christian faith was similar to
mine. His recent messages on “pet sins” demonstrated
to me that he wasn’t just going to preach an “ultra-grace” message that only
focused on the love of God and the forgiveness of sins. These simple messages
showed me that Pastor Roscoe was calling his congregation to be disciples of Christ
by encouraging them to turn from the sins.
And yesterday, any doubts about Starpoint’s vision were
erased for me as Pastor Roscoe began a series on “Walking with God” that basically
encouraged the congregation to reach out to God in conversational prayer while
exercising their bodies with the simple act of walking. That’s right my new pastor, was basically
telling us to “keep walking and talking with God.”
So I while I may not know exactly where the journey of my
life will take me in the months and years ahead, I know beyond a shadow of a
doubt that I didn’t “stray from the path”. God has got me right where I am
supposed to be right now and I have great peace knowing that He has been with
me all along, has led me to this wonderful place in my life, and I know He will
be with me in the days ahead.
So I encourage you, to turn and start, or keep walking and talking
with God because His ways are higher then our ways and He is good and faithful
to work all things together for your good and to bring you to a good place if
you just listen to His voice and go in the direction that He is calling you
to.
_____________________________________________________________
Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book
for Men”.
This
morning’s meditation verse is:
Romans 8:15 (NLT2)
15 So you have not received a
spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when
he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”
Today’s Bible verse speaks of that fact that when we put our faith in
Christ, we are adopted into God’s royal family, and we receive the indwelling
presence of the Holy Spirit, and become children of God.
We can call God – Abba Father! – which is a term of endearment that
reflects a close intimate relationship of a father with his child, as well as the
childlike trust a young child puts in their “daddy.” Yes, Daddy God. Ok, I revere the Father way too much to use
that term on the regular but I can attest that I have had moments of deep
personal intimacy of the Lord where I have experienced His love and care to
such an extent that I know what the “Daddy God” folks are talking about.
It’s that love, and deep trust in the Father, that we can have as His
children that will cause us not to fear.
While we have been bought for a price and are the “slaves” of God, we
don’t need to fear His punishment. In Christ we are bought and paid for, but we
are also forgiven, and we are also God’s children.
We can trust the Lord because He loves us, He owns us, and We are His children.
This is what a relationship with God
means. We are His. We need not fear Him. We can draw close to Him and receive
His help.
So lose the ideas of a angry and vengeful God. If you have put your faith
in Christ, you have been saved from God’s wrath and are now on His side, are
forgiven, and are in His family.
So draw close to Him to receive His love and His guidance. So fear not,
the Father loves you and He will show you the way in which you should go.
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.
Spreading a Passion
for Christ Crucified—by Teaching
But now here’s a question:
If that is the aim of God in the death of Christ—namely, that “Christ
crucified” be honored and glorified for all things—then how is Christ to get the glory he deserves? The answer is that this
generation has to be taught that these things are so. Or to say it another way:
The source of exultation in the cross of Christ is education about the cross of
Christ.
That’s
my job. I am not alone, but I do embrace it for myself with a passion. This is
what I believe the Lord called me to in 1966 when I lay sick with mono in the
health center in Wheaton, Illinois. This is where it was all leading—God’s
mandate: So live and so study and so serve and so preach and so write that
Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen God, be the only boast of this
generation. And if this is my job, yours is the same, just in a different form:
to live and speak in such a way that the worth of “Christ crucified” is seen
and savored by more and more people. It will be costly for us as it was for
him.
The Only Place to Boast in the Cross Is on the
Cross
If we desire that there be
no boasting except in the cross, then we must live near the cross—indeed we
must live on the cross. This is shocking. But this is what Galatians 6:14 says:
“Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me,
and I to the world.” Boasting in
the cross happens when you are on the
cross. Is that not what Paul says? “The world has been crucified to me, and I
[have been crucified] to the world.” The world is dead to me, and I am dead to
the world. Why? Because I have been crucified. We learn to boast in the cross
and exult in the cross when we are on the cross. And until our selves are
crucified there, our boast will be in ourselves.
But
what does this mean? When did this happen? When were we crucified? The Bible
gives the answer in Galatians 2:19–20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It
is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in
the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for
me.” When Christ died, we died. The glorious meaning of the death of Christ is
that when he died, all those who are his died in him. The death that he died
for us all becomes our death when we are united to Christ by faith (Romans
6:5).
But
you say, “Aren’t I alive? I feel alive.” Well, here is a need for education. We
must learn what happened to us. We must be taught these things. That is why
Galatians 2:20 and Galatians 6:14 are in the Bible. God is teaching us what
happened to us, so that we can know ourselves, and know his way of working with
us, and exult in him and in his Son and in the cross as we ought.
Linking with the Death and Life of Christ
Crucified
Consider Galatians 2:19–20
again. We will see that, yes, we are dead and, yes, we are alive. “I have been
crucified with Christ [so I am dead]. It is no longer I who live, but Christ
who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh [so, yes, I am alive, but
it isn’t the same “I” as the “I” who died] I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me.” In other words, the “I” who lives is the
new “I” of faith. The new creation lives. The believer lives. The old self died
on the cross with Jesus.
You
may ask, “What’s the key for linking up with this reality? How can this be
mine? How can I be among the dead who are alive with Christ and who see and
savor and spread the glory of the cross?” The answer is implied in the words
about faith in Galatians 2:20. “The
life I now live … I live by faith in
the Son of God.” That is the link. God links you to his Son by faith. And when
he does, there is a union with the Son of God so that his death becomes your death
and his life becomes your life.[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), 54–56.
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