Authority Over the Darkness – Statements of Truth – 11 – Purity 1135

Authority Over the Darkness – Statements of Truth – 11  – Purity 1135

Purity 1135 08/31/2023 Purity 1135 Podcast

Purity 1135 on YouTube: 

Good morning,

Today’s photo of the moon breaking through the clouds over the tons-mast power tower
and farmland off of Waite Rd in Easton NY comes from yours truly as I did my
best to capture the magnificence of last night’s “super moon” while I was out
walking the dog and literally skipping in the moonlight as the joy of being out
in the nighttime air provided its own brand of energy.  I apologize for the quality of the photo, My phone’s
camera isn’t the greatest, but the fact that I was even able to get this photo
is a testimony of how super the moon was last night because most of my previous
attempts at capturing nighttime skies have been dismal failures.  A white dot with an all-black background doesn’t
really convey the magic moment of a full moon so I am thankful that although the
clouds obscured our view of the moon, they provided a setting for its light to
shine all the same.  

Well, it’s Thursday and after last night’s
Celebrate Freedom Growth Group meeting at Starpoint Church, I am reminded that
even though we may never be perfect in adequately reflecting God’s love and
light, when a group of Christians comes into a setting of mutual support where
we are attempting to practice heart-focused discipleship and encourage one another
in our attempts to overcome our hurts, habits, and hang-ups, the Lord uses the
setting and our collective experiences to really let His light shine.  While there could be much darkness to talk
about in a “recovery” group, our group is designed to focus on the light in the
darkness, the victories being won a day at a time, and the very real presence
of God in our lives.   

While it was a mixed bag of testimonies with
some celebrating victories and others admitting to continued challenges, the
fact that we were together to support one another was enough to create an
atmosphere of peace and joy despite the difficult circumstances that many of us
are facing.  Some of us are in the
painful stages of transition because of divorce, and some have recently
suffered physical pains of aging, medical issues. or injuries, some are dealing
with court issues, and others are dealing with the struggles of the normal
course of raising children or dealing with family, but when we focus on who we
are in Christ and how we are trusting God to help us, we can see past the pain
and know that God is with us, and we have great hope for where He is leading
us.  We know there is power in the name
of Jesus and when we stand on the truth of God’s word, proclaim it over our
lives, and live according to it, we can watch the darkness flee.     

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 have presented each of
the Statements of Truth from Step 2 of the Steps to Freedom in Christ, one at a
time, and today is the 11^th and last one! 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:

11.  I believe
that the Lord Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth, and He is the
head over all rule and authority. I am complete in Him. I believe that Satan
and his demons are subject to me in Christ since I am a member of Christ’s
body. Therefore, I obey the command to submit to God and resist the devil, and
I command Satan in the name of Jesus to leave my presence.

And the Bible verses listed with this statement
are: 

Matthew 28:18 (NKJV)
¹⁸  And Jesus came and spoke
to them, saying, “All authority has been given to
Me in heaven and on earth.

Ephesians 1:19-23 (NKJV)
¹⁹  and what is the
exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the
working of His mighty power
²⁰  which He worked in Christ
when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the
heavenly places,
²¹  far above all principality
and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in
this age but also in that which is to come.
²²  And He put all things
under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the
church,
²³  which is His body, the
fullness of Him who fills all in all.

Colossians 2:10 (NKJV)
¹⁰  and you are complete in
Him, who is the head of all principality and power.

James
4:7 (NKJV)
⁷  Therefore submit to God.
Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

While today’s statement of truth
highlights the reality of the spiritual battle that we are in as Christians, it
also proclaims the power of our faith because of Christ’s supremacy and how our
faith in Jesus has made us complete and given us a measure of His power and
authority to overcome the evil one.   

As I have traveled along the path of Christian
discipleship, I have tried to “know God more: and to live authentically as a
Christian as much as I can. As I have attempted to live by faith, one of the
questions I would ask,  as I read the
word of God and meditated on the various principles and doctrines of our faith,
was: “What do I do with this?”

As a disciple of Jesus Christ, we are
not necessarily concerned with just learning what the Teacher has taught us
through His words and example, we should also seek to put the wisdom of His
ways into practice and apply them to our lives.  

So while we could acknowledge that Jesus
has all power and authority over heaven and earth, we should ask: what does
that have to do with me? 

Well, Jesus passed that authority on to
us. The verses that follow Jesus’ proclamation of all authority in Matthew, tell
us to go and to make disciples.  We are
to use Jesus’ authority to spread His teachings and to make others to be well-versed
in His ways.  That’s a very practical
application of His authority.  We aren’t
telling other people our philosophy of life; we are sharing the truth of God’s
word straight from the Messiah’s mouth. 
I didn’t say it, Jesus said it. I can tell you that we are to love God,
love our neighbors as ourselves, and to love our enemies because Jesus said
it.  I can tell you to forgive others
because Jesus said to and because God has forgiven us because of Jesus. 

However, God’s kingdom is an everlasting,
all-encompassing – physical and spiritual kingdom, and the power and authority
of Jesus extends beyond just sharing His teachings. His authority and power can
also be effectively used to defeat the unseen spiritual forces of darkness – demons
– that actively tempt, deceive, condemn, and accuse us.  If we submit to God, we can resist the enemy
and tell him to flee!

The Steps to Freedom in Christ is a
process in which we can exercise the authority we have been given in Christ
over demons.  Through prayerful confession
and renunciation, we can break the permissions we have unwittingly given to the
enemy and tell them to leave us.  People
who have gone through the Steps to Freedom in Christ have literally been set
free from demonic oppression. 

Christ also gives us the power and
authority over sin in our lives as well. We have the authority to “go and sin
no more” but we have to exercise that authority over sin to be free from
it.  When we fall into sin, we are proclaiming
that sin has authority over us but when we act on the truth that we have been
freed from sin, we have authority over it. We have to believe that God has given
us His power and authority to say no to sin and then actually live according to
it! IF we can say no to sin one time, it proves we have the power and authority
over it and we just have to continue to exercise it to demonstrate God’s power
and authority in us.

In Christ we have been made complete,
but if we don’t exercise our authority in Christ we won’t fully experience our
freedom or the abundant life that God has for us.

In Christ, We have been set free and
been given the power and authority to live free, but we have to use it to
experience it.

——————————————————————————————–

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

Isaiah 28:1-4 (ESV)
¹  Ah, the proud crown of the
drunkards of Ephraim, and the fading flower of its glorious beauty, which is on
the head of the rich valley of those overcome with wine!
²  Behold, the Lord has one
who is mighty and strong; like a storm of hail, a destroying tempest, like a
storm of mighty, overflowing waters, he casts down to the earth with his hand.
³  The proud crown of the
drunkards of Ephraim will be trodden underfoot;
⁴  and the fading flower of
its glorious beauty, which is on the head of the rich valley, will be like a
first-ripe fig before the summer: when someone sees it, he swallows it as soon
as it is in his hand.

Today’s
verses fall under the seventh point of our counseling reference guide
resource’s section on Alcohol & Drug Abuse.

 7. God’s wrath was upon Israel for its sin
of drunkenness.

Today’s verses come from
the Old Testament and refer to God’s judgment on the northern kingdom of Israel,
aka Ephraim. The northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians in 721 B.C. and today’s
verses indicate that one of the things that God judged them for was drunkenness.  

Does God really care about
whether we get drunk or not, really? 
Yeah, he does.

“Drunkards of Ephraim” is
not a term of endearment here, it is a judgment.  It’s something that the people of Ephraim
were proud of but was actually something to be ashamed of and was one of the
things the northern kingdom was punished for by God. 

God doesn’t punish virtues
or “bad habits”. God punishes sin.  And
so the northern kingdom’s fall shows us that God’s wrath will fall on those who
have the sin of drunkenness. 

The good news is that
faith in Christ covers our sins. We can be forgiven, but the whole counsel of
God indicates that even though sin can be forgiven, God’s people are to not
persist in them. Christians are to repent of their sins and go and sin no
more.  For the sin of drunkenness, that
means we are to go into recovery and stop getting drunk.

So let the “drunkards of
Ephraim” teach you a lesson – drunkenness is a sin. It is a sin, worthy of God’s
wrath and it must be forgiven through faith in Christ and repented of.   

——————————————————————–

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

Inclining
Hearts to Love God

“Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the
Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:6). Because
they had been eternally predestined unto the adoption of sons (Eph. 1:4, 5),
because they were actually given to Christ under that character in the
Everlasting Covenant (John 17:2; Heb. 2:13), at God’s appointed time the Holy
Spirit is sent unto their hearts to give them a knowledge of the wondrous fact
that they have a place in the very family of God and that God is their Father. This
it is which inclines their hearts to love Him, delight in Him, and place all
their dependence on Him. The great design of the Gospel is to reveal the love
of God to His people, and thereby recover their love to God, that they may love
Him again who first loved them. But the bare revelation of that love in the
Word will not secure this, until “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us” (Rom. 5:5).

It is by the gracious
work of the Holy Spirit that the elect are recovered from the flesh and the
world unto God. By nature they love themselves and the world above God; but the
Holy Spirit imparts to them a new nature, and Himself indwells them, so that
they now love God and live to Him. This it is which prepares them to believe
and appropriate the Gospel. The effects of the Spirit’s entering as the Spirit
of adoption are liberty, confidence, and holy delight. As they had “received”
from the first Adam “the spirit of bondage”—a legalistic spirit which produced
“fear;” their receiving the Spirit of adoption is all the more grateful:
liberty being the sweeter because of the former captivity. The Law having done
its work in the conscience, they can now appreciate the glad tidings of the
Gospel—the revelation of the amazing love and grace of God in Jesus Christ. A
spirit of love is now bred in them by the knowledge of the same.

The blessed fruit of
receiving the Spirit of adoption is that there is born in the heart a childlike
affection toward God and a childlike confidence in Him: “Whereby we cry, Abba,
Father.” The Apostle employs in the original two different languages, “Abba”
being Syrian and “Father” being Greek, the one familiar to the Jews, the other
to the Gentiles. By so doing he denotes that believing Jews and Gentiles are
children of one family, alike privileged to approach God as their Father.
“Christ, our peace, having broken down the middle wall of partition between
them; and now, at the same mercy-seat, the Christian Jew and the believing
Gentile both one in Christ Jesus, meet,
as the rays of light converge and blend in one common center—at the feet of the
reconciled Father” (O. Winslow).^[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

(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154). The mt4christ247 podcast is also available
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Audible.com. 

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