Loving God and “Explaining the Way of God More Accurately” – Purity 1200

Loving God  and “Explaining
the Way of God More Accurately” – Purity 1200

Purity 1200 11/17/2023 Purity 1200 Podcast

Purity 1200 on YouTube:

Good morning,

Today’s photo of the last light of day illuminating
the sky and the surface of the waters of the Schodack Creek comes to us from
yours truly as I decided to get out of my car long enough to capture one shot
of this magical moment after arriving at River House after work yesterday.

Well, It’s Friday, thank God, and I don’t know if
anyone has noticed it lately but there is something about the sunset skies in
the late autumn and winter months of upstate NY that can be simply
breathtaking.  Although today we are
getting a mini heat wave with a forecast high of 60 degrees, lately the
temperatures have been lower even though the skies have been relatively clear
and there have been wispy cumulus clouds that have been transformed into cotton
candy wonders of pink and purple as twilight time approaches.  I noticed the same phenomenon last year too.
As the temperatures got colder and more unhospitable the skies seemed to
display a beauty that was altogether different from what we get in summer. 

I point this out because one of the core skills we
try to encourage our members to develop at the Celebrate Freedom Growth Group on
Wednesday nights is “learning to find joy in the everyday pleasures in life”.
You wouldn’t think that looking at the sky could help your emotional resilience,
but it can.  According to Warner &
Hinman’s book, Building Bounce, spending five minutes to appreciate the good
things in life, like looking at a sunset sky, can help us build joy and emotional
resilience.

For the Christian, appreciation can beyond just good
feelings and drinking in the experience because we can recognize that what we
are enjoying comes from God. Everything that was made comes from Him and when
we acknowledge and thank God for the things we are experiencing and the life we
have, our appreciation and joy can take on an even higher relational dimension as
we can love God.  

That may sound like a strange concept, loving God,
especially if you have been in circles where judgment, punishment, and the fear
of the Lord were used to try to “scare you straight” or keep you in line.  And don’t get me wrong, Jesus taught a lot
about those things to warn people to repent, but he also told us to love
God.  

Matthew 22:37-38 (NKJV) tells us
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.

Appreciation
is the way that we get there.. When we practice appreciation it should lead us
to appreciating God. We think about God, who He is, what He has done, and how
He is good, holy, righteous, and loving and we begin to form a deep relational
bond with the Maker of all things who loved us enough to send His one and only Son
to live and die to save us. 

My day is
spent “walking and talking God”. As I go about my day, I talk to the Lord.  I thank Him for keeping me safe. I ask Him to
help me. I thank Him for the good things that I experience, and I ask for
strength and wisdom to work through the challenges I face.  This is having a relationship with God. 

Many of us
talk to ourselves. Instead of doing that, I suggest talking to the Lord. What
used to be your self-dialog, can be transformed into you “praying without
ceasing” by simply addressing the Lord and engaging with Him throughout the
day.

I read the
Bible with my wife almost every night of the week, with those long Wednesday
ministry nights being a regular exception, and last night we were reading in
Exodus 17 about how the Amalekites attack Moses, Joshua, and the Israelites,
and how when Moses had his hands lifted in the air, the Israelites were winning
the battle, but when his hands were lowered the Amalekites were winning.  So Aaron and Hur sat Moses down on a rock and
stood on either side of him, holding up his hands until the battle was
won.  I made the joke that this instance
in scripture was the “original wave” and although this isn’t written, I was
pretty sure that Moses had a ”rally cap” on having turned his hat inside out
and backward to gain the Lord’s favor.  I
joked of course, and as I laughed at my own silly joke, I was just filled with
joy and told my wife I loved her and that I loved the Lord because we could
read His word and be inspired because He is with us and for us.   

I appreciated
what He had done for the Israelites way back when and I appreciated how He
brought TammyLyn and I together as man and wife and how we could enjoy His word
together.  

Appreciation
kills religion by causing you to relate to the Lord in a highly personal way. Appreciation
leads you to understand that God is alive and active in the world and in your
life specifically. It builds your joy, emotional resilience, and when it is
directed to God it causes you to love the Lord.

I didn’t know
this stuff. I didn’t really understand that you could love God. Unfortunately,
most of us don’t know that. Most of us were taught that “religion” was a small
part of our lives. Something nice to visit on the weekends or call on in times
of need, but we were basically taught that it was of little value because we
had to provide for ourselves, and those instances of unanswered prayers were
presented as evidence of the limits of faith. Thus we separate ourselves from
the Lord and do things according to our own desires and the philosophies of
this world, but it was never supposed to be that way.

In His
original plan, we were supposed to live with God and even though Adam’s sin
changed everything, God sent Jesus to restore His original order. We can have
peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ. We can live with Him, and we can
love God like we were supposed to from the beginning, all we have to do is
place our faith in Jesus to be made new and choose to practice appreciation to
grow our love for the One who first loved us.  

I was reading
Acts 18 this morning in the section that talks about Apollos – an eloquent man
who was instructed in the way of the Lord, being fervent in spirit (small s),
and who taught accurately about the things of Jesus.  But Apollos was only “acquainted with the
baptism of John” – which was to prepare Israel for the Messiah’s arrival. And even
though He acknowledged that Jesus was Israel’s Messiah, MacArthur’s Commentary
states that Apollos:

…did
not, however, understand such basic Christian truths as the significance of
Christ’s death and resurrection, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and the
church as God’s new witness people. He was a redeemed OT believer (v. 24).^[1] 

But

Acts 18:26 (NKJV) tells us
²⁶  ….. When Aquila and
Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God
more accurately.

MacArthur’s commentary confirms that:

Aquila
and Priscilla completed Apollos’ training in divine truth by instructing him in
the fullness of the Christian faith.^[2]

And that’s
what I try to do. As someone raised in a liturgical church that sort of mixed
the gospel of grace with the need to do good works (a false gospel, mind you),
I had some understanding about Jesus and how the Christian faith “worked” – or didn’t
work for me.  But I didn’t know God’s
grace. I didn’t know God’s love. I didn’t know that all I had to do was to put
my faith in Jesus to be forgiven, accepted, and given eternal life. And as much
as I hoped and prayed I would go to heaven someday, I didn’t know I would and,  if I’m honest, I have to admit that I didn’t love
the Lord, I feared Him.  

But all that
changed through one message, delivered via a radio broadcast, when David Jerimiah
effectively taught me, in a moment, about God’s love and grace that pulled me
out of the darkness and gave me new life.   

So having
received the gift of my salvation and God’s love and presence in my life, I
endeavor to be like Priscilla, Aquilla, and David Jerimiah and “explain the way
of God more accurately” to those who don’t know Him or love Him.  

So, appreciate
the good things in your life. Every life has been blessed in one way or another
and when we count our blessings and acknowledge that they come from the Lord we
can begin to love God and desire a deeper relationship with Him where we will
never want to leave His presence.      

——————————————————————————————–

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 Church, Communion of the
Saints.

Ephesians 4:11-13 (NASB)
¹¹  And He gave some as
apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some
as pastors and teachers,
¹²  for the equipping of the
saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;
¹³  until we all attain to the
unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to
the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

Today’s
verses are the first of two passages of scripture that fall under the fifth point
of our counseling reference guide resource’s section on Church, Communion of the
Saints.

 5. Gifts of the Spirit differ. Each member
must use his or her gifts to serve others.

Today’s verses tell us
that there are various gifts and talents in the body of Christ for different functions,
but they all have a common purpose – to build up the

Body of Christ and to
bring us together in unity.

The purpose of the “church”
is further explained to be to give us a greater knowledge of the Son of God – by
seeking and following the ways of Jesus – 
and to mature us – that we would grow in knowledge and love of the
Lord.   

So whatever your calling
may be, remember that it isn’t used to puff you up, it is supposed to be used
for the benefit of others. So take your talents and fulfill your purpose and
help yourself and others to grow in their knowledge of Jesus and to “grow up”
into the people that God created us to be.

——————————————————————–

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 are sharing from A. W. Pink’s – The Arthur
Pink Anthology  – a collection of A.W.
Pink’s tracts brought together in one book and dispersed here on the blog for
your encouragement.

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 free as a PDF at many sites, but printed copies of collections of A.W.
Pink’s books are available for purchase wherever Christian books are sold. 

The Arthur Pink Anthology – 6

Christian Fools –
Part 4 of 8

Some of you say, Well
how can it be his duty to believe it, when he cannot do so? Is it his duty to
do an impossibility? Well, listen! Is my duty, is my responsibility measured by
my ability, by my power to perform? Here is a man who has ordered a hundred
pounds’ worth of furniture; he receives it, and he is given thirty days’ credit
in which to pay for it; but during the next thirty days he squanders his money,
and at the end of the month he is practically bankrupt. When the firm presents
their bill to him, he says, “I am sorry but I am unable to pay you.” He is
speaking the truth. “I am unable, it does not lie within my power to pay you.”
Would the head of that business house say, “All right, that ends the matter
then: sorry to hear that you do not have the power, but evidently we cannot do
anything.” No, my friend, ability does not measure our responsibility. Man is
responsible to do many things that he is not able to do. You that are
Christians are responsible to live a sinless life, for God says to you, “Awake
to righteousness and sin not,” and in the first Epistle of John we read, “These
things write I unto you, that ye sin not.” God sets before you and me a
standard of holy perfection. There is not one of us that is capable of
measuring up to it, but that is our responsibility, and that is what we are
going to be measured by when we stand before the judgment-seat of Christ.

Now then there are
many Arminian preachers who are afraid to preach sermons on certain texts of
the Bible. They would be afraid to stand up and preach from John 6:44—“No man
can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him.” They would be
afraid to stand up and preach from Romans 9:18—“Therefore hath He mercy on whom
He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth.” Yes, and it is also true
that there are many Calvinist preachers who are equally afraid to preach from
certain texts of the Scriptures lest their orthodoxy be challenged and lest
they be called Freewillers. They are afraid to stand up and preach, for
example, on the words of the Lord Jesus:—“How often would I have gathered thy
children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye
would not!” Or on such a verse as this:—“The kingdom of heaven suffereth
violence, and the violent take it by force;” or “Strive (agonize) to enter in
at the Strait Gate.” And to show you that I am not imagining things, I am just
going to read you three lines. Listen! “At the meeting at … [I will leave out
the name] on January 15th last, the question was asked to the effect: Had not
some of our ministers for the sake of orthodoxy abstained from preaching from
certain texts, and the answer was in the affirmative.” I am reading now from a
Strict Baptist magazine! That was a meeting of Strict Baptist preachers and
they were honest enough to admit, themselves, that because they were afraid of
their orthodoxy being challenged, they were silent on certain texts of
Scripture. O may God remove from all of us the fear of man.

Some of you perhaps
are thinking right now in your own minds, Well, Brother Pink, I do not see how
you are consistent with yourself. My friends, that does not trouble me one
iota, and it won’t cause one hair in my head to go gray if I am inconsistent
with any Calvinistic creed: the only thing that concerns me is to be consistent
with the Holy Spirit, and to teach as the Holy Spirit shall enable, the whole
counsel of God; to leave out nothing, to withhold nothing, and to give a
proportionate presentation of God’s truth. Do you know, I believe that most of
the theological errors of the past have grown out of, not so much a denial of
God’s truth, as a disproportionate emphasis of it. Let me give you a simple
illustration. The most comely countenance with the most beautiful features
would soon become ugly if one feature were to grow while the others remained
undeveloped. You can take the most beautiful baby there is in the world tonight
and if that baby’s nose were to grow while its eyes and its cheeks and its mouth
and its ears remained undeveloped, it would soon become unsightly. The same is
true with every other member of its face.

Beauty is mainly a
matter of proportion and this is true of God’s Word. It is only as truth is
presented in its proper proportions that the beauty and blessedness to it are
maintained in the hearts and lives of God’s people. The sad thing is that
almost everywhere today there is just one feature of truth being
disproportionately emphasized.^[3]

—————————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
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Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and
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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
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Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship