“An Astounding, Almost Miraculous Life” – Purity 1161

“An Astounding, Almost Miraculous Life” – Purity 1161

Purity 1161 10/02/2023 Purity 1161 Podcast

Purity 1161 on YouTube:

Good morning,

Today’s photo of fallen leaves floating on the surface
of the pond at the East Greenbush Town Park under a blue cloudless sky comes to
us from yours truly as I decided to enjoy the spectacular October weather outdoors
yesterday afternoon.  Although I had
planned on an early return to River house yesterday a delay in my grocery order
suggested that I do something with the time between the 11:30 am service at
Starpoint Church and my 3:00 pm grocery pick up and because the weather was sunshiny
and bright I chose to visit East Greenbush’s Town Park for the first time where
I found a picnic table near the park’s “Red Barn” to sit and enjoy the autumn
view and the opening passage’s of Thomas Kelly’s “The Eternal Promise” which is
the first selection of the Renovare Book Club.  

Renovare (https://renovare.org/)
is a Christian non-profit organization engaged in Christian spiritual formation
whose stated mission is “to resource, fuel, model, and advocate more
intentional living among Christians and those wanting a deeper connection with
God.”  I discovered the Renovare through Dallas
Willard’s teachings there and because I am always pursuing a deeper connection
with God, and because I am always looking for “what’s next” in that pursuit,
and because my Deeper Walk SOM training concludes in December, I joined their Book
Club to try something new on the path of Christian Discipleship and Kelly’s “The
Eternal Promise” seems like a good guide for appreciation and growth.

Thomas Kelly was a Quaker and theological professor
of some renown but what makes him famous in Christian spiritual formation
circles are his writings about his experiential spiritual upheaval – which he
described as “an astounding, an almost miraculous Life,” in the reality of God’s
presence, writing: “There you will find rest for your souls, and power, and
peace, and joy unspeakable and full of Glory.”  
While I am cautious about those who refer to themselves as “mystics” and
have never sat in on a Quaker’s Friends meeting, in reading Kelly’s work, I
recognized a brother who had an experiential knowledge of God that was similar
to mine which filled me with joy, awe, and wonder as I sat in the October sun enjoying
the weather, my life, and my God yesterday afternoon.  

When you know, you know and when you have had a life-changing
experience with God and put your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord as well as
Savior, you know that there is no other Way but His and although you may
stumble, fall down, and run into the occasional dead end in trying to follow
His lead, you are compelled to keep going and staying in step with Him the best
you can.   On God’s path there are trials
and sufferings but there is also freedom, peace, and joy and just when you feel
that you may have “arrived” at some knowledge of the truth or some level of
sanctification, you realize that there is more to know and more to surrender to
grow even more.

When you’re on this path that never ends, you don’t look
to finish, you look to see what is next because there is more light to allow
into your darkness and more love to experience and share.  

So as we go into a new month and a new work week,
let me encourage you to always seek the Lord and to find what He has for your
life. In His presence, there is power, peace, and “an astounding, almost miraculous
Life” but you have to keep walking and talking with God to find 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 verses come from the section on Anger, Hot Temper.

Galatians 5:22-25 (NASB)
²²  But the fruit of the
Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³  gentleness, self-control; against
such things there is no law.
²⁴  Now those who belong to
Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
²⁵  If we live by the Spirit,
let us also walk by the Spirit.

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

 11. Good news! Through the Spirit you can
overcome the sin of a hot temper!  

Today’s verses are the first of two passages of scripture that
our resource provides to encourage us with this good news. And rather than
presenting them all at once, we are doing them “one at a time, one day at a
time. 

Today’s verses present the
fruit of the Sprit and while it doesn’t specifically state that they are a cure
for a hot temper, the implication is that a life of “walking in the Spirit”
requires a “crucifixion of the flesh and its passions” that results in peace,
gentleness, patience, and self-control which are more or less the opposite
attributes normally associated with a “hot temper”.  

