What about Results? Answering the Call – Purity 789

What about Results? Answering
the Call  – Purity 789

Purity 789 7/21/2022 Purity 789 Podcast

Good morning, today’s photo a water pathway that runs through
a city to distant mountains and a sky painted by the sun comes to us from a
friend who has taken a year to travel through various parts of the world to share
the gospel of Jesus Christ along the way. 
Today’s photo documents this friend’s visit to the city of Prizren, which
is “the second most populous city and municipality of Kosovo and is … located
on the banks of the Prizren River between the foothills of the Sharr Mountains
in southern Kosovo. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prizren).  I just love how my friend’s love for the Lord
and willingness to follow His call has set them on a journey where they will spend
an entire year of their lives seeing distant lands and cultures with the sole intention
to represent God’s kingdom and share the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  

Not only has my friend chosen to leave all that was
familiar to them behind for a year, but they also chose to trust the Lord by
doing it alone. Now they are part of a team, but they didn’t insist that
someone go with them to hold their hand. They also trusted the Lord to provide
the funds for this traveling mission trip and the Lord was faithful and now
what they dreamed about is coming true. They are living it.

Well, it’s Thursday again and I share this “water pathway
to the mountains” to encourage my friends to either keep going, or to get on,
the path of Christian Discipleship which is my poetic way saying to choose to
live out your Christian faith every day. 
Instead of “just believing” or agreeing with certain ideas about faith,
the true value of our lives in Christ is realized when we live according to what
God says about us, seek to know Him more, and to surrender to His will for our
lives by pursuing our kingdom purpose.  

Our faith isn’t a list of dos and don’ts, a set of rules
to follow.  Our faith is a mission to do
the good works that God has prepared for us, to show and share His love and to
make disciples.

So tonight, although I haven’t been called to a year long
mission trip around the world, not yet anyway, I am answering the call the Lord
was leading me to and will be hosting another session of Freedom in Christ Ministries’’
“The Grace Course” on Zoom. 

And how do we know we are doing the right thing? How do we
know that what we are “called” to is “of God”?    How do we know we are fulfilling our
purpose in Christ?

Unfortunately, unless the Lord shows up with signs and
wonders or speaks from heaven there is no easy way to know that what you are
preparing to do is “really what God wants you to do.”  

As I thought about this question, the first thing that
came to mind is that we can know that whether or not what we do is God’s
purpose for us, by the results that we get.  

It makes sense. Like with my friend who is on their
extended mission, the mere fact that they were able to fund their trip could be
seen as a huge indicator that this is the Lord’s will for their life.  We could reckon that the Lord is sovereign
and that if He didn’t want my friend to go on this trip, the money wouldn’t have
come or something else would have prevented it.  

Likewise, if you start a church or a ministry and a bunch of
people show up, the large crowds could be seen as a huge indicator that you are
fulfilling your purpose and the Lord is blessing your faithfulness.  Results thus could be a good indicator of how
to gauge whether or not we are in the Lord’s will.   

Of course the problem is that you really have to act on
faith because you won’t see the results until AFTER you act.   

Plus, the results that we are hoping for – big crowds,
perhaps,(we do desire to reach the nations right ?), might not be what God has
in mind.  And just because something isn’t
successful in our eyes doesn’t mean that we were outside of God’s will.  

God can also use our failures or struggles to produce the
fruit of developing our Christians character, our trust in Him alone, and our
patience and perseverance.   

If everything we did was blessed by God we might take the
Lord for granted and think that we are wise and we know the perfect will of God”,
are making all the right moves, and don’t need to grow.

And because none of us is Jesus Christ, I know none of us
are perfect and that we will go through seasons where our faith will be tested,
and we will be called to repent and surrender more of ourselves to God’s ways
instead of just doing things like we always have.  

I have a friend who was “called” to leave his home state
of Arizona to come to Poughkeepsie to start a church and he was faithful to
pursue it.   But despite his faithfulness
and efforts to build a church there, he wasn’t successful.  He had small measures of success but
ultimately the church didn’t take off.   
So, I guess he was outside of God’s will right? 

