Living the Good Life of Spiritual Formation and Communicating with God – Purity 1713
Purity 1713 07/18/2025 Purity 1713 Audio Podcast
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Good morning,
Today’s photo of a pine tree surrounded by a lake beach under a magnificent blue and cloud filled sky comes to us from yours truly as I captured this view during my short visit to Grafton Lake State Park on Wednesday.
Well, It’s Friday – thank God and Praise the Lord – and I am filled with joy this morning because I have four consecutive days of food plan success and I am looking forward to being reunited with my beloved wife at quitting time, and will be spending the day tomorrow at Lake Lauderdale celebrating at my step-daughter, Elisabeth’s graduation party. So, I am experiencing the simple joy of “doing what is right” and the anticipatory pleasure of enjoying the benefits of a loving marriage, family life, and God’s creation.
Living the good life for the Christian is about coming into alignment with God’s will for us and it is best found through a lifestyle of practices that will cause us to connect with the Lord and hear what He is telling us. Through Bible study, prayer, and good practices to improve and maintain our physical, mental, and emotional health, we can communicate with the Lord and demonstrate that we hear what He is saying about following Him and being a good steward to what He has given us.
An overall lifestyle of Christian discipleship that affects every area of your life is what I am talking about. If my simple suggestions are too vague, I suggest you read some of the following spiritual formation books to encourage you to get on the path of Christian Discipleship.
- Richard Foster’s Celebration of the Discipline
- Dallas Williard’s Renovation of the Heart or The Spirit of the Disciplines
- Christopher A. Hall’s A Different Way
- John Mark Comer’s Practicing the Way
These books on spiritual formation communicate to us how it is exactly we live as followers or apprentices of Jesus. Speaking of communication, yesterday’s In Touch with Dr. Charles Stanley spoke about God’s Goal in Communicating to us and I am sharing it on the blog today to remind all of us that God has a good plan for our lives and He is speaking to us to help us find it. Dr. Charles Stanley writes:
“God’s Goal in Communicating
Those who are willing to hear, apply, and share God’s truth benefit from it.
1 Corinthians 2:9-14
When the Lord has something important to say to us, we can trust that it is for our benefit and invariably speaks directly to our needs (Isaiah 48:17). So we must be clear in asking, What is God’s primary purpose in speaking to me? What does He want me to do as a result of what He’s said? We’ll learn God speaks so that …
- We are able to comprehend the truth. That is, He wants us to fully understand His message and absorb it into our heart and mind.
- We may be aligned with the truth. Just knowing biblical principles is not enough; we must apply them to our circumstances and live out the life of faith.
- We can then communicate the truth. Hearing scriptural principles and applying them to our situation is just the beginning. Our Father wants us to share that life-changing knowledge with others.
How can you better understand biblical truth? How can you more effectively apply God’s principles and share them with others? The Lord is always ready and able to help you discover the answers to these questions. Open yourself to His message today and then submit to whatever the Holy Spirit tells you.” – Charles Stanley
Amen. I know full well the resistance one can have to the things of God. While raised in a liturgical church since my youth, I didn’t really believe and start to follow Jesus until I was 38 years old. Before that I rejected God’s advice more than I accepted it and the funny thing is that I didn’t seem to be alone in that regard when I considered the attitudes and actions of others in my church or who identified in some way as Christian.
“I believe but…” statements from myself and others usually ended with pronouncements that demonstrated our unbelief or our inability or unwillingness to apply God’s word. Those statements usually affirmed our belief in ourselves or what the world said more than what God said.
This just shows that many who call themselves Christians either have a lot of learning or growing to do, or that they aren’t Christians at all.
After all, why would God reveal Himself to us, give us His word, and send Jesus to teach how to apply it and die for us, if we were just going to ignore or reject it?
God gives us His word and Jesus did all He did for us for our benefit. God did all that and speaks to us through His word and in our spirits not to condemn us or to steal our joy. He speaks to us because He loves us and doesn’t want us to suffer.
So, listen to what God says. Seek His voice. Read His word. Understand that it is given to us for our good and then try to comprehend how applying it to your life will help you.
God wants us to comprehend His word and to be aligned with it to lead us to the abundant life of peace that Jesus promised us.
So, stop denying or rejecting God’s wisdom – it is being given and is available for your good.
After you realize that like I have, you too will want to share what you know to help others to realize it too.
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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 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. (The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling By John G. Kruis on Amazon )
This morning’s meditation verses come from the section on Overcoming Sin – Changing.
John 1:12–13 (NLT) But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.
Today’s verses are the first of two passages of scripture that fall under the second point of our counseling reference guide resource section on Overcoming Sin – Changing.
2. Believers are children of God, born again by the Holy Spirit.
Today’s Bible verses deliver the great news that all who believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior are given the right to become children of God and that we are spiritually reborn, not by our own efforts but by a birth that comes from God.
These verses reinforce Ephesians 2:8-10 (NASB) which tells us:
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
We are God’s handy work. We are made His children because of His grace that sparked our faith in Jesus Christ. This is why the gospel is “the good news”. Our right to become children of God was a free gift from the Lord. So, we should rejoice, enjoy it, and share it with others by telling them how although we were lost, we have been found and made God’s children because of His love, mercy, and grace.
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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 “Day by Day Along the Way” By Jay E. Adams.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage you all to purchase Adams’ books for your own private study and to support the late author’s work. This resource is available online for less than $20 at many sites.
Day 212
Whoever has ears to hear, let him listen. – Luke 14:35
Probably most of those who are reading these words are well equipped with a pair! But Jesus was not concerned about whether we have ears; His concern was about how well we use them. He wants us to listen carefully to what He says. God doesn’t speak audibly today, but like those who heard Jesus speak, you too can do so by reading in the Gospels what He had to said. Moreover, what the apostles and prophets wrote in the rest of the New Testament books is equally the Word of God. You can read those words over and over as often as necessary. What a privilege! The people who heard Jesus heard only once—they had better listen carefully. But they did hear Him if they were in His presence. You will not hear unless you open the Bible and read it! You must be in His presence too! You do have an advantage over the first listeners, but unless you take advantage of your advantage, you will hear less![1]
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[1] Jay E. Adams, Day by Day along the Way (Cordova, TN: Institute for Nouthetic Studies, 2020), 220.
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