If You Believe, You Can – I Can Do All Things #4 – Purity 1359
Purity 1359 05/23/2024 Purity 1359 Podcast
Purity 1359 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a view of the sun blazing through the trees of a forest comes to us from yours truly as I captured this scene while hiking the Gallop Road Loop trail at the Merck Forest and Farmland Center near Rupert Vermont back on May 13th, 2023.
Well, It’s Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, and I am happy to report that my wife and I will be backpacking and staying in a Vermont Forest Cabin for the next two nights to enjoy the wonders of God’s creation, the peace of its relative solitude and silence, and joy of each other’s company. I will be off the grid for a couple of days so there will be no Bible Study with the Cincotti’s tomorrow, but I should be back and “better than ever” come Tuesday morning.
Our lives are to be enjoyed and appreciated and as we contemplate the lives lost to the service of our country on Monday, we should take a moment to thank God for their lives and for His goodness as His Son Jesus Christ gave the example of dying for the good of many long before America was ever imagined. God is the author of life and freedom, and He will give and take it away according to His purposes but there is hope for all men because of Jesus. So experience true life and freedom by trusting in Christ your Lord and Savior and by surrendering to God’s will for your life.
Some may wonder if they have the faith to “do that” – to be a Christian and live for God – but I know you don’t have to earn it or work hard to clean yourself up in order to be a disciple of Jesus. You just have to believe in Him. That’s it. If you believe, you can.
And that brings us to our current series on “I can do all things”, where we are sharing from Neil Anderson’s Who I Am in Christ – A Devotional – to explain how it is we can do that – that we can “do all things through Christ who strengthens us” and see God do the “impossible in our lives. So we turn to the good doctor’s advice who contrasts the difference between truth and lies in today’s section on:
“New Age Versus Christianity
New Age philosophers say, “If you believe something enough, it will become true.” They argue that we can create reality with our minds. In order to do that, we would have to be gods, which is precisely what they are saying. That lie goes all the way back to the garden. “You will be like God” (Gen. 3:5).
Christianity says, “It is true; therefore I believe it.” Believing something doesn’t make it true, and not believing something doesn’t cause it to go away. Jesus prayed for us concerning this in His high priestly prayer in John 17:15, 17: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.… Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” We believe in God and walk by faith according to His Word. In my book Victory Over the Darkness, I shared the following:
If You Believe You Can, You Can
If you think you are beaten—you are.
If you think you dare not—you don’t.
If you want to win but think you can’t,
It is almost a cinch you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose—you’re lost.
For out of the world we find
That success begins with a fellow’s will.
It’s all in the state of mind. Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or the faster man;
But sooner or later the man that wins.
Is the one who thinks he can.
That poem has an element of truth and expresses the power of positive thinking. The Christian community has been somewhat reluctant to buy into this well-known axiom and for good reason. Thinking is a function of the mind and cannot exceed its inputs and attributes. Any attempt to push the mind beyond its limitations will only result in moving from the world of reality into fantasy. Believing something beyond what we know to be biblically true is not faith—it is presumption. And we dare not presume upon God.[1]”
So here Anderson advises us on our only reliable source for truth – the word of God – The Bible – and tells us to not presume upon God by trying to push our minds beyond our limitations. God is not here to do our bidding and His word is not to be twisted or manipulated to say things it doesn’t say or to be used as a set of magic words to make our dreams come true. New Age philosophy would have us to be little gods and so we must be careful of those who would take the Christian faith and try to “name and claim” prosperity and blessings as their right because although they may sound holy their hearts may be saying “my will be done” rather than “Thy will be done” to the Lord.
So believe you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you but be aware that the overall context of that “promise” included having to suffer for your faith and had more to do with being “content” in all things, more than manipulating the circumstances of all things.
God is in charge and He giveth and taketh away. So trust in Him and know that His ways are higher than our ways and that we are not always going to get what we want, but in Christ we already have more than we will ever need.
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For those who want more evidence for Christianity than my simple encouragements provide, I offer apologist, Frank Turek’s website, https://crossexamined.org/ .
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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 Decision Making.
Hebrews 11:24-25 (ESV)
24 By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter,
25 choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.
Today’s verses fall under the fourth point of our counseling reference guide resource’s section on Decision Making.
5. Moses’ decision is a good example to follow.
Today’s verses present the example of Moses to encourage us in our faith and to refute the idea that material prosperity is more important than a relationship with God. Moses grew up in a palace but when he realized that it was pagan and oppressing God’s people, he rejected its provision and comforts to be right with the Lord. Likewise our sins of the flesh may feel good and provide temporary pleasure and comfort but when we realize that our actions go against the will of God and make us subject to His wrath, we need to turn from our sin, seek God’s forgiveness through Jesus, and commit ourselves to following God’s ways.
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As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.com 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.
MORNING READING: ROMANS 2
“In whatever you judge another you condemn yourself;
for you who judge practice the same things.”
– Romans 2:1
Here is a law of God. When Paul wrote it or emphasized it, he was addressing the apostate Jew. But as a law, it is applicable to all.
The law in essence is this: I must not practice anything for which I would condemn another. The Lord Himself propounded this same law when he said, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged … why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?” (Matt. 7:1-3).
Give me the grace, O Lord, to live what I preach.
Help me not to judge, if I would not be judged. Amen.[2]
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Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship
[1] Neil T. Anderson, Who I Am in Christ (Ventura, CA: Regal, 2001), 271–272.
[2] Stephen Olford and Heather Olford, According to Your Word: Morning and Evening Through the New Testament, A Collection of Devotional Journals 1940-1941 (Nashville, TN: B&H Books, 2008).
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