Are You asking God “What have You Done for me Lately?" - Purity 937

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.org or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Good morning. Today's photo of a blue cloud-dotted sky reflected in the waters of the River Torrens somewhere in the parklands of Adelaide, South Australia comes to us from Dave Bond Photography, as Dave shared this scene back on Facebook on August 12th. 2nd of 2022. Well, it's Tuesday, and as I was recently looking back and reflecting on the year that is now history, I discovered that I still had a lot of awesome photos from the past year in my phone's photo archive. And while I am fully committed to looking forward, uh, I am still willing to draw from blessings from the past to empower my walk today. Like any relationship, our relationship with God is not only strengthened by what he is doing in our lives today. Its richness is also increased when we consider and appreciate the things we have experienced together in the past. Whether it is a human relationship or our relationship to God, we do a great disservice to it if we only overly focus on what have you done for me lately. Uh, while I can understand the disappointment and frustration of human relationships that cool over time because one or both parties take each other for granted and stop trying, we would do well to establish a balance in our relationships, uh, where we don't forget all that we have been through, and at the same time remaining fully engaged in loving our loved ones by being intentional about being present in the here and now and not just resting on the laurels of the things we have done in the past or by assuming your not leaving and being in the general vicinity of one another equals intimacy. I'm here, ain't I? If you feel the need to defend your place in your relationship by saying something like that, you may have unwittingly checked out or have failed to see the needs of the other person in the relationship. If you come to a point where you have to declare your presence in your relationships, whether because of a lack in you or the other person, that's a red flag that something is wrong. Someone's been— someone's taking someone for granted. Someone isn't trying, or someone is putting unrealistic expectations on the others to fulfill them. If there is one thing we should know as Christians on the pathway of faith, it is that seeking to be fulfilled by anything in this world other than the Lord is doomed to failure. Other people, or favorable circumstances may be, uh, may be able to give us pleasure and even peace, um, but unless we address the elephant in the room, our sin and separation from God, we will only be living in denial. And even if we make a profession of faith in Christ, if we fail to foster our relationship with God, our lives can easily become spiritually dry and resemble the dissatisfaction and discontentment that is common among the rest of the world. If we are seeking happiness and fulfillment with the things of this world, even in our close interpersonal relationships, without God, we will either realize the hard truth that these things can't satisfy us, or we will be— we will have a nagging feeling that something is missing. The sooner we come to this realization or ex— existential crisis, the sooner we can stop the madness of seeking happiness in the world, and the sooner we can rest and find our peace and joy in the Lord. However, just like in human relationships, the beginning of our relationships with God can be very exciting, but if we aren't careful, we can become just as frustrated with God as we are with our human relationships. As I stated above, If our relationship with God is not what it used to be, we should examine it by the same standards we would with any human relationship and ask: Is one of us taking the other for granted? Did someone stop trying? Is someone putting unrealistic expectations on the other to fulfill them? Unfortunately, although we can use these questions to examine our relationship with God, The fault in our relationship with God will undoubtedly fall on us. God is perfect and we are not. When our relationship with God goes stale, we can use these questions to see where we have gone wrong. In the early stages of our walk with God, we are full of joy at the realization that we've been forgiven and have been given eternal life. And often new believers are highly satisfied with their church communities and with all the lessons they learn about their newfound faith and about God. But as time goes on, we could take God, our church, and our knowledge for granted and develop dissatisfaction because we already know all there is to know, quote unquote, and nothing new or exciting is happening in our walk. And we can ask, what has God done for me lately? Oof, I pray that is not you, because if it is, I have bad news for you. You have gone astray and need to ask yourself the next two questions on our list. Is someone not trying? The number one instruction that I give, that I have tested with years of practice, is to seek the Lord. Uh, if you are asking what God has done for you lately, you have at best become passive in your seeking the Lord. I suspect that anyone complaining about spiritual dryness has failed to seek the Lord in one way or another. I stress the need for a daily spiritual practice to keep us present and engaged in our relationship with the Lord. Our seeking the Lord happens via daily prayer and Bible study and simply conversing with God as we walk through life. A daily spiritual practice keeps us trying and present with the Lord every day. Our seeking the Lord can also spill into our hobbies. Instead of secular music and entertainment, we can seek the Lord with Christian worship, Christian books, podcasts, and television programs. And of course, we can seek the Lord at church. I would encourage you not to not only go to church, but, but to seek some way where you can be fully engaged by serving the church in some way. If you are bored at church, you probably aren't participating in church and are just watching. However, in all these activities, we need to attach relationally with the Lord. We need to tell the Lord we love him and pursue him out of and because of our love for him. You could have a daily spiritual practice, go to church, and surround yourself with Christian media, but if you aren't doing it with a genuine affection to seek the Lord and to know him more because you love him, you may dry out quicker than someone who is passive. This brings us to the last question: Is someone putting unrealistic expectations on the the other to fulfill them? This question can cut two ways. While God has done and continues to do miracles, even the Bible— even in the Bible, they are rare. Some of us can be praying for that miracle with such ferocity and tenacity because we believe that we can be sorely disappointed when our prayers are not answered. There is a distortion of our faith commonly known as the Word of Faith movement where essentially God is treated as a heavenly slot machine who only has to be manipulated with great unquestioning faith and the right words spoken out loud in the name of Jesus in order to get what you want. The prosperity gospel lives here. The attitude in these circles places the blame on the individual for not having enough faith or, or for being, for foolishly praying that God's will be quote-unquote foolishly, you know, you know, that's the way we should pray. Although we are directed by God's Word to pray about everything, we deny God's sovereignty and set ourselves up for disappointment when we expect that all of our prayers will be answered perfectly. The other thing that this question reveals is that we may be consumers, that we are in this thing just for what we can get out of it, and if God doesn't come through and we stop receiving blessings, our hearts grow cold and we can walk away from the Lord. If consumers are not receiving what they want or need, if they're not excited and entertained or asked to actually do something, they take their business elsewhere or stop being a customer or stop being a customer or start— yeah, stop being a customer. You usually back and go elsewhere, usually back to the world, the flesh, or the devil. In my faith walk since 2010, I have seen people go in and out of local churches to the point where I would almost suggest installing revolving doors. I've seen people come in, get excited, proclaim the congregation as my church, share scenes from worship services on social media, and then all but disappear. I'm sure that many of these Christians would have reason for their departure. I suspect that we— if we examine the circumstances surrounding their leaving, we would discover that someone took the other for granted, someone stopped trying, or someone has unrealistic expectations. We don't bless God for coming to him. He blesses us. We don't have to go to church and follow the Lord. We are blessed to go to church and to follow him. If we are asking what God has done for us lately, we have forgotten what we have received. Um, and regardless of what negative circumstances surround our walk of faith, if we love the Lord, we will continue to follow him because we know, like Peter, that there is nowhere else to go. When Christ challenged his disciples to leave after one of his more shocking and puzzling teachings, Peter said, In John 6:68-69, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also, we have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God." When we know who we are in Christ and when we know who God is, we don't take Him for granted. We continue trying by showing up and seeking and following Him wherever He leads. We also seek to know Him more so we don't have false expectations. And we don't follow him because of the things we get. We follow him because we love him. We love the one who created everything but somehow decided he wanted to be— he wanted us to be with him forever. So keep walking and talking with God. Stay engaged in your faith by seeking the Lord at all times as an expression of your love for him. As always, I, uh, let's see. No, not as always. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verse is Zechariah 4:6, and it says, then he said to me, this is what the Lord says to Zerubbabel: it is not by force nor by strength, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Heaven armies. Today's verse reminds us that it is by God's Spirit that many— most of his work will be done and many of his victories will come. It is not by the sweat of our brow that we are transformed. It is by coming into alignment with God's Spirit, by knowing who we are in Christ, and by following his Spirit, who will lead us into all truth and comfort and guide us as we go. It's not walking in the church or even walking in this— in the Bible. It's walking in the Spirit, because the things of God are spiritually discerned. And when we quote-unquote figure something out, we have to remember that our salvation and our sanctification are gifts from God through the Holy Spirit. You may have to work hard in life and as a part of this path, but remember that is not by our strength but by God's Spirit that we will live and grow in His kingdom. As always, I invite all to go to mtforchrist.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 Arthur W. Pink, or A.