WE are the Champions – Sharing Victory and Joy! – Purity 1176

 WE are the Champions – Sharing Victory
and Joy! – Purity 1176

Purity 1176 10/19/2023 Purity 1176 Podcast

Purity 1176 on YouTube: 

Good morning,

Today’s photo of a parking lot and a stand of trees highlighted
by the beams of a late afternoon sun to display their glorious Autumn hues
comes to us today from yours truly as I paused for a second to capture this
magic moment while standing in the lobby of Starpoint Church as I was preparing
for another meeting of the Celebrate Freedom (recovery/discipleship) Growth
Group. 

Well, it is Thursday and while today’s photo doesn’t
follow my habit of displaying a pathway to visually encourage my friends to get
on or to stay on the path of Christian Discipleship, it does highlight a destination
where every disciple’s pathway should take them regularly: a local Bible
believing – Jesus Following – church! This photo was captured from the inside
of a church and if you are walking and talking with God you should be making
visits to a local church at least once a week!  

But rather than being at the church for a midweek
service like some churches provide, I was at Starpoint Church to lead Celebrate
Freedom – a growth group whose focus is on helping Christians to overcome their
“hurts, habits, and hang-ups with God’s help, Christian Community, and
Christian discipleship, recovery, and community freedom ministry materials and
encouragements.  Our group focuses on our
relationship with God, with each other, and with the spiritual practices of our
faith – the ways we can put our faith into action.  

When I began preparing to lead this group in the
spring of this year, I was blessed to be able to enlist the help of Debbie
Deyoe to be our Woman’s Leader and was surprised to be approached by Scott
Salvadore who volunteered to help with the ministry, stating that he knew about
recovery but wanted to learn more about Christian recovery and serving in
ministry. I was thrilled to have a volunteer and saw in Scott a great potential
to lead so I immediately enlisted him to be the Men’s small group discussion
leader. 

Over the last 6 months, Debbie, Scott, and I have
faithfully walked together leading the Celebrate Freedom Growth Group and we
have seen people come and people go. We have been filled with hope for each
person who has come to our meetings and unfortunately, we have seen far too many
stop coming without the freedom and victory that we know is possible with
God.  

But we have remained faithful to serve because some people
have kept coming and those who have been faithful in trusting God to help them
have received a measure of hope, faith, peace, victory, freedom, and joy that
they didn’t have before coming to Celebrate Freedom.

Last night, during our meetings regular “check in” –
where the members introduce themselves and share a little about their lives and
are prompted to reflect on something they are thankful for – I prompted the
members to end their check by completing the sentence: “At Celebrate Freedom, We
__________” . 

For instance, I shared: “At Celebrate Freedom, We can
be open and honest”. 

From what I can recall others shared: “We give
thanks” “We talk about our lives” “We support one another”. “We practice
gratitude.” “We receive hope” “We share our lives”  “We have fun” and “We worship.”    

I had already led the group in a brief quieting
exercise – a minute of “box breathing” after which in the stillness and silence
I affirmed everyone in their identity in Christ by methodically reading through
the “Who I am in Christ” list, changing the verbiage to “You are…”  – like “You are accepted in Christ. You are
free forever from condemnation. You are forgiven and redeemed of all your sins”
etc.  I did that to affirm their individual
identity in Christ, but I did this – “At Celebrate Freedom, We _________”  to foster our community identity as a group
and as members of a group. 

The whole focus at Celebrate Freedom has been on:

A.    Appreciation – Practicing Quieting and – to develop the ability to calm
ourselves in the face of adversity and “return to joy” by focusing on the
things that are true about us and the good things we are thankful for –thus  building emotional resilience.

B.    Beliefs – Focusing on Our Thinking – Renewing our Mind with the Truth
drawn from God’s Word and who we are in Christ – Our beliefs drive our emotions
and when we think about who we are in Christ, we can replace negative thoughts
with life-giving one.

C.   Community – We “form joy bonds” with one another (we are happy to see one
another) as we come together to support one another in our walks of faith in
the presence of God – thus we also “commune” with God as we increase our love
and “joy bonds” with Him.  

So last night we affirmed, who “We are” at Celebrate
Freedom.  As people have come we have
shared our struggles with one another, but we have also shared our victories.

And last night, the Lord saw fit to move things in His
sovereign timing so the group could experience a dramatic victory filled with
joy together.  

If you didn’t know, other than being a faithful
servant of His local church and to Celebrate Freedom, Scott Salvadore was also named
the Mullet Champion of 2022.  Yesterday,
we were all hoping and praying for good news as Scott had been recently campaigning
to be the first-ever back-to-back Mullet Champion and we started last night’s
meeting waiting for the results to be announced.

As the Lord would have it, Scott was doing his “check
in” at Celebrate Freedom, when his cell phone rang, and he got the news that
the results for the 2023 Mullet Championship were in.  The group waited with breathless anticipation
as Scott played the video announcing the results on his phone and we exploded
with joy as we realized that the third and second-place contestants were named,
and they were not Scott, meaning that, as Jared Allen finally announced, that
Scott Salvadore was the 2023 Mullet Champion! 

At Celebrate Freedom, we share our victories, and
the Lord blessed us all with this triumphant moment for Scott and how he would
once again use it as a platform to encourage others to follow Jesus
Christ.  

My journey of faith on the path of Christian Discipleship
has taken me places I have never dreamed of going and meeting amazing men and
women of faith and last night the Lord showed His favor to those who make their
purpose in life to give Him glory. 

So keep walking and talking with God. When you put
your faith in Jesus and follow Him with the way you live your life, you can
experience what true freedom and victory means and in the fellowship of the
saints, you can share the joy!

——————————————————————————————–

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 Bitterness, Resentment,
& Hate.

Genesis 37:4 (NIV2011)
⁴  When his brothers saw that
their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not
speak a kind word to him.

Today’s
verses fall under the fifth point of our counseling reference guide resource’s
section on Bitterness,
Resentment, & Hate.

 5. Joseph’s brothers allowed bitterness to
grow into hatred and murder in the heart.

Our resource actually
lists all of Genesis 37 to illustrate this point but for brevity we
cherrypicked the verse that exposes the root of bitterness that led to Joseph’s
calamities.

Today’s verse points out how
jealousy can drive even members of the same family to hate one another and Joseph’s
story highlights how one can suffer because of the bitterness of others.

My wife, TammyLyn and I are currently reading through Joseph’s story which runs from Chapter 37 to 50, the
end of, Genesis, and even though I have read through and been moved by Joseph’s
life journey several times, I was still shocked and appalled at how Joseph’s brothers’
hatred was so sharp that you are actually thankful he was only sold into
slavery.  Remembering Cain and Abel, and
maybe Lord of the Flies, I could all too easily imagine a sudden outburst of sudden
and brutal murderous violence in the desert. 
As it is, the brothers’ cover-up their selling of Joseph by “faking his
death” by pouring a goat’s blood over Jacob’s multicolored tunic and corporately
lying to their father, who is absolutely heartbroken.  That’s cold, man. You figured at least one of
the brothers would be grief-stricken with guilt and let the cat of the bag, but
they don’t.  However, years later – their
secret sin still weighs heavy on their hearts as they rationalize their bad
circumstances as just punishment for what they did years ago.  when a disguised Joseph threatens to imprison
them for spying in Egypt. 

Luckily, Joseph is a
faithful man of God and sees God’s divine will in the events of His life and
sees how his brothers’ evil deed was used by the Lord to save countless lives
from famine. 

But let’s not count on our
bitterness being used by the Lord for good. We don’t want to be the one whose
evil was used for good.  Instead, humble
yourself before the Lord, forgive others as you have been forgiven, and let go
of any bitterness that could grow into hate.

——————————————————————–

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

31 – The Spirit Endowing

Gift of
Discernment

In order to preserve the church in truth and
peace during those primitive times, and safeguard them from being imposed upon
by the false prophets while there was a real communication of the extraordinary
gifts of the Spirit (whereby the more occasion was afforded for charlatans to
pretend unto the possession of them), God graciously endowed some of His people
with the gift of “the discerning of
spirits” (1 Cor. 12:10). The saints were thereby provided with some who
were enabled in extraordinary manner to judge and determine those who claimed
to be specially endowed by the Spirit—but when the extraordinary manifestations
of the Spirit ceased, this particular gift was also withdrawn, so the Christians
are now left with the Word alone by
which to measure and try all who claim to be the mouthpiece of God.^[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
on Google Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartradio, and
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     

“The views, opinions, and commentary of this
publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to
reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries,
or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication,
and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the
author may represent.”

Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship