Changing Habits and Enjoying Hobbies – 28 Day Joy Challenge – Day 24 – Purity 1080

Changing Habits and Enjoying
Hobbies – 28 Day Joy Challenge – Day 24 –  Purity 1080

Purity 1080 06/28/2023 Purity 1080 Podcast

Purity 1080 on YouTube: Coming Soon!

Good morning,

Today’s photo of a round bush situated between a
pair of palm trees underneath a blazing sun with a blue expanse of an unknow
body of water comes to us from an anonymous FB friend who shared this scene on
social media back on or around May 25^th.   My short investigation to reveal the
identity of today’s mystery photographer proved to be fruitless, so if this
scene is yours and you’d like to fill us in on the details, let me know and I
will update the blog afterward to give you the credit you so richly deserve for
sharing this view from your life.  

I thought this shot was worthy of sharing even
though I didn’t have all the information because of its simple beauty and its symmetry,
and I thought that the round mound of shrubbery in the middle of those palm
trees was an adequate visual representation of our arrival of the midpoint of
our work week and “hump day”.   So whether
you have this week figured out thus far or if you a still looking for answers,
let me encourage you that:, like those prophets form the late 80’s, Bon Jovi,
proclaimed:  

“Whoa,
we’re half-way there

Whoa,
livin’ on a prayer

Take
my hand and we’ll make it. I swear

Whoa,
livin’ on a prayer”

(https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bonjovi/livinonaprayer.html)

Whoa, late 80’s flashback… that was unexpected, but
no more unexpected than how I would be producing a Christian blog or podcast,
and be literally living on prayers as part of my daily spiritual practice.     

Yeah, for those who knew me BC -before Christ – this
is quite a surprise, I would imagine as most of my life was spent in far less
spiritual pursuits.  I had little, non,
or at best a nominal faith at various times in my life before making Christ my
Lord and Savior in 2010 and since then I have been filling my life seeking the
Lord and His will for my life. 

Early in my new life in Christ, I was just happy I
made it into God’s kingdom and was very ignorant about what the Bible said about
God and how we are to live as Christians, or maybe I was just ignorant about
how to actually do what the Bible said. Obey the Bible? Are you serious?  Yeah, really. 

This past weekend Pastor Roscoe Lily did a message
on The Belt of Truth (https://fb.watch/lrI39Uq6KE/)
as part of a series on the Armor of God and his three points on what we are to
do with “The Truth” of God’s word were:

1.    Choose to Follow Jesus

It is one thing to “intellectually know the truth
about who Jesus is, but it is another thing to choose to follow Him. An
understanding of this truth would cause us to choose to follow.  

2.    Obey all the Teachings of Jesus

When we understand that everything written about
Jesus in the Bible is true, it should further cause us to obey what He said!

3.    Teach Truth to our kids – aka Make disciples!

And finally when we have accepted and applied this
truth to our lives, we should be compelled to share this truth with others.

After hearing Roscoe’s message I marveled over the
possibility that anyone could hear it and not be convicted by it to – do what
it said – follow Christ, obey His teachings, and make disciples – but then I
remembered my denominational church upbringing and how I sat in a church that
continually taught on “obeying” and how those messages never caused me to
repent. Somehow I and others, I’m sure, sat there and listened but never let
the truth change the way we thought about life or the way we compromised in the
area of obedience. 

Did we not get enough information to do it? Maybe,
but I think it was more likely that we believed the lie that we were “nothing
but sinners saved by grace” (maybe?!?) and it was virtually impossible to
expect us to be anything other than sinners.  
Our sin is a tough habit to break so many of us gave up ever trying to
live according to God’s truth- proclaiming that it just wasn’t “true for me” –
showing our lack of faith.  

In my old church, you kept quiet and hoped for the
best. We had no assurance of whether we were saved or not because our sin and
failure to obey God’s word was always before us but somehow we never repented. Paradoxically,
I was under the impression that I had to somehow earn my salvation but did
little or nothing to get it!  

But that was a lie, we are saved by faith alone, in
Christ alone, by grace alone – Salvation is a free gift and when we understand
that also live by faith – believing that we are new creations – because we are –
we can live as new creations, reject our old habits and hobbies and discover
the new life Christ has given us.  

And that sort of brings us to our current series,
which will ask us to consider our old hobbies, and what, if anything, has
changed with how we behave.  

We are drawing towards the end of our journey of walking through the 28 Day Joy Challenge, (https://4habits.org/) because we are encouraging
ourselves and others, you, to “find peace” in our lives by increasing our
capacity for joy and by building our emotional resilience through simple
practices of quieting and appreciation.

The 28 Day
Joy challenge is based on Dr. Marcus Warner & Chris Coursey’s latest book,
The Four Habits of Joy-Filled People, and you can sign up to take it for free,
and purchase a variety of books from Warner and Coursey on topic of Joy, by
going to https://4habits.org/.  

So let’s
jump into Day 24, which will direct us to reflect on a favorite hobby from our
lives and how it gave or gives us joy. 

———————————————————————————————————

Day 24 – Your Favorite Things

 

Welcome to Day 24
of the 28 Days to Joy Challenge!

Today’s
Encouragement:

Get ready for some
deep reflection today! Sharing your feelings and motivations with other people
might feel new or awkward, but we hope you have experienced how much shared joy
these connections can bring.

Today’s Practice:
Exercise 24

Today we will
practice appreciation, anticipation of joy, and sharing our feelings.

– How This Exercise
Will Benefit You:

Hobbies increase
our satisfaction in life. Reflecting on the things we love to do can help us
relax and feel more joy in the present moment.

– Exercise Steps:

Reflect on a
favorite hobby from your life. Think about why this hobby was meaningful to
you, and what made this hobby satisfying. Next, share your thoughts with
someone on the following: 1) why you stopped doing this hobby if you no longer
do it, 2) if you started a new hobby, and 3) what hobby you would like to do at
some point in your life.

Have fun with this
exercise. We pick up tomorrow with more joy practice!

Two of my favorite hobbies growing up were reading
and collecting books.  As a young
adolescent, I discovered Stephen King’s books and instantly fell in love with
the action and suspense that came out of his many works.  So I collected and read all of his
books.   King gave me a love of reading
and that hobby had served me well through the years as what I once did to
entertain myself I eventually used to learn the truth of God’s word and apply
it to my life.    

In my youth, my love of reading and collecting
caused me to collect magazines, comic books, and novels. Reading and collecting
books continued into my adulthood and while the content of what I read and
collect has shifted to Christian media, it is still something that occupies my
time.  I have a deep desire to know as
much as I can about God and about living a Christian life and at this point
have more than enough books to last me the rest of my life.  So if anything, I will probably begin the
process of reducing my collection of physical books anyway, because even though
reading books and learning give me joy – having stacks of unread books doesn’t.  It’s not the “having” of the books that gives
me joy, it’s the reading – and with my busy schedule this year, it’s a hobby
that I haven’t been enjoying enough of lately. So I anticipate, after
graduating from Deeper Walk’s school of prayer ministry, prayerfully at the end
of the year,  rediscovering the joy of
diving into the books that surround me on all sides. Learning new things and
getting lost in books that interest me brings me joy and I can’t wait for more
time to pursue this hobby in the future.  

So what about you? What favorite hobby do you have that
brings you joy? Has your hobby changed in any way, and do you anticipate it
bringing you joy in the future?   

Part of building our emotional resilience is found
in quieting and appreciation, so it my prayer that your hobbies provide you
with a way to be at peace and to appreciate the “good thing” you have found in
life, and that your hobby will be a continual source of joy.

\——————————————————————————————–

Today’s
Bible verse comes to us from “The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling” By
John G. Kruis.

(
While Bible verses on various topics of Counseling can be found with a quick
google search, we encourage you to purchase this resource to support the late
author’s work. (https://www.amazon.com/Quick-Scripture-Reference-Counseling-Kruis-ebook/dp/B00CIUJZT2?ref_=ast_author_dp )

This
morning’s meditation verse comes from the section on Adultery:

1
Corinthians 6:9-10 (ESV)
⁹  Or do you not know that the
unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither
the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice
homosexuality,
¹⁰  nor thieves, nor the
greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of
God.

Today’s verse is used by
our resource to point out “No adulterers go to heaven.” And it was one of the “drunken
verses” that caused me to go into recovery and eventually pursue sexual purity
as well.   

If anyone tells you, you don’t
have to “do anything” to be saved, they are technically correct because we are
saved by faith alone. However, verses like today’s verses make it clear that
repentance should be a natural fruit of our salvation.  

I usually include verse 11,
to point out that all is not lost if these are your sins, and that repentance
is needed. 

1
Corinthians 6:11 (ESV)
¹¹  And such were some of
you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Yes, we may have done the
sins on this list, but the idea is that after we come to Christ, we repent of
those sins – we stop doing them – and they no longer define who we are. We are
new creations in Christ and so we will no longer be – Sexually immoral,
thieves, drunkards, etc.    

So, don’t wallow in your
sin – identify with Christ and repent to demonstrate you have been born again
and you understand that your new life comes with the power over your sin,  Renew your mind with the truth of God’s word
and live the new life you have in Christ.

———————————————————————-

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  The Holy Spirit By A.W. Pink.

As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage you all to purchase A.W. Pink’s books for your own
private study and to support his work.  This resource is available online
for $0.99 (https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Spirit-Arthur-Pink-Collection-ebook/dp/B008CM5292/ref=sr_1_3?crid=AHKAQOM39CTN&keywords=a.w.+pink+the+holy+spirit&qid=1684376225&sprefix=a.w.+pink+the+holy+spirit+%2Caps%2C96&sr=8-3)  

A.W. Pink’s The Holy Spirit

11 – The Spirit Quickening

We shall now confine ourselves to the initial operation of the Spirit within the elect of God.
Different writers have employed the term “regeneration” with varying latitude:
some restricting it unto a single act, others including the whole process by
which one becomes a conscious child of God. This has hindered close accuracy of
thought, and has introduced considerable confusion through the confounding of
things which, though intimately related, are quite distinct. Not only has
confusion of thought resulted from a loose use of terms, but serious divisions
among professing saints have issued therefrom. We believe that much, if not
all, of this would have been avoided had theologians discriminated more sharply
and clearly between the principle of grace (spiritual life) which the Spirit
first imparts unto the soul, and His consequent stirrings of that principle
into exercise.

Quickening Is the Initial Operation of the Spirit

In earlier years we did not ourselves
perceive the distinction which is pointed by John 6:63 and 1 Peter 1:23: the
former referring unto the initial act of the Spirit in “quickening” the
spiritually-dead soul, the latter having in view the consequent “birth” of the
same. While it is freely allowed that the
origin of the “new creature” is shrouded in impenetrable mystery, yet of
this we may be certain, that life
precedes birth. There is a strict analogy between the natural birth and the
spiritual: necessarily so, for God is the Author of them both, and He ordained
that the former should adumbrate the latter. Birth is neither the cause nor the
beginning of life itself: rather is it the manifestation
of a life already existent: there had been a Divine “quickening” before the
child could issue from the womb. In like manner, the Holy Spirit “quickens” the
soul, or imparts spiritual life to it, before
its possessor is “brought forth” (as James 1:18 is rightly rendered in the
R.V.) and “born again” by the Word of God (1 Pet. 1:23).

James 1:18, 1 Peter
1:23, and parallel passages, refer not
to the original communication of spiritual life to the soul, but rather to our
being enabled to act from that life and induced to love and obey God by means
of the Word of Truth—which presupposes a principle of grace already planted in
the heart. In His work of illumination, conviction, conversion, and sanctification,
the Spirit uses the Word as the means thereto, but in His initial work of
“quickening” He employs no means, operating immediately or directly upon the
soul. First there is a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17; Eph. 2:10), and then the
“new creature” is stirred into exercise. Faith and all other graces are wrought in us by the Spirit through
the instrumentality of the Word, but not
so with the principle of life and grace from which these graces proceed.^[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

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These teachings are also available on the
MT4Christ247 You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MT4Christ247

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 Ask Seek Knock blog (https://tammylynask.blogspot.com/ ),  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)

For those who require the assistance of a Deeper
Walk International Prayer Minister to experience healing or your freedom in
Christ, I highly recommend Christy Edge’s Life on the Edge Freedom Prayer
Ministry. You can schedule a session by going to : https://cedge216.wixsite.com/life-on-the-edge     

“The views, opinions, and commentary of this
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Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship