The Earthly Consequences of Sin – Self-Deception Series 12 – Purity 1101

 

The Earthly Consequences of Sin – Self-Deception
Series 12 – Purity 1101

Purity 1101 07/21/2023 Purity 1101 Podcast

Purity 1101 on YouTube: 

Good morning,

Today’s photo of a misty morning sunrise in the “Holler”
comes to us from Fred Dimmick as he shared this scene near his former home in
Liberty Kentucky back on July 15^th, 2021.    

Well, It’s Saturday and whenever I am at a loss to
choose the photo of the day I usually take a random quantum leap back in time
in my I-phone’s  photo archive to discover
and share what photos got “left behind” and to marvel over their beauty and the
time gone past.

And let me tell you, when you are walking in the
Spirit a short trip back in time can seem like ages ago because while our day
to day existence on the path of Christian Discipleship can seem like we are
just plodding along trying to be faithful to where the Lord is calling us to
go, His path for us is intentional leading us to the good things He is guiding
us toward. And while we may be simultaneously walking through our “day to day normal
lives” and have uncertainty over where this is all leading, when we look back we
realize that our faithfulness to keep following was being rewarded.  

In July 2021, I was teaching The Bondage Breaker at
my local church, sometimes to any empty room, because I was podcasting the
class and the “show must go on”,  and at other
times to an individual student named TammyLyn Sequin.  So it was a humble ministry to say the least.  

However, because I decided to record those sessions
and share them via the podcast and YouTube, my efforts to share the message of the
reality of demonic oppression and Freedom in Christ has reached many more.  While our efforts are still a very humble
ministry, the first lesson of The Bondage Breaker that I taught in a church
basement  in 2021, has over 5 thousand
views on You Tube.   But before I go breaking
my arm patting myself on the back, I’ll keep it real and admit that the
subsequent classes only have a few hundred. 
Undoubtedly, when curiosity revealed that my “video” was of an audio
podcast, many viewers tuned out, but a few went on to listen and some even requested
the class materials via email.

But our ministry has never been about quantity, and
admittedly is pretty low on production quality, shots fired at myself, but as I
have always said, if our efforts at sharing the truth about “walking in the
Spirit” and Freedom in Christ encourage even one person, that is enough for me
and far more than I ever would have previously imagined.  

I used to be a reclusive addict in a basement,
playing guitar for an audience of me, myself, and I, and the fact that I can
encourage anyone to follow the Lord is simply miraculous but that’s how good
God is. He can lead us out of the darkness and give us freedom, meaning, and
purpose in a very short time.  

That solitary student, in July of 2021, TammyLyn
Seguin, became my fiancé a few months later and became TammyLyn Clark on New
Year’s Day of 2022.  So a lot can happen
when you decide to be faithful to what the Lord calls you too.  

But none of these things would have happened if I
believed the lies I used to tell myself:

“I’m no good. I’m evil. I can’t change.”

Those statements may have been rather factual
considering the circumstances of my past, but the Lord changed all of that when
He showed me His truth – the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the new
life that is available to ALL – capital A-L-L – who put their faith in Christ
and decide to follow Him in Spirit and in Truth.  

So we agree with the Higher Truth about us – What God
says about us and everyone who puts their faith in Jesus.  We renounce the lies and stand on the truth
of God’s word and watch it manifest and change our lives as we simply try to
follow Him.

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 elenth “Way You Can Be Deceived By
the World”:

11. Believing that there are no earthly consequences
for my sin.

The scripture reference for this point is:

Galatians
6:7-8 (NLT2)
⁷  Don’t be misled—you cannot
mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant.
⁸  Those who live only to
satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful
nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life
from the Spirit.

“Rules are made
to be broken but don’t get caught” was a rule of my fraternity back in college
and it was a philosophy that I followed that I had followed for most of my life
as my pre-Christ existence was consumed by the desire to satisfy my selfish
wants and desires only.   I exercised my
freedom to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and learned to avoid
detection or “getting into trouble” pretty well.  I had secrets. While I was an upstanding
family man by day, I was a law and rule breaking amoral anarchist of sorts and
was capable of all kinds of deception and criminal activity.  And while I used to pride myself on the fact
that I often “never got caught”, I recognize now that there were great
consequences for my sins to my relationships, my physical and mental health,
and my soul. 

When we sin, it
damages us personally and our relationships. 

Without faith
in Christ, our sins send us to perdition. 

But the effects
on our lives of sin in the terra firma are no less sinister.  

Our sin changes
our worldview as it corrupts our vision to see the world and other people as
something to take from, use, and manipulate. 
It causes the thief to see everything as theirs. It causes the adulterer
and fornicator to see everyone as a possible conquest. So it corrupts our hearts
and minds and moves us further into darkness as it hardens our hearts and
disturbs our minds.   

So don’t
believe the lie that there are no earthly consequences for your sin.  You may avoid detection or punishment from
other men, but sin always has negative consequence as it separates us from
other people and separates us from the person God created us to be.

——————————————————————————————–

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 verses come from the section on Affliction, Discipline, Chastisement,
& Trials.

1 Peter
1:6-7 (NIV2011)
⁶  In all this you greatly
rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all
kinds of trials.
⁷  These have come so that the
proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes
even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus
Christ is revealed.

Today’s
verse falls under the 1^st point of our counseling reference guide
resource’s section on Affliction, Discipline, Chastisement, & Trials

 1. “Not all affliction is for specific
sins. God often sends affliction to purify and strengthen our faith, for His
glory.”

Today’s verses encourage
us that the hard times and trials that we go through in our lives are not
without a purpose.

Without Christ,  trials and grief may develop personal
fortitude and maturity and become a badge of honor as we could pride ourselves
over having “suffered much” but ultimately would prove meaningless as our
ability to “tough it out” would fail under God’s judgment and wrath.   

However, with Christ – to suffer
grief and trials become a testimony to our faithfulness to persevere and
continue to share and demonstrate the hope we have in Christ.  When we suffer and remain faithful to point
to God as our hope, our trials have meaning and purpose and will be rewarded by
God as they give Him glory.     

——————————————————————–

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

15 – The Spirit Drawing

There seems to be a pressing need for a clear and full
exposition of the Spirit’s work of grace in the souls of God’s people. It is a
subject which occupies a place of considerable prominence in the Scriptures—far
more so than many are aware—and yet, sad to say, it is grievously neglected by
most preachers and writers of today; and, in consequence, the saints are to a
large extent ignorant upon it.

Reasons for Ignorance of the Spirit’s Drawing

The supernatural and special work of the Holy
Spirit in the soul is that which distinguishes the regenerate from the
unregenerate.

1. The religion of
the vast majority of people today consists merely in an outward show, having a name to live among men, but being
spiritually dead toward God. Their religion comprises little more than bare
speculative notions, merely knowing the Word in its letter; in an undue
attachment to some man or party; in a blazing zeal which is not according to
knowledge; or in censoriously contending for a certain order of things,
despising all who do not rightly pronounce their
particular shibboleths. The fear of God is not upon them, the love of God does
not fill and rule their hearts, the power of God is not working in their
souls—they are strangers to it. They have never been the favored subjects of
the Spirit’s quickening operation.

“No man can come to
Me, except the Father which hath sent
Me draw him; and I will raise him up
at the last day” (John 6:44). This emphatic and man-humbling fact is almost
universally ignored in Christendom today, and when it is pressed upon the
notice of the average preacher or “church member,” it is hotly denied and
scornfully rejected. The cry is at once raised, “If that were true, then man is
nothing more than a machine, and all preaching is useless. If people are unable to come to Christ by an act of
their own will, then evangelistic effort is needless, worthless.” No effort is
made to understand the meaning of those words of our Lord: they clash with
modern thought, they rile the proud flesh, so they are summarily condemned and
dismissed. No wonder the Holy Spirit is now “quenched” in so many places, and
that His saving power is so rarely in
evidence.

2. With others the
supernatural agency of the Spirit is effectually shut out by the belief that Truth will prevail: that if the Word of
God be faithfully preached, souls will be
truly saved. Far be it from us to undervalue the Truth, or cast the slightest
reflection on the living Word of God; yet modern ideas and present conditions
demand that we plainly point out that it is
not the Truth, the Scriptures, the Gospel, which renews the soul; but instead, the power and operations of the Holy Spirit. “You may teach a man
the holiest of truths, and yet leave him a wretched man. Many who learn in
childhood that ‘God is love,’ live disregarding, and die blaspheming God.
Thousands who are carefully taught, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou
shalt be saved,’ neglect so great salvation all their days. Some of the most
wicked and miserable beings that walk the earth are men into whose consciences,
when yet youthful and unsophisticated, the truth was carefully instilled.

”Unmindful of this,
and not considering the danger of diverting faith from the power to the instrument, however beautiful and perfect the
instrument may be, many good men, by a culpable inadvertence, constantly speak
as if the Truth had an inherent ascendance over man, and would certainly
prevail when justly presented. We have heard this done till we have been ready
to ask, ‘Do they take men for angels, that mere Truth is to captivate them so
certainly?’ yes, and even to ask ‘Have they ever heard whether there be any
Holy Spirit?’

“The belief that
Truth is mighty, and by reason of its
might must prevail, is equally fallacious in the abstract, as it is opposed
to the facts of human history, and to the Word of God. We should take the
maxim, the Truth must prevail, as perfectly sound, did you only give us a
community of angels on whom to try the Truth. With every intellect clear and
every heart upright, doubtless Truth would soon be discerned, and, when
discerned, cordially embraced. But, Truth, in descending among us, does not
come among friends. The human heart offers ground whereon it meets Truth at an
immeasurable disadvantage. Passions, habits, interests, yes, nature itself,
lean to the side of error; and though the judgment may assent to the Truth,
which, however, is not always the case, still error may gain a conquest only
the more notable because of this impediment. Truth is mighty in pure natures,
error in depraved ones.

“Do they who know
human nature best, when they have a political object to carry, trust most of
all to the power of Truth over a constituency, or would they not have far more
confidence in corruption and revelry? The whole history of man is a melancholy
reproof to those who mouth about the mightiness of Truth. ‘But,’ they say,
‘Truth will prevail in the long run.’ Yes, blessed be God, it will; but not
because of its own power over human
nature, but because the Spirit will
be poured out from on high, opening blind eyes and unstopping deaf ears.

“The sacred writings,
while ever leaving us to regard the Truth as the one instrument of the sinner’s
conversion and the believer’s sanctification, are very far from proclaiming its
power over human nature, merely because it is Truth. On the contrary, they often
show us that this very fact will enlist the passions of mankind against it, and awaken enmity instead of
approbation. We are ever pointed beyond
the Truth to HIM who is the Source and Giver of Truth; and, though we had
Apostles to minister the Gospel, are ever lead not to deem it enough that it
should be ‘in word only, but in demonstration
of the Spirit and in power’ ” (William Arthur, 1859).^[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     

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Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship