No Problem Too Big For God – Statements of Truth – 10 – Purity 1134
Purity 1134 08/30/2023 Purity 1134 Podcast
Purity 1134 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo a roaring fire in front of a rustic
red barn and a massive pine tree with a magnificent sunset sky in the
background comes to yours truly as I stopped burning brush, from a recently
downed, similarly massive, pine tree, long enough to enjoy the moment, capture
it with a few quick pics and to realize just how blessed I was in life, despite
the trials and hard work that come with it sometimes.
When I discovered that one of the huge pine
trees in my backyard cracked in collapsed on the morning of August 19th
I initially made inquiries to a friend who is in the landscaping business whether
or not he removed trees. He indicated that he didn’t but that he knew a “tree
guy” that might be able to help me out. However,
I live quite a distance south of my friend and his tree guy associate and a
couple days later, my friend told me his contact determined I lived too far
away to help.
At that point, I got the sense that I was
supposed to take care of this problem on my own and I decided that I would be
my own “tree guy”. I have a chainsaw, a Sawzall, a hand saw or two, and I have a
burning barrel to dispose of wood. I don’t
really do much with the back hill that is my back property and because the felled
tree isn’t really an emergency I decided to commit myself to “doing it myself” –
little by little bit by bit – and purchased a “lumberjack pair” of a large
handsaw and log splitter axe to deal with the larger trunk areas of the tree –
which I am still waiting to receive. And
even though I have limited time I have made what I would consider great
progress with three cutting and burning sessions.
This latest episode with “the tree” reminds me
that sometimes you find yourself in a situation where there are no quick fixes
and that are going to require patience and a sustained effort for an
undetermined amount of time.
When my divorce was finally signed in 2019, I
came to the realization that the marital house was lost, I wasn’t going to
receive much of anything when and if it sold, and I had to find a new place for
my kids and I to live. I was in debt at the time and immediately started
working two jobs with vague hope that I could eventually reduce my debt, save
money for a down payment, and qualify for a second mortgage. My initial efforts
were paltry in comparison to the “mountain” I had to move to buy a new place,
but I pressed in and did all I could to work toward that dream and leaned on
the Lord every single day to receive His strength for the journey ahead and
even received His peace and joy in the midst of it all. Long story short, one blessing led to another,
which snowballed to a place where I was debt free and moved into my place down
by the River about 9 months after I signed the documents that ended my marriage
and caused me to pay support and work two jobs to survive. And of course, there was a little thing
called Covid-19 that happened to fall right in that time frame, but God was faithful,
and He taught me all about what can happen when you decide to walk with Him
through life and how even the biggest challenges are overcome when He is with you.
So yeah there is a pretty big tree in my backyard,
but I know that with sustained effort and faith in the Lord, you can overcome
anything or at least endure it until He makes a way. That’s the truth, so help
me God.
And that brings us to our current series –
Statements of Truth – that springs from the last portion of Step # 2, Deception
Vs. Truth, of the Steps to Freedom in Christ by Dr. Neil Anderson
That step deals with Deception, and because we have
completed the process of examining, confessing, and renouncing all of the ways
we have been deceived. the good doctor prescribes a healthy dose of truth for us:
Anderson introduces the Statements of Truth by
stating:
“For two thousand years Christians have known the
importance of verbally and publicly declaring truth. Read aloud the following
statements of truth, and carefully consider what you are professing. You may
find it helpful to read them aloud every day for at least six weeks, which will
help you renew your mind to the truth.”
So for our current series, we are presenting each of
the remaining 2 Statements of Truth from Step 2 of the Steps to Freedom in
Christ, one at a time, We are declaring them verbally and publicly, because we,
like the Christians who have gone before us over the last two thousand years.
know the importance of doing so.
We are also sharing the statement’s associated Bible
verses and sharing our thoughts about what each Statement of Truth is telling
us, why they are important, and how they apply to our lives as Christians.
So today’s Statement of Truth is:
10. I renounce all selfish goals and choose the ultimate
goal of love. I choose to obey the two greatest commandments: to love the Lord
my God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love my neighbor as
myself.
And the Bible verses listed with this statement
are:
Matthew 22:37-39 (NKJV)
37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD
your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
38 This
is the first and great commandment.
39 And
the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.’
1 Timothy 1:5 (NKJV)
5 Now the purpose of the
commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from
sincere faith,
Today’s statement of truth focusses on
the centrality of love in our faith. Christianity was never meant to be a
religion – a list of do’s and don’ts, ceremonies,
and traditions. Our faith is rightly
understood to be a love relationship between us and God.
John 3:16 (NKJV)
16 For
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
God’s love for us is shown in
His Son Jesus and the symbol of that love is the Cross of Christ, where God
demonstrated just how much He loved us with sacrificial atonement that cost the
life of His beloved Son.
One thing we may not realize because
hindsight is 20/20 and we get blinded by the things we know after the fact, is
that Jesus said these words! This
passage of scripture is from a conversation Jesus had with a befuddled and
confused Nicodemus. And although we know the end of the story and what Jesus
was pointing to, we can’t blame Nicodemus
for being confused.
In hearing how Jesus was saying
that people who believed in Him would be “saved” and not perish, He may have
been a little nervous that Jesus was some wild revolutionary who was confessing
a desire to rule and reign on the earth with a thinly veiled threat of violence
for anyone who didn’t “believe in Him”.
In the same passage, Jesus says that he, the Son of Man, (talking about
Himself In the third person – uh oh) came down from heaven. So Nicodemus may have been a little unsure whether
or not this “miracle worker”, Jesus, may
have been a little unbalanced.
But as hard as it may have been
for Nicodemus to understand at the time, everything Jesus said was true but how
it was true was still a mystery and an unfulfilled prophecy at the time.
God’s great love wasn’t
expressed in the establishment of some earthly kingdom. His great love was demonstrated
by a costly sacrifice that allowed sinful men to be accepted into His eternal
kingdom.
And so now that we know the
truth of God’s great love for us, we who believe in Jesus to love Him right
back with every depth of our being – with our minds, hearts, and souls – and to
share the love of God by loving our neighbors as ourselves.
But just as we are not forced
to believe in Christ, we must freely choose God’s ultimate goal of love. We
must choose to obey God’s call to love Him and our neighbors as ourselves.
——————————————————————————————–
For
those who want more evidence for Christianity than my simple encouragements provide,
I offer apologist, Frank Turek’s website, https://crossexamined.org/ .
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 Alcohol & Drug Abuse
Proverbs 23:32-35 (ESV)
32 In the end it bites like a
serpent and stings like an adder.
33 Your eyes will see strange
things, and your heart utter perverse things.
34 You will be like one who
lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast.
35 “They struck me,” you will
say, “but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not feel it. When shall I
awake? I must have another drink.”
Today’s
verses fall under the sixth point of our counseling reference guide resource’s
section on Alcohol
& Drug Abuse.
6. Consider
the sad picture of a drunkard. (The Bible tells it like it is!)
Today’s verses were shared
yesterday under point #5 of our counseling reference guide, “Heavy Drinking Brings
Misery” but Mr. Kruis must have thought that the wisdom from this passage
in Proverbs bore repeating, this time with the emphasis on just how sad the
alcoholic’s plight is. Alcoholism causes misery and it is sad to see how the
one addicted to alcohol will be drawn back to drink even though it causes them
to suffer.
Ironically yesterday, without
looking ahead, I actually repeated Kruis’ sentiment in point number six “The Bile
tells it like it is!” – I used those exact words without knowing it when I
considered how accurately this passage of scripture relays scenes from an
alcoholic’s life.
However, sad this picture of
a drunkard’s life may be though, I know that there is great hope even for the saddest
among us when we decide to surrender to God and ask for the Lord’s help to
deliver us from alcoholism’s darkness.
What we think is sad and just impossible to overcome ( I must have
another drink!) is possible for God to heal.
So I again encourage those
with alcohol or drug addictions to seek the Lord’s help and to join a recovery
program where you can place your faith in Jesus as your higher power and
experience your freedom in Christ through His strength and guidance.
The Lord set me free after living most of my
life in bondage to booze and I know He can do it for anyone willing to follow
Him into freedom.
——————————————————————–
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
22 – The Spirit Assuring
“Received
the Spirit of Adoption”
Turning now to the positive side: believers
have “received the Spirit of adoption, whereby they cry, Abba, Father:” they
have received that unspeakable Gift which attests and makes known to them their
adoption by God. Before the foundation of the world God predestined them “unto
the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself” (Eph. 1:5). But more—the
elect were not only predestined unto
the adoption of children—to actually and openly enjoy this inestimable favor in
time—but this blessing was itself provided and bestowed upon them in the
Everlasting Covenant of grace, in which they not only had promise of this
relationship, but were given in that Covenant to Christ under that very
character. Therefore does the Lord Jesus say, “Behold I and the children which
God hath given Me” (Heb. 2:13).
It is to be carefully
noted that God’s elect are spoken of as “children” previous to the Holy Spirit’s being sent into their hearts:
“Because ye are sons, God hath sent
forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts” (Gal. 4:6). They are not, then,
made children by the new birth. They were “children” before Christ died for
them: “he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation; and not for that nation
only, but that also He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad” (John 11:51, 52).
They were not, then, made children by what Christ did for them. Yea, they were
“children” before the Lord Jesus became incarnate: “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and
blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same” (Heb. 2:14). Thus it is
a great mistake to confound adoption and regeneration: they are two distinct
things; the latter being both the effect and evidence of the former. Adoption
was by an act of God’s will in eternity—regeneration is by the work of His
grace in time.
Had there been no
adoption, there would be no regeneration: yet the former is not complete
without the latter. By adoption the elect were put into the relation of children; by regeneration they are given a nature suited to that relation. So high
is the honor of being taken into the family of God, and so wondrous is the
privilege of having God for our Father, that some extraordinary benefit is
needed by us to assure our hearts of the same. This we have when we receive the
Spirit of adoption. For God to give us His Spirit is far more than if He had
given us all the world, for the latter would be something outside Himself, whereas the former is Himself! The death of Christ on the Cross was a demonstration of
God’s love for His people, yet that was done without them; but in connection
with what we are now considering, “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which
is given unto us” (Rom. 5:5).
Wondrous and blessed
fact that, God manifests His love to the members of His Church in precisely the
same way that He evidenced His love unto its Head when He became incarnate,
namely, by the transcendent gift of His Spirit. The Spirit came upon Jesus Christ
as the proof of God’s love to Him and also as the visible demonstration of His
Sonship. The Spirit of God descended like a dove and abode upon Him, and then
the Father’s voice was heard saying, “This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased”—compare John 3:34, 35. In fulfillment of Christ’s prayer, “I have
declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou
hast loved Me may be in them” (John
17:26) the Spirit is given to His redeemed, to signify the sameness of the
Father’s love unto His Son and unto His sons. Thus, the inhabitation of the
Spirit in the Christian is both the surest sign of God’s fatherly love and the
proof of his adoption.[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 YouTube 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
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