Early Morning Desperation Prayers & Redeeming the Time – Purity 1864
Purity 1864 01/17/2026 Purity 1864 Audio Podcast
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Good morning,
Today’s photo of a cloudless blue sky over the trees, barn, and the frozen tundra of the clearing at the end of “Freedom Road,” comes to us from yours truly as I braved the cold temperatures and “walked like a penguin” to get over the icy patches yesterday to take my first trip down my favorite walking place in 2026.
Well, it’s Saturday, and when I awoke this morning, I got an email message from a friend’s wife letting me know that he had been admitted to the hospital and asking for prayers. I immediately went into prayer, travailed in the Spirit, and composed a response of my prayer for my friend and his wife, to let them know that I wasn’t just sending “good vibes” for them, but I was calling on God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit to move in the situation to bring healing and comfort to their minds and bodies. Without getting into specifics, their report was alarming and potentially quite serious. In their time of need, I wanted them to know that I was praying for them and, more importantly, that the Lord was with them and would be with them throughout this trial. If you’re a praying person, please pray for P & T and their family.
Sudden illness and reports like this remind us of just how fragile our lives are and when I get a request for prayer like this, it reminds me just how important it is to walk in the Spirit every day. To be a person that someone calls on for prayer is an honor and a privilege, and it reflects the reality of your relationship with God and gives Him glory. In this world filled with atheists, skeptics, and unbelievers, it’s so important to live out your faith every day. People need the hope, truth, and love that come from God, and when our walk with the Lord makes people think of us in times of trouble, to call on the Lord, we fulfill our purpose as ambassadors of Christ. When we get to minister to people and offer prayers on their behalf, it reminds us of the Lord’s purpose for us and convicts us even more to choose to reject the ways of the world, the flesh, and the devil and to walk in the Spirit for the benefit of others. Our walk with Christ isn’t just about us finding our peace; it’s about bringing the hope and peace of the Lord to a world that desperately needs it. We don’t know how long we have to live, but when someone calls on us for prayer, we understand that we should use whatever remains of our lives to represent God’s kingdom and to be a light in the darkness.
Speaking of the days of our lives, the Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah devotion for this weekend calls us to consider our remaining time in this life, and I am sharing it on the blog today to encourage us all to use what time we have left to pray and live for God. David Jeremiah writes:
“WISDOM FOR THE YEAR: REDEEM THE TIME
See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. – Ephesians 5:15-16
This proverb arose in the fourteenth century: “Time and tide wait for no man.” Tide suggests the rising and falling of the ocean’s tides. But in early English tide referred to seasons or periods of time (think yuletide referring to Christmas). So, the proverb might best be understood as “Time and seasons wait for no man.”
The point of the proverb is obvious: Time is an unrelenting reality that cannot be stopped, delayed, reversed, lengthened, or shortened. As you are reading this devotional, the clock of your life is ticking. You are closer to the completion of your time on earth at this moment than you were when you woke up this morning. So, when Paul wrote, “[Redeem] the time,” he was conscious of the precious nature of time. We should take advantage of every day, month, and year and treat them as gifts of God. We should use our time wisely, knowing we will never get back time that has passed.
Prayerfully consider how you can best use the coming year. Once passed, it can never be replaced.
If you die wrong the first time, you cannot come back to die better a second time. –
Robert Murray M’Cheyne
Amen. Wow. This message really reminds us of the brevity of life and how each passing day brings us closer to the end of this earthly life and to our entrance into God’s eternal kingdom.
As curious as I am to see beyond the veil and to see God face to face, it has become more and more impressed upon me that God has me here to represent His kingdom and the spiritual life of a disciple of Jesus Christ.
To fulfill my purpose in this earthly life, the Lord is encouraging me to go deeper into a life in the Spirit – to help me to increasingly become the person He made me to be and to help to set the captives free – to be used by God to encourage others to trust in Him and to live in His ways to experience freedom, victory, peace, and joy.
This is the call for all of us in Christ, and as the time of our lives runs out, it is imperative to wake up to this reality and to choose to live for God and surrender to His will and ways for our lives.
When we choose to live in Spirit, God blesses us (and others) with His peace, wisdom, strength, and love. As we come into alignment with God’s purpose for our lives, we feel the joy of fulfillment and fellowship with God.
Just let’s not waste our time anymore chasing after the things of this world that take us away from what the Lord has for us. Instead, let’s rejoice over all the blessings that God gives us in this life that we take for granted, and let our joy in the Lord be our strength to become the people He made us to be and to do the things that He would have us to do.
Let’s use every day to draw close to Him and to live out our purpose in Christ.
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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 verse comes from the section on Progressive Sanctification – Growing in Faith & Godliness.
John 17:17 (NASB) [Jesus, thinking of his redeemed people, prayed,] Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.
Today’s verse is the first of five passages of scripture that fall under the third point of our counseling reference guide resource section on Progressive Sanctification – Growing in Faith & Godliness.
3. God works in us through His Word to bring us to spiritual maturity, to sanctify us.
Today’s Bible verse is the words of Jesus that tell us what is true and what makes us holy – God’s word.
We don’t read the Bible for historical facts, entertaining stories, or practical advice, although we can find all of those things within its pages. No, read the Bible because God calls us to sanctify ourselves – to be made holy – to be set apart for God’s purposes and to be cleansed from all unrighteousness – and there is no better way for us to do that than to be transformed in the renewing of our mind by God’s word.
This short verse tells us that. Jesus prays that God sanctify us in His truth and then clues us in that God’s truth is His word, so therefore if we want to follow Jesus’ desire for us, we will interact with God’s word on a continual basis to allow it to transform us.
So be sanctified by God’s truth, by reading and obeying His truth found in His word.
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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 363
The Spirit’s fruit is … faithfulness. – Galatians 5:22
Where can you find loyalty and faithfulness today? Not often in the workplace. Surely, it’s scarce in politics. And how many broken homes demonstrate its absence? Here is a quality that today’s society seems to have forgotten. Lack of faithfulness is often exhibited among Christians and in their churches, in particular: so often we discover people are undependable and untrustworthy in their relations to one another. In both beliefs and actions, every believer ought to be a reliable person that you could trust with your life and reputation. Soldiers in the spiritual battles we face need to be loyal to one another. Your word should be “yes,” and not “yes” and “no” as Paul mentioned in his letter to the Corinthians that others were accusing him of saying. Faithfulness is the chief quality of a good steward. And you are a steward—to you God has entrusted the Gospel; and you must be faithful to it. In addition, being faithful in our dealings with our brothers and sisters in Christ ought to go without saying. Just as we have placed our dependence upon Jesus Christ, so too ought we, His servants, be every bit as dependable.[1]
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[1] Jay E. Adams, Day by Day along the Way (Cordova, TN: Institute for Nouthetic Studies, 2020), 371.
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