But the thing is he was faithful to the call and although
the church didn’t take off, because he had moved to New York, he was in the
right place at the right time when a church in the nearby area needed an
associate pastor.  He now is on staff as
part of that church where he preaches and sometimes leads worship.  He went from being virtually all alone to
being surrounded by a vibrant church community.   Good story, right?  True story, but the thing is that it took Years
with a Capital Y for it come to pass.  

But this friend, remained faithful and I am sure that he
would testify that the Lord had been with him every step of the way, in the
lean years and now that he has “arrived”.  

This is the journey of our faith.  We go to where we believe the Lord calls us.
We don’t worry about the results. We leave those up to Him. But we remain in
constant contact with Him to lead us as we go, and we do the best we can to
share His truth and His love and to remain faithful in seeking His purposes for
us.  

So don’t worry about whether or not “you are doing it
right”, just abide in the Lord’s presence through communicating with Him through
prayer, Bible study, and asking Him for strength and guidance and you can be
assured that He is with you regardless of the circumstances and regardless of
the results.   

As long as our desire is to remain true to follow God’s
word, glorify Jesus, and do good things in His name, out of love for Him, not
out of obligation or in the hopes to gain something,  we can be certain that we won’t go too far
off course because God will undoubtedly work all things together for good
because we love Him and are answering the call to pursue His purpose for us.   

Romans 1:16-17 (NKJV) say
¹⁶  For I am not ashamed of
the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who
believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
¹⁷  For in it the
righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The
just shall live by faith.”

For in it, the gospel, the
righteousness of God is revealed. The righteousness of God is Jesus. He is
revealed from faith to faith. That means we grow, we progress from “faith to
faith” – we mature and know Jesus, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit more –
in our hearts, in our minds, and in our experience. 

This is our call. Through
our faith in Jesus, we have been justified. We are thus “just” – and we shall
live by faith.  That describes the fact
that we will live forever – we are saved – by our faith.  And it describes HOW we are to live, by faith,
by believing what the word of God says and by trying to mold our lives to
follow it. 

When we do this, we just happen
to get to know God more, from faith to faith.  

This is the cycle of life in
the Spirit. So keep walking and talking with God and keep growing as you go
from faith to faith.

   

——————————————————————————————————————–

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

This morning’s meditation verse is:

2 Peter 1:3 (NKJV)
³  as His divine power has
given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the
knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,

In
today’s verse, we are encouraged to discover that we have already been given
all that pertains to life and godliness because we know Jesus who called us by
glory and virtue.  

One thing
I have come to understand our faith lies in the heart of today’s verse: we
ALREADY got it!

When
we put our faith in Christ as Lord and Savior, we received the indwelling
presence of the Holy Spirit who made us spiritually alive, giving us eternal
life, and the power over sin.   God “has given”
– past tense – we already have “it” – all things that pertain to life, as in we
will never die or face God’s wrath in hell, 
we will instead live with Him for all eternity.   

Most
of us understand that part of the gospel, we will go to heaven someday… but we
also receive all things that pertain to godliness – we can live a righteous
life where we are no longer in a “master-slave” relationship with sin.  When we trust in who we are in Christ and ask
the Lord for the guidance and strength to repent of our former ways of living,
we can succeed because we have already been given a portion of God’s “divine
power” that pertains to life and godliness!

So go
to the Lord and thank Him for His salvation from sin and death, believe you
received it, and walk with the Lord in faith to receive the guidance and
strength for you to live out the righteous life that God has already provided
you with.

______________________________________________________________________

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 Clinton E. Arnold’s
“Powers of Darkness”

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

Secure and Protected

Paul
eloquently attested to the security of all who are “in Christ” in the face of
every conceivable hostile power. More than security he portrayed believers as
wrapped in the arms of a loving God, forever protected and forever cherished.

At the end of a
section where he had described the nature of life in the Spirit, he closed by
pointing his readers to the love and power of God in Christ. He remarks:

For
I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor
anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in
Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:38–39 RSV)

While
throughout the book of Romans, Paul had been primarily concerned about the
influences of sin, the law, the flesh and death on the believer, he turned his
attention here to a more comprehensive list of forces that could separate us
from God. His focus was primarily upon the hostile spirits and angelic forces
against whom we struggle. This comes out particularly in his references to
“angels,” “principalities,” “powers” and quite possibly in the expressions
“height” and “depth.”

Principalities and powers
surface throughout Paul’s letters as the spirit beings he saw as hostile to
God’s people. In this context angels must be regarded as the rebellious evil
angels who function in a way similar to the principalities and powers. Paul
used the term angel in this sense
(see 2 Cor 12:7 and Col 2:18), and it was widely used in Judaism to describe
supernatural beings in league with Satan.

It appears that Paul
may have used the terms height and depth as a comprehensive way of
referring to all of the astral spirits who were commonly believed to control
human destiny. In astronomical texts both terms appear technical. They were
used to refer to the zenith and nadir of the stars, that is, the highest and
lowest points reached by a heavenly body. It may be intentional that Paul’s
very next expression is, literally, “nor any other creature.” Some commentators
have thought this reference confirms that Paul had astral spirits in mind when
he used height and depth. J. D. G. Dunn comments on these
two terms, “Paul deliberately draws on current astronomical terms to denote the
full sweep of the heavens visible and invisible to the human eye, and thus all
astrological powers known and unknown which could be thought to determine and
control the fate and destiny of human beings.”

In Christ nothing can
sever us from God’s rich love showered upon us. However they are conceived, not
even the powers of darkness have the ability to disunite God and his people.
This does not mean that the principalities and powers will not try. Our
conflict with them continues, but in Christ we have a superabundant supply of
divine enabling power and love to sustain us.

In his second letter
to the Thessalonians Paul affirmed the promise of divine protection in a much
simpler way. In a letter that warned believers about the coming of a
satanically inspired “lawless one” (2 Thess 2:8–9), Paul’s assurance of divine
protection would have proved exceptionally comforting. Paul told them, “But the
Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one” (2
Thess 3:3). The promise had already proved true in the experience of the
Thessalonians as new believers. In his earlier letter Paul had remarked that he
had sent Timothy to check on their progress in the faith because he was afraid that
“in some way the tempter might have tempted you and our efforts might have been
useless” (1 Thess 3:5). Quite the contrary to his fears Paul learned that the
Thessalonians had been growing in their faith, in spite of persecution, and
were actively propagating the message of the gospel. The Lord was truly
faithful to them. He did indeed strengthen and protect them from the evil one.

Protection from evil
spirits was something of great concern to people living in the first century.
The word protect occurs over and over
again in the magical papyri as part of recipes that are designed for bringing
protection to those who use them, especially in the form of a magical amulet.
This kind of magic is commonly referred to as “apotropaic” magic, which
literally means “warding off.” It claims to protect people from evil spirits.

For Paul only the one
true God gives “protection.” His protection for the believer extends as far as
the rule of all the powers of darkness, including Satan himself.

Although God provides
us with protection, becoming a Christian does not mean that one gains an
automatic immunity to the demonic realm. Believers need to learn about their
position in Christ. This is precisely why the study of Scripture and theology
is so important for Christian living. Since Satan is a deceiver and an accuser,
we need to know the truth about who we are in Christ. The actuality about our
new identity needs to be grasped and appreciated in the depths of our
consciousness so that we can live like free people, rescued from servitude to
the powers of darkness.

These truths are
difficult for people to comprehend and accept. Paul felt the need to pray and
ask for the help of the Holy Spirit to guide the Ephesian Christians in opening
their hearts to it (Eph 1:17–18). Surely more than a few of Paul’s readers in
Ephesus had heard many of the same truths being taught by their teachers when
they gathered for worship and instruction. After all, Paul had spent nearly
three years in the area, personally imparting his doctrine to the people who
would become the leaders and teachers of the churches in the area. Many of the
people still needed to be convinced. We also need to ask God for the Spirit’s
illuminating help so that we too may understand the full significance of
Christ’s work for us and our new identity in Christ.

Once the truth about
our new identity in Christ has been grasped, we need to align our lives with
this reality. We need to learn to draw on the resources available through our
vital union with Jesus Christ. The Spirit’s fullness must be appropriated for
living in the world on a day-to-day basis. And now is when we need to talk
about “spiritual warfare.”^[1]

—————————more
tomorrow————————

Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage
Breaker”, “Freedom in Christ” series of Discipleship Classes via the
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Encouragement for the Path of
Christian Discipleship