Storming the Gates and Prayer – Purity 1250

Storming the Gates and Prayer – Purity 1250

Purity 1250 01/17/2024 Purity 1250 Podcast

Purity 1250 on YouTube: Coming Soon!

Good morning,

Today’s photo of a peak experience and a view of
what I believe to be Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains in the distance
comes from an unknown Facebook friend who shared this mountain view back of
June 22^nd, 2023.   If this photo
is yours, give us a heads up and I will give photo credit where photo credit is
due by updating the blog after the fact. 
I spent 10-15 minutes looking at the nature-loving usual suspects among
my FB friends and, but this photographer is currently still at large.  

Well, It’s Wednesday and although I can’t tell you
who took this photo I can tell you that I appreciate their sharing it and thought
that it was more than adequate to visually represent our arrival at another “hump
day”.   

Speaking of humps, I was sidelined yesterday with a
medical condition that is causing pain and discomfort to an area that we want
to remain in the shadows and when I saw snow covering my car yesterday morning,
I decided to stop ignoring it and seek medical attention to get it resolved.  Although I can’t see it without the use of a
mirror, and I don’t want to look at it, 
I know what it is from a prior experience, and I know the treatment is required
going under the knife or forceps… or whatever instruments are used to
surgically remove hemorrhoids.  If memory
serves me correctly it’s a quick painful procedure but yesterday I was ready to
suffer the indignity and pain to try to get it removed.  

Unfortunately, my best-laid plans to storm the gates
of a proctologist’s office were shut down by the bureaucratic miasma of our healthcare
industry.  I tried to bluff my way into
an unknown doctor’s office under the pretense of getting a referral from my
general practitioner, but I couldn’t get the office staff or nurse to grease the
wheels and was sent back to my family doctor who took a peak at the affected
area to confirm my self-diagnosis and gave me the referral that I know I needed
but I wasn’t able to get an appointment until this morning.  So, I’ll have at least two days off from work
as I will attempt to get my condition looked at and removed today but I have no
degree of certainty of what will actually happen until my 9 am
appointment.  

I may have some false memories about my prior
experience but I believe that after I was seen and treated in the same visit by
the proctologist that I saw for this same condition back in the early years of
my recovery – either 2015 or 2016, when I learned about what can happen oh so
suddenly in a small doctor’s office. 

For those who don’t know “surgery” isn’t just for
the operating room at the big hospital. 
You would be amazed and possibly traumatized at what can be done in a
small doctor’s office.  Google “test for chlamydia
– urethral swab”, “vasectomy procedure”, and “hemorrhoid surgery procedure” to
get a small idea of some of the unimaginable things that happen behind closed
doors at the urologist or proctologist’s office.  So pray for me as I am hoping to be subjected
to the indignity of having a complete stranger rip things out of my nether
regions!  But I won’t know until I get
there.       

TMI,? Perhaps, but I have learned that it is best to
be transparent in my walk of faith. Even if it costs me a loss or someone else’s
negative opinion, I have learned just to tell the truth about what happens in
my life because I never want to be accused of putting on some sort of act –
that my faith life and my private life are not the same.  Because I was so wary of phony or
hypocritical Christians in my pre-Christ existence, the last thing I want to be
accused of being like them.  As I say, if
you don’t like the hypocrites in the church, try not to be one. 

Hey MT, what about trying to “storm the gates of the
doctor’s office” weren’t you “lying”. 
Actually, I wasn’t. Now while I was never told to show up at the
proctologist’s office expecting to be seen immediately, I did call my GP’s
office and was upfront and maybe a little bit graphic in describing my
condition to the clerk on the phone, and I was told to call the proctologist’s
office directly and if I needed anything from my family doctor to call
back.  So I just took the next step – why
call and get shut down by some disembodied voice, when you can just show up and
see them face to face to plead for mercy and care?  So that’s what I did.  I figured that with yesterday’s snow, there might
be some openings in the schedule, and I could get the referral, after the fact,
if I needed – because it didn’t seem required based on what I was told – and could
get seen and treated all in one morning. 
You never know unless you try and sometimes that proactive approach will
work.   The only thing that trying costs
you is your time and maybe your dignity as those who reject your attempts may
attempt to shame you. But when you are purposeful and don’t care about the
opinions of “mere men” there is really nothing to lose.  So after a good bit of confusion by my impromptu
visit, the system jumped in to assert its authority to send me back to “GO”
without collecting my $200. 

But even after the runaround, there was a small hope
that I might get into the proctologist after my “peek-a-boo” referral visit
with my primary care provider.  But even
though I hoped there would be an available appointment in the afternoon, the
best the receptionist could do was schedule me for this morning. 

At no point in my mad scheme was I dishonest.  I reported what I was told accurately and
merely tried to advocate for myself to get some expedited help.  

And that’s what we have to do with our walk with
God.  We will invariably run into trials
in this life and so we should be honest with the Lord and go to Him in prayer
to plead our case. We should be persistent in prayer to get the help we need. Sometimes
our cries for help will be answered in sometimes miraculous fashion – believe it
or not I have prayed for and seen “healing” come on a few occasions – as disease
is halted in its tracks or pain or weakness has disappeared – so as crazy as it
may sound to some when you need help from God, ask Him for it.  

Granted, not all our prayers will be answered immediately
or in the manner that we hope for, but they might. So ask.  

And likewise, accept your cup of suffering with patience,
if that is the hand you’re dealt.  I
prayed for my bump to go away the day before, it didn’t, and my prior
experience has taught me that I need medical attention when this happens – so instead
of persisting in prayer – I used what I learned previously, including “storming
the gates” – which has worked before – to try to get the treatment I needed.

In our lives, we trust the Lord, we pray, AND we do
as much as we can to try to resolve our own problems. If our prayers are
answered immediately, great! If we can fix our own mess, great!  But sometimes we will have to do both – pray and
put forth continuous effort – and possibly wait a long time – before we receive
what we need.  

But in the meantime, we don’t lose faith and we don’t
stop trying and we don’t stop walking and talking with God.  

So whatever “hump” you have to get over today,
remember that you are not alone in your pain and struggles – The Lord is there
to call on and to give you strength to help you to persevere even when your
prayers aren’t answered in the way you hope for. 

——————————————————————————————–

Today’s
Bible verses come 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 Comfort.

Psalm 30:4-5 (NLT2)
⁴  Sing to the LORD, all you godly ones! Praise his
holy name.
⁵  For his anger lasts only a
moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime! Weeping may last through the night, but
joy comes with the morning.

Today’s
verses fall under the 20th point of our counseling reference guide resource’s
section on Comfort.

20.     God’s favor lasts for a lifetime. He turns
weeping into rejoicing.

Today’s verses simultaneously
tell us of the joy we should have in our relationship with God, which is
appropriately celebrated with singing and praise, and the harsh reality that we
may need to suffer times of correction or loss on this mortal coil as we learn
to follow where the Lord wants us to go.  

When you live most of your
life doing things your way, independent of God, the transition to a life of
walking in the Spirit can be a painful one as you are guided to reject your
worldly ways and free yourself from fleshly or selfish desires and bondages to
walk into freedom and a life of righteousness.  
In that transition, you may lose some things too. From material possessions,
relationships, or even your naivety about what was actually important in life,
you may weep over the heartbreak from losing the life that you once knew before
you realize the joy of the new life that you have been given.  

But when you find it, you will
sing and you will praise the Lord as the mourning is turned to dancing and the
laments are exchanged for songs of thanksgiving.   Keep walking and talking with God and you’ll
get there.

——————————————————————–

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 “According to Your
Word: Morning and Evening Through the New Testament” By Stephen F. Olford – A
Collection of Devotional Journals: 1940-1941.

As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage you all to purchase Olford’s books for your own
private study and to support his work.  This resource is available online
for less than $10 at many sites.

EVENING READING: MATTHEW 10

“Do not worry about how or what you should speak.
For it will be given to you in that hour what you should
speak; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your
Father who speaks in you.” – Matthew 10:19-20

Personally,
I feel that in these two verses is a principle that should always operate in
public speaking. By that, I mean that the inference here is not exclusively for
the servant of the Lord who is delivered up. Notice also, “Behold, I have put
My words in your mouth” (Jer. 1:9); “The Spirit of the LORD spoke by me, And
His word was on my tongue” (2 Sam. 23:2); “I will be with your mouth and teach
you what you shall say” (Ex. 4:12). These are just a few of the many instances
where the above principle obviously operates.

 

Speak in living echoes of Your tone.^[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

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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)

“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,
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Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship