Bad Company – Forsaking Friends in Low Places- Self-Deception Series 10 – Purity 1099

Bad Company – Forsaking Friends in Low Places-
Self-Deception Series 10 – Purity 1099

Purity 1099 07/20/2023 Purity 1099 Podcast

Purity 1099 on YouTube:

Good morning,

Today’s photo of the majestic blue heavens with
angelic like cloud formations over Waite Rd comes to us from yours truly as I
captured this scene while taking a weary afternoon walk last Saturday after a
forced six day work week.  

Well, It’s Thursday and as is my habit I share this
photo of an asphalt pathway as a visual encouragement to get on or to keep walking
on the path of Christian Discipleship. I also share it because of that
magnificent blue sky which has been a rarity this “white sky summer” as we have
been inundated with nearly record setting rainfall and periodic poor air
quality due to the perpetual wildfires of “O’ Canada”.  You wouldn’t think you could take something
as simple as blue skies in summertime for granted but apparently we have as
Summer 2023 makes me appreciate it each time I look up and see blue.    

And that’s one thing about our human experience,
that is lamented about in that power ballad from 1988, the hard rock -hair band
– Cinderella’s “Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone), that the love we have,
that the positive circumstances we have, may not last forever and that what we
take for granted today may be gone tomorrow.  

One of the things that Christians can take for
granted and shockingly stop appreciating is the fact that they know the truth
of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that they have been translated from the
kingdom of darkness into God’s kingdom.  If
we are not careful, we can take our salvation and freedom for granted to the
point that it will feel like it is gone. 
Instead of celebrating and rejoicing in what the Lord has done in our
lives continually, we can become jaded and depressed over the negative
circumstances in our lives, become weary, and seek comfort and meaning from the
world again!  If we fail to practice gratitude
and appreciation and choose to stop seeking the Lord’s presence, strength, and
guidance in regular Bible study, prayer, and through “walking in the Spirit”,  we can start believing lies that will lead us
into sin or take us to the depths of depression.   

So as disciples of Jesus Christ, we have to remind
ourselves of what our Teacher has taught us, what He has done in our lives, and
rejoice over our salvation and that we have been chosen to know and share the
Truth.   We have to walk the fine line of
contentment and seeking to be further sanctified on this path and we must be
diligent in the battle for our minds when the world, the flesh, or the devil
seek to deceive us.   

And that brings us to our current series on Self-
Deception, where we have decided to investigate some of the ways we deceive
ourselves by walking through Step 2, Deception Vs. Truth, of the Steps to
Freedom in Christ to see what ways we may have been deceived by “the world” and
ourselves and in what ways we have wrongly defended ourselves. 

So we present the ninth “Way You Can Be Deceived By
the World”:

9. Believing that I can associate with bad company
and not become corrupted.

The scripture reference for this point is:

1
Corinthians 15:33-34 (NLT2)
³³  Don’t be fooled by those
who say such things, for “bad company corrupts good character.”
³⁴  Think carefully about what
is right, and stop sinning. For to your shame I say that some of you don’t know
God at all.

Okay, this one hit close to home because I have many
friends that I have left behind on the path of Christian Discipleship who are
going the way of the world and unless the Lord is gracious are headed for
destruction.  But the thing is that they
are kind, amusing, and seemingly “good people”, although that “good” label may
slip off if one were to consider some of their life choices or how they have
treated others during various times and seasons of their life.  

When we choose to surrender to Jesus and follow Him,
we make the choice to separate ourselves from our worldly ways and many of our
old friends, some in “low places”, will not appreciate our newfound faith and no
longer be our friends.  While some will
flat out reject us as a “Bible thumper” of “born again weirdo”, others will
tolerate our faith as long as it doesn’t interfere with their lives but will
also secretly hope for us to come back to our “old selves” again.  Some will seek to challenge our faith and
others will seek to lead us into temptation periodically to see if our “faith”
is for real.   

While I love my old worldly friends and have seen quite
a few of them come to faith in Jesus, praise the Lord, if they are not “walking
and talking with God”, we don’t really hang out anymore.  I have accepted our limited friendships,
which are usually limited to a disengaged status on social media or have
accepted that we are no longer friends anymore. 
Some people can’t even tolerate being connected to me on Facebook
because of my vocal faith.  While I wish
them well, I don’t regret the disillusionment of these friendships and
acquaintanceships because I know the truth and don’t want anything or anyone to
lead me into temptation or to disrupt my relationship with the Lord. 

God comes first and everyone else comes next.   

However, this lie, that it is okay to hang out with
bad company with no fear of corruption, really hits close to home because I
have friends who have suffered greatly because they couldn’t cut ties to toxic
people and in one case, bad company contributed to their death.    

“Jake” was a Christian man with the demons of
addiction and although He was known for his knowledge of scripture, sense of
humor, and kind heart, he had a continual need to be accepted by his “friends
in the street”.  And because of Jake’s
associations, Jake would continually return to addictive life of crime, and it
was in one of these episodes with bad company that he overdosed and died,
leaving behind a devastated wife and several children and grandchildren.  

So don’t believe the lie that bad company won’t corrupt
you. They may cause you to compromise your faith or lead you to be less than
you are meant to be in Christ, but they could also be used by the enemy to
steal, kill, and destroy.    

——————————————————————————————–

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 come from the section on Adultery:

Romans 7:2-3
(ESV)
²  For a married woman is
bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is
released from the law of marriage.
³  Accordingly, she will be
called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive.
But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another
man she is not an adulteress.

Today’s verse falls under
the 18^th point of our counseling reference guide resource’s section
on adultery, 18. “Anyone who divorces his or her spouse for any reason other
than adultery and marries another commits adultery.”

Today is actually the second
verse under point 18, as I discovered when I turned the page in our resource
this morning, and it reiterates the fact that marriage is supposed to be “until
death” and acknowledges the insolvability of the marriage covenant and the
subsequent sin that results when marriage vows are broken for less than
biblical reasons.    But if the spouse
dies, the covenant is broken by God and allows you to marry again without the
sin of adultery.  

I was reading Mark 10 this
morning and John Macarthur’s commentary on Mark 10:1-12 which addresses divorce.  

Macarthur’s commentary regarding
remarriage states: 

Remarriage after a
divorce—except for legitimate biblical grounds—proliferates adultery. The
innocent party—one whose spouse has committed prolonged, hard-hearted,
unrepentant adultery—may remarry without being guilty of adultery, as may a
believer whose unbelieving spouse has chosen to leave the marriage (see note on 1Co 7:15).^[1]

So
unless there was sexual immorality or the “unbelieving spouse” chooses to leave,
your new relationships would be adulterous.   But God forgives us when we repent and
blesses new marriages when we follow Him. 
So know the hard truth and try to obey and follow the Lord from this
point forward.

——————————————————————–

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

14 – The Spirit Comforting

No
Place for a “Decision” to Be Saved

One would naturally suppose that the good
news of a free Savior and a full salvation would readily be embraced by a
convicted sinner. One would think that, as soon as he heard the glad tidings,
he could not forbear exclaiming, in a transport of joy, “This is the Savior I
want! His salvation is every way
suited to my wretchedness. What can I desire more? Here will I rest.” But as a
matter of fact this is not always the case, yea, it is rarely so. Instead, the
stricken sinner, like the Hebrews in Egypt after Moses had been made manifest
before them, is left to groan under the lash of his merciless taskmasters. Yet
this arises from no defect in God’s gracious provision, nor because of any
inadequacy in the salvation which the Gospel presents, nor because of any
distress in the sinner which the Gospel is incapable of relieving; but because
the workings of self-righteousness hinder the sinner from seeing the fullness
and glory of Divine grace.

Strange as it may
sound to those who have but a superficial and non-experimental acquaintance
with God’s Truth, awakened souls are exceedingly backward from receiving
comfort in the glorious Gospel of Christ. They think they are utterly unworthy
and unfit to come to Christ just as they are, in all their vileness and
filthiness. They imagine some meetness must be wrought in them before they are
qualified to believe the Gospel, that there must be certain holy dispositions
in their hearts before they are entitled to conclude that Christ will receive
them. They fear that they are not sufficiently humbled under a sense of sin,
that they have not a suitable abhorrence of it, that their repentance is not
deep enough; that they must have fervent breathings after Christ and pantings
after holiness before they can be warranted to seek salvation with a
well-grounded hope of success. All of which is the same thing as hugging the
miseries of unbelief in order to obtain permission to believe.

Burdened with guilt
and filled with terrifying apprehensions of eternal destruction, the convicted
sinner yet experimentally ignorant of the perfect righteousness which the
Gospel reveals for the justification of the ungodly, strives to obtain
acceptance with God by his own labors, tears, and prayers. But as he becomes
better acquainted with the high demands of the Law, the holiness of God, and
the corruptions of his own heart, he reaches the point where he utterly
despairs of being justified by his own strivings. “What must I do to be saved?” is now his agonized cry. Diligently
searching God’s Word for light and help, he discovers that “faith” is the
all-important thing needed, but exactly what faith is, and how it is to be
obtained, he is completely at a loss to ascertain. Well-meaning people, with
more zeal than knowledge, urge him to
“believe,” which is the one thing above all others he desires to do, but finds
himself utterly unable to perform.

If saving faith were
nothing more than a mere mental assent to the contents of John 3:16, then any
man could make himself a true believer whenever he pleased—the supernatural
enablement of the Holy Spirit would be quite unnecessary. But saving faith is very much more than a
mental assenting to the contents of any verse of Scripture; and when a soul has
been Divinely quickened and awakened
to its awful state by nature, it is made to realize that no creature-act of
faith, no resting on the bare letter of a text by a “decision” of his own will,
can bring pardon and peace. He is now made to realize that “faith” is a Divine gift (Eph. 2:8, 9), and not a
creature work; that it is wrought by “the operation
of God” (Col. 2:12), and not by the sinner himself. He is now made
conscious of the fact that if ever he is to be saved, the same God who invites
him to believe (Isa. 45:22), yea, who commands
him to believe (1 John 3:23), must also impart
faith to him (Eph. 6:23).

Cannot you see, dear
reader, that if a saving belief in Christ were the easy matter which the vast majority of preachers and evangelists of
today say it is, that the work of the
Spirit would be quite unnecessary?
Ah, is there any wonder that the mighty power of the Spirit of God is now so
rarely witnessed in Christendom?—He has been grieved, insulted, quenched, not
only by the skepticism and worldliness of “Modernists,” but equally so by the creature-exalting
free-willism and self-ability of man to “receive Christ as his personal Savior”
of the “Fundamentalists!”! Oh, how very few today really believe those clear and emphatic words of Christ, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me (by His Spirit) draw him” (John 6:44).

Ah, my reader, when
GOD truly takes a soul in hand, He brings him to the end of himself He not only convicts him of the worthlessness of
his own works, but He convinces him
of the impotence of his will. He not Only strips him of the filthy rags of his
own self-righteousness, but He empties him of all self-sufficiency. He not only
enables him to perceive that there is “no good thing” in him (Rom. 7:18), but
he also makes him feel he is “without
strength” (Rom. 5:6). Instead of concluding that he is the man whom God will
save, he now fears that he is the man who must be lost forever. He is now brought down into the very dust and made to
feel that he is no more able to savingly believe in Christ than he can climb up
to Heaven.

We are well aware
that what has been said above differs radically from the current preaching of
this decadent age; but we will appeal to the experience of the Christian
reader. Suppose you had just suffered a heavy financial reverse and were at
your wits’ end to know how to make ends meet: bills are owing, your bank has
closed, you look in vain for employment, and are filled with fears over future
prospects. A preacher calls and rebukes your unbelief, bidding you lay hold of
the promises of God. That is the very
thing which you desire to do, but can you by an act of your own will? Or,
a loved one is suddenly snatched from you: your heart is crushed, grief
overwhelms you. A friend kindly bids you to, “sorrow not even as others who
have no hope.” Are you able by a “personal decision” to throw off your anguish
and rejoice in the Lord? Ah, my reader, if a mature Christian can only “cast
all his care” upon the Lord by the Holy
Spirit‘s gracious enablement, do you suppose that a poor sinner who is yet
“in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity” can lay hold of Christ by
a mere act of his own will?

Just as to trust in
the Lord with all his heart, to be anxious for nothing, to let the morrow take
care of its own concerns, is the desire
of every Christian, but “how to perform that which is good” he “finds not” (Rom. 7:18), until the Holy Spirit
is pleased to graciously grant the needed enablement. The one supreme yearning
of the awakened and convicted sinner is
to lay hold of Christ, but until the Spirit draws him to Christ, he finds he has no power to go out of himself, no
ability to embrace what is proffered him in the Gospel. The fact is, my reader,
that the heart of a sinner is as naturally indisposed for loving and
appropriating the things of God, as the wood which Elijah laid on the altar was
to ignite, when he had poured so much water upon it, as not only to saturate
the wood, but also to fill the trench round about it (1 Kings 18:33)—a miracle is required for the one as much
as it was for the other.

The fact is that if
souls were left to themselves—to their own “free will”—after they had been
truly convicted of sin, none would
ever savingly come to Christ! A further and distinct operation of the Spirit is
still needed to actually “draw” the heart to close with Christ Himself. Were
the sinner left to himself, he would sink in abject despair; he would fall
victim to the malice of Satan. The Devil is far more powerful than we are, and
never is his rage more stirred than when he fears he is about to lose one of
his captives: see Mark 9:20. But blessed be His name, the Spirit does not
desert the soul when His work is only half done: He who is “the Spirit of life”
(Rom. 8:2) to quicken the dead, He who is “the Spirit of truth” (John 16:13) to
instruct the ignorant, is also “the Spirit of
faith” (2 Cor. 4:13) to enable us to savingly believe.^[2]

—————————more tomorrow————————

Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage
Breaker”, “Freedom in Christ” series of Discipleship Classes via the
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at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, You can also find it on Apple podcasts

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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
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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     

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Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship