Right to Remain Silent and Pray – Purity 1149

Right to Remain Silent and Pray – Purity 1149

Purity 1149 09/16/2023  Purity 1149 Podcast

Purity 1149 on YouTube: 

Good morning,

Today’s photo of the silhouettes of trees in the
foreground of a blazing multicolored sunset sky comes to us from yours truly as
I captured this scene on the drive back to River House from Chatham last
evening.  

Well, It’s Saturday and although I am celebrating my
freedom from my regular weekday work schedule today, last night I went to
Columbia County Pathways to Recovery’s “Let’s Walk for One More Chance”
Memorial/Recovery Walk to celebrate my 8 years of freedom from alcohol and
drugs and to remember those who have died because of overdose.  The dead were remembered with signs bearing
their names, photos, and ages at the time of their deaths. Speeches were made
to encourage support of recovery efforts in Columbia County and the evening
ended with a candlelight vigil memorial walk as the people gathered paraded the
memorial signs down and around Main Street.  

I wore my old custom Celebrate Freedom Hat from my
days of leading the recovery ministry at Rock Solid Church and had the
intention of promoting Pastor Bob Costello’s renewal of Celebrate Freedom at
Rock Solid Church – the meetings are on Thursdays at 6:30pm in the church
basement in Hudson- but my ideas of marketing Christian Recovery or making an
evangelistic outreach were silenced in light of the solemn occasion and secular
humanist atmosphere.  

I was saddened by the loss of life and grieving friends
and family, and obvious lack of community support, it was a small event, but I
was also reminded of spiritually deadness of secular recovery efforts that
unwittingly give ground to spiritual forces of darkness and promote destructive
ideas.  

I intended to hand out some pamphlets promoting the Christian
Celebrate Freedom Recovery Meeting at Rock Solid Church or offering “The God of
Hope” with some tracts from Derek Prince Ministries but when I realized that this
group was comprised of people who believed in general spirituality, themselves,
questionable recovery methods, pagan practices, and/or – and I kid you not –“the
Universe”, I decided to leave my pamphlets and tracts in my pockets and to just
silently pray for “the lost” – both living and dead.  You have to “know the room” sometimes and as
it was I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb as I was one of the few people
there not wearing purple or who did not belong to the organization that hosted
this event, I decided to not rain on their parade.  The Holy Spirit didn’t move me to speak so I
remained silent and did my best to support the group’s efforts to promote
recovery in the Columbia County community.  

Regardless of their secular humanistic, general or
pagan spirituality, they were encouraging recovery and the stopping of deaths
to substance use disorder and that was a good thing – so just like when Jesus didn’t
tell his disciples to stop those who were casting out demons, but who didn’t follow
Him, from doing so – I figured that I should respectfully support this Recovery
Community Organization because of the good they do, even though they don’t necessarily
follow Jesus.  

Recovery efforts generally point to a Higher Power
and have been used by God to bring people to saving faith in Christ. Recovery
Efforts also promote sobriety and the continuation of life that could be used
by the Lord to bring people into His kingdom – so as much as I would some
serious correction to what these people are preaching, I decide to trust the Lord
to do His will through and to this group and the people gathered if it is in
His plans.  

Back in the day, I went to every Columbia County
Pathways to Recovery community meeting to promote Christian Recovery and I can
tell you that all my efforts to promote Jesus and Christian Recovery had no
visible fruit whatsoever except from what it did in me to confirm and solidify
my faith.  As far as I can recall, not
one person ever came to our Celebrate Freedom Recovery Meetings due to my
efforts to promote our ministry at those meetings, so it taught me about the “anti-Christian
spiritual atmosphere” out there and it taught me to be humble.   And so I had a refresher course with those
lessons last night.

As disturbing as it can be to see how spiritually cold,
dark, and dead it is in the secular world and how sad and devasting the state
of our culture is in terms of record numbers of suicide and drug overdose
deaths that plague us, it made me thankful for my life saving – soul preserving
– faith in Jesus Christ. You see I don’t just celebrate my “recovery”; I
celebrate my freedom from sin and death and the Holy Spirit’s seal on my life
that confirms that I have a place in God’s kingdom no matter what subtle or not-so-subtle
hostility or rejection I might face on earth. 
I have been given a hope and a future. I haven’t recovered – I have been
cured. I have a hope and a future because I have been given a new life in
Christ!

SO grieve with those who are grieving, support those
who do good works – no matter who they follow, and whether the Spirit directs
you to speak or remain silent, be sure to stand for the lifegiving – soul-saving
truth of Jesus Christ.

——————————————————————————————–

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 Anger, Hot Temper.

Proverbs 17:9 (NLT2)
⁹  Love prospers when a fault
is forgiven, but dwelling on it separates close friends.

Today’s
verses fall under the third point of our counseling reference guide resource’s
section on Anger,
Hot Temper

 3. Love covers a multitude of sins and
overlooks many offenses.

Today’s verse is the third
of five passages of scripture that our resource provides to demonstrate love’s
power over anger. And rather than presenting them all at once, we are doing
them “one at a time, one day at a time.  

This verse highlights the
“love” that is able to prosper when we forgive one another from the heart and
warns of how dwelling on other people’s faults could break the closest of
relationships.  

As Christians, we are to
love our enemies and our neighbors as ourselves, and the only way to do that
requires being well-versed in the practice of forgiveness. If we can forgive
from the heart, by not holding people’s past offenses to us against them, we
can reconcile relationships and live at peace.  

Of course, we must be wise
and discerning in who we reconcile with. 
Some people are not trustworthy and should be given limited access to
our lives, but we can forgive them.  
Forgiveness sets us free from bitterness and gives us freedom from pain
in the future. And when others appreciate the forgiveness we give and repent of
their harmful ways, real friendships can result.

So forgive faults and don’t
dwell on them. Our forgiveness could save relationships but dwelling on the
sins of others in the past will only cause continued pain, bitterness, and
possibly end our relationships.  

——————————————————————–

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

25 –The Spirit Assisting

Role of Suffering

A child of God oppressed, suffering sorely, often
driven to his wit’s end—what a strange thing! A joint-heir with Christ
financially embarrassed, poor in this world’s goods, wondering where his next
meal is coming from—what an anomaly! An object of the Father’s everlasting love
and distinguishing favor tossed up and down upon a sea of trouble, with every apparent prospect of his frail boat
capsizing—what a perplexity! One who has been regenerated and is now indwelt by
the Holy Spirit daily harassed by Satan, and frequently overcome by indwelling
sin—what an enigma! Loved by the Father, redeemed by the Son, his body made the
temple of the Holy Spirit, yet left in this world year after year to suffer
affliction and persecution, to mourn and groan over innumerable failures, to
encounter one trial after another, often to be placed in far less favorable
circumstances than the wicked; to sigh and cry for relief, yet for sorrow and
suffering to increase—what a mystery!
What Christian has not felt the force of it, and been baffled by its
inscrutability.

Now it was to cast
light upon this pressing problem of the sorely tried believer that the eighth
chapter of Romans was written. There the Apostle was moved to show that “the
sufferings of the present time” (v. 18) are not
inconsistent with the special favor and infinite love which God bears unto
His people. First, because by those sufferings the Christian is brought into
personal and experimental fellowship with the sufferings of Christ (v. 17 and
cf. Phil. 3:10). Second, severe and protracted as our afflictions may be, yet
there is an immeasurable disproportion between our present sufferings and the
future Glory (vv. 18–23). Third, our very sufferings provide occasion for the
exercise of hope and the development of patience (vv. 24, 25). Fourth, Divine
aids and supports are furnished us under our afflictions (vv. 26, 27) and it is
these we would now consider.^[1]

—————————more
tomorrow————————

Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage
Breaker”, “Freedom in Christ” series of Discipleship Classes via the
mt4christ247 podcast!

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These teachings are also available on the
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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