A Pretty Solid Decision Purity 843

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.org or follow me, M.t. Clark, at Facebook or Twitter. Let's see, good morning. Today's photo of an almost foreboding pathway to the beach at Middleton in South Australia comes to us from Dave Bond Photography, who shared this scene back on August 19th, commenting, "There are so many of these little openings along our coast that lead to the beach." Many look very similar, but they are all unique. Every time I walk by one with my camera, I pause and choose: shot or not? Of course, it depends on the sky and the surrounding vegetation, or lack of. This day down near Middleton was a pretty solid decision. Well, it's Thursday again, and even though today's photo may give us the sense that we don't necessarily want to ascend up that path for fear of what may lie on the other side. While I will admit to the reality, uh, that the pathway of Christian discipleship may lead us to places we don't want to go, I'm here to encourage you that even though the path before you may be uncertain or positively frightening, do it afraid. Because if the Lord calls you to go into difficult situations, we can be assured that he will be with us to give us the strength and wisdom to go through it, and that it's taking those steps of faith into the unknown that lead to our freedom and maturation as Christians. And like our friend Dave said, when we take that shot, we can know that we made a pretty solid decision. A couple of days ago, I listened to Eric Metaxas's letter to the American church, in which he discussed the parallels between what Christians are seeing in our country currently and how it is eerily similar to what the people of Germany faced in the 1930s. Metaxas highlights the experiences of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and how he unsuccessfully tried to wake up the church in Germany of the dangers of the church being complicit and submissive to the totalitarian rule under Adolf Hitler, and the disastrous effects that possibly could have been avoided had the church in Germany chose to follow Christ rather than the powers of the government. To his credit, Bonhoeffer saw the writing on the wall long before the true evil of Hitler's schemes came to their deadly ends. But the lesson of Nazi Germany shows us how good people can be led astray when they compromise their Christian principles for following the current trends in society. The German church suffered from a long tradition of a tradition of nationalism and honoring their governmental leaders, to the point that German churches had images of ex-chancellors right in their churches. This tradition of support of the powers that be and their national pride was a departure from the following— from following the lordship of Christ, uh, and it was exploited, uh, to horrible ends when Hitler came to power. As he corrects his text. Um, Metaxas points to this subtle compromise and weakness in the Church of Germany at that time and makes the case that the American church is also at a cultural crossroads of sorts, where the failure of the church to be the church could lead to a future in which countless people will suffer and die because Christians were afraid to stand for Christ and the Bible's stand— standards of morality in our current culture, who subtly or blatantly oppose the ways of our Savior and the words of the Bible. Metaxas points to the proliferation of the Marxist socialist doctrine of critical race theory, lax sexual ethics, support sort of the idea that abortion, murder, is a right, or healthcare and the availability of gender reassignment procedures in our current society as issues that Christians should speak out about and oppose, and indicating that if we do nothing now to resist these current trends, to show our love for the people who have been deceived in believing these things were good, our country will be transformed, where the Christian voice will eventually be silenced, as our current cancel culture has already shown us. Metaxas is pointing to and encouraging us to take the hard road of speaking the truth in love without affirming others who are living in a lifestyle that is in opposition to what the Bible teaches. Metaxas is calling for Christians to be Christians, not just in word but indeed to not just say we believe, but to live like we believe, and to be bold enough to stand on the Word of God and to call what is evil evil and what is good good. The cultural impasse we face is the result of years of the failure of the church in America and throughout the West to be the church. The cheap grace that Bonhoeffer wrote about in 1937 that highlighted the lack of discipleship in a time where Christianity was part of the fabric of society is alive and well today, but even worse as, as that Christian fabric of society has worn thin and denominational churches are dwindling. And those seeking to follow Christ have to be wise and discerning in where they worship because of the rise of false teachers that profess to have spiritual power with their prosperity Gospels or their prophetic end times miracles, signs, and wonders doctrines. So what are we supposed to do? I encourage people to follow Christ with the way they live their life. I have learned that following Jesus and living according to the wisdom of the word of God can transform lives by correcting the errors that we make when we believe the lies of the world. I am currently doing a series on Buttonhofer's Cost of Discipleship to encourage people to be authentic in their Christian faith. And I believe that if enough Christians sought the Lord's will for their life and repented of their sins, the church could not only turn the tide of what is happening in our society, we could help millions to live a life of peace, love, and joy by teaching them what the Lord says about how to live our lives. And how the path of Christian discipleship is not a death march but leads from darkness to light, from sorrow to joy, and from death to life. So as always, um, as I always say, keep walking and talking with God and be bold to follow the Lord's lead to oppose the spiritual forces of darkness and the lies that our current society is enmeshed in. Without condemnation, but with compassion, care, and concern that comes from a heart that was broken, from eyes that once were blind, and a life that once was, was broken, but who were all made new by Christ. Today's Bible verse— verses come to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verses are Romans 5:3-5, and they say, we can rejoice too when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance, and endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation, and this hope will not lead to disappointment, for we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. Today's Bible verse— verses assure us that the trials we face have a purpose to build our endurance, our character, our confidence of salvation, and that we will not be disappointed. Um, when— with the hard path that Eric— with the hard path that Eric Metaxas encourages us to take in his latest book, And the Orientation of the Pathway, Christian— and of Christian discipleship leads to in the first place, there will be trials. But today's verses encourage us to not lose our hope when we walk through them, and that even if we suffer in our attempts to follow and serve the Lord, it only edifies us and assures us of who we are in Christ by reminding us of how Christ suffered for us and how he He did it all out of love. As always, I invite all to go to mtforchrist.org. 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 Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Discipleship, also known as The Cost of Discipleship, where we will conclude chapter 2. The Call of Discipleship. So if you want to see how that chapter ends with the disposition of the rich young ruler and the conclusion, go to mt4christ.org to check out that, that resource at the end of today's blog post. And so, uh, we start another Thursday. Tonight we have our Bonhoeffer course. I'm happy to say I, I finally finished my preparations for the presentation I'll do. And I hope it encourages people to, to answer the call and to understand the, the dynamics of what we'll be talking about tonight as we'll be going through chapter 3, which is Single-Minded Obedience. And if we had single-minded obedience in our call to Christ, um, you know, and lived an authentic Christian life, we probably wouldn't have the problems we had in this country. Unfortunately, the church, you know, has compromised with sin a long time ago. You know, church became a country club where everyone came and gathered, but, you know, no one really believed. Or at least that, that, that seemed to be my orientation when I grew up. You know, it was just a place to go, and it was nice, nice to go there on Christmas and Easter and Not sure why we had to go any other time. It seemed more of a chore that children were forced to do, more than someplace we came joyfully. And because of that lack of joy, you know, we were condemned by the Word of God. We saw ourselves as sinners, and we saw our Christian life as hopeless, something we couldn't live So why try? And because we lived in sin, we more or less denied the gospel, denied everything about our church tradition and everything. And I ran off into atheism, so— and sin, you know, you don't get one without the other. And if you're some, you know, holy roller atheist, you know, who doesn't do anything wrong, the religion you subscribe to is yourself. Your self-righteousness. So yikes! Either, you know, there's really, there's really no middle ground when you don't believe in God because, you know, basically you're either going to live a licentious lifestyle of doing everything to please yourself and to manipulate others, or you'll stand on a high horse of your own self-righteousness and your own philosophy of life. When you worship nothing, you either worship your sin or you worship yourself, or you do both. So, uh, sorry atheists, uh, I used to be there, but you know, at least I, you know, was a hedonistic, uh, atheist. You know, I was all about, you know, feeling good, having, you know, the peace that comes from, you know, changing circumstances and you know, trying to find euphoric moments. I was never, you know, some joyless, you know, self-righteous atheist. What's the point in that? You know, really, because atheism is nihilism, meaning there's no purpose in life. I mean, that's the underlying tenet of atheists. If there's no God, there's no meaning. If there's no meaning, you know, what's the point in anything? But the good news is there is God. Jesus Christ came to earth, did miraculous things, and spoke wisdom to us to show us he was good. And he rose from the dead to show us he was God, and he came to save us. When we put our faith in him, everything can change. And you know As much as I encourage, you know, people to walk out their faith, you know, sometimes you wonder just what we can change. But the thing is, we can't stand hopeless. We have to try to give people hope. And even though, you know, the Bible sort of indicates things aren't gonna, you know, be man-made kingdom of God here on earth, Jesus has to return, it doesn't mean we can't live our lives according to the word of God and encourage other people to, to follow us as we follow Christ. So that's what we do here at mt4christ.org. And if you need help, basically you can always reach out with email at mt4christ247@gmail.com. That's me. And, uh, if you don't want to— if you don't want to reach out to help, we, we provide our, our teachings to encourage you at They're all on YouTube and our podcast for Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ. I mean, don't those titles alone sound like good? You want victory, you want to break bondage, you want freedom. You know, these are, these are good things. And the teachings are all based on the word of God and the work of Dr. Neil Anderson. So I have a little bit of commentary in those lessons, but Mostly, uh, you know, I would hope that they're helpful as people are checking them out, and I appreciate that. So, um, let's pray. As disciples of Christ, uh, who want to be responsible and good stewards of what we have, we have to pray and go to work. So let's do that. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. We thank you for all that you do for us and And we thank you for people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eric Metaxas, who point to the things that are wrong in this world, the things that oppose your word and that are unpopular to take a stand against. But, well, we do it anyway because— not because we hate people, but because we want them to show— we want to show the love of God that points to a righteous way of living, um, that's based on his holy standard, not our say-so or opinion. And it just happens to be the word that, um, that brought the existence and the being, and the word that put the law of good and evil, you know, our morals on our hearts. We all know it because God gave it to us. So Lord, we just thank you for all that you've given us. And we thank you for the people that are listening today. We pray for them to be blessed by your grace and by your guidance as we go about today. As we pray always, Lord God, Heavenly Father, we just pray for you to open our eyes to what you want us to see and open our hearts to what, what you want us to know, and lead our, lead our path in the way we should go as we go about this Thursday. Uh, Lord, we thank you, we praise you, and we love you. And we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.