Through His word, the Lord
clearly states that He is the Creator, Healer, and Sustainer of all things and if
we are willing to walk in His ways there is nothing that we can’t overcome.  Renewing our minds with His truth and
adopting a lifestyle consistent with His ways leads to the cultivation of the
fruit of the Spirit. 

So if your temper is hot
and anger is a problem, walk in the Spirit and discover the pathway past anger
and that promises patience, love, joy, and peace.

——————————————————————–

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

27 – The Spirit Transforming

Summary

For the benefit of clarity we will give a
brief digest of our previous exposition of 2 Corinthians 3:18, which is a verse
that supplies a comprehensive summary of the Spirit’s work in the believer. The
“we all” are those that are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The “with open face”
signifies with minds from which their enmity against God has been removed, with
hearts that are reconciled to Him. “Beholding” is a repeated act of the soul, which is the effect of its having been
supernaturally enlightened. “As in a glass” refers to the revelation which God
has made of Himself in the Law and in the Gospel. The “glory of the Lord”
connotes His character or moral perfections. “Are changed into the same image”
tells of the transformation which is effected in the believer by the Spirit.
The “from glory to glory” announces that this great change of the heart’s
reformation and conformation to the image of God is produced gradually.

When the Spirit deals
with an elect soul, He first brings him face to face with God’s Law, for “by
the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20). He reveals to him the perfections
of the Law: its spirituality, its immutability, its righteousness. He makes him
realize that the Law is “holy, and just, and good” (Rom. 7:12) even though it
condemns and curses him. He shows that the Law requires that we should love the
Lord our God with all our hearts, and our neighbors as ourselves; that it
demands perfect and perpetual obedience in thought, word, and deed. He
convinces the soul of the righteousness of such a demand. In a word, the one
with whom the Spirit is dealing beholds “the glory of the Lord”—His majesty,
His holiness, His justice—in the glass of the Law. Only thus is the soul
prepared and fitted to behold and appreciate the second great revelation which
God has made of His moral perfections.

Next, the Spirit
brings before the soul the precious Gospel. He shows him that therein a
marvelous and most blessed display is made of the love, the grace, the mercy,
and the wisdom of God. He gives him to see that in His eternal purpose God
designed to save a people from the curse of the Law, and that, without flouting
its authority or setting aside its righteous claims; yea, in such a way that
the Law is “magnified and made honorable” (Isa. 42:21) through its demands
being perfectly met by the believing sinner’s Surety. He unveils to his
wondering gaze the infinite condescension of the Father’s Beloved, who
willingly took upon Him the form of a servant and became obedient unto death,
even the death of the Cross. And the Spirit so
works in his heart that, though the Cross be a stumbling block to the Jew and
foolishness unto the Greek, it appears to him to be the most wondrous, blessed,
and glorious object in the universe—and by faith he thankfully rests the entire
interests of his soul for time and eternity upon the atoning sacrifice which
Christ offered thereon unto God.

Not only does the
Spirit give that soul to behold “the glory of the Lord” as it shines first in
the “glass” of the Law, and second in the “glass” of the Gospel, but He also
causes him to be “changed into the
same image,” that is, He begets within him corresponding principles and
affections, to the one and to the other. In other words, He brings his heart to
a conformity to the Law and to a compliance with the Gospel. He causes
the believer to “set to his seal” (John 3:33) to the whole Truth of God. He
brings him to a full acquiescence with the Law, consenting to its righteous
claims upon him, and working in him a desire and determination to adopt the Law
as his rule of life or standard of conduct. So, too, the Spirit causes him to
gladly embrace the Gospel, admiring the consummate wisdom of God therein,
whereby the perfect harmony of His justice and mercy are blessedly exhibited.
He brings him to renounce all his own works, and rest alone on the merits of
Christ for his acceptance with God.

“Beholding as in a
glass” is literally “in a mirror.” Now the mirrors to the ancients, unlike
ours, were not made of glass, but of highly burnished metal, which reflected
images with great brilliancy and distinctness, corresponding to the metal. If
the mirror was of silver, a white light would be the result; if of gold, a
yellow glow would be suffused. Thus an opaque object reflected the rays of the
sun, and so became in a measure luminous. Here the Apostle makes use of this as
a figure of the Spirit’s transforming the believer. The Law and the Gospel
display various aspects of “the glory of the Lord,” that is, of God Himself,
and as anointed eyes behold the same, the soul is irradiated thereby and an
answerable change is wrought in it.

As the soul by faith,
with broken heart (and not
otherwise), beholds the glory of the Lord, in the mirror of the two Testaments (and not in the New
without the Old), he is by the continual operations of the Spirit in him (Phil.
1:6) “changed into the same image.” The views thus obtained of the Divine
character excite answerable affections in the beholder. Rational argument may
convince a man that God is holy, yet that is a vastly different thing from his
heart being brought to love Divine
holiness. But when the Spirit removes the veil of enmity and prejudice from the
mind and enables the understanding to see light in God’s light, there is a
genuine esteem of and delight in God’s character. The heart is won with the
excellence of His moral perfections, and he perceives the rightness and beauty
of a life wholly devoted to His glory. Thus there is a radical change in his
judgment, disposition and conduct.

In the glass of the
Law there shines the glory of God’s holiness and righteousness, and in the
glass of the Gospel the glory of His grace and mercy, and as by the Spirit’s
enablement the believer is beholding them, there is wrought in him a love for
the same, there is given to him an answerable frame of heart. He cordially owns
God as righteous in all His ways and holy in all His works. He acknowledges
that God is just in condemning him, and equally just in pardoning him. He
freely confesses that he is as evil as the Law pronounces him to be, and that
his only hope lies in the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb. Christ is now “The
Fairest of ten thousand” to his soul. He desires and endeavors to exercise righteousness and truth, grace
and mercy, in all his dealings with his fellows. Thus a personal experience of
the transforming power of the Law and the Gospel brings its subject into a
conformity to their temper and tendency.

This being “changed
into the same image” of the glory of the Lord, is but another way of saying
that the Law of God is now written on the heart (Heb. 8:10), for as we have
said previously, the Law is a transcript of the Divine nature, the very image
of God. As the Law was written in indelible characters on the tables of stone
by the very finger of God, so at regeneration and throughout the entire process
of sanctification, views and dispositions in accord with the nature of the Law
become habitual in the heart, through the operations of the Holy Spirit,
according to the measure of grace which He supplies. The genuine language of
the soul now becomes, “How reasonable it is that I should love with all my
heart such an infinitely glorious being as God, that I should be utterly
captivated by His supernal excellence. How fitting that I should be entirely
for Him and completely at the disposal of Him who is Lord of all, whose rectitude
is perfect, whose goodness and wisdom are infinite, and who gave His Son to die
for me!”

This being “changed
into the same image” of the glory of the Lord, is also the same as Christ being
“formed” in the soul (Gal. 4:19). It is having in kind, though not in degree,
the same mind that was in the Lord Jesus. It is being imbued with His Spirit,
being brought into accordance with the design of His mediatorial work, which
was to honor and glorify God. In a word, it is being at heart the very
disciples of Christ. This being “changed into the same image” of the glory of
the Lord, is to be “reconciled to
God” (2 Cor. 5:20). Previously, we were at enmity against Him, hating His
sovereignty, His strictness, His severity; but now we perceive the surpassing
beauty of His every attribute and are in love with His whole Person and
character. No greater change than this can be conceived of: “Ye were sometimes
darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord” (Eph. 5:8). This great change is to
“come unto” God (Heb. 7:25), causing us to diligently seek daily supplies of
grace from Him.^[1]

—————————more
tomorrow————————

Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage
Breaker”, “Freedom in Christ” series of Discipleship Classes via the mt4christ247
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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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Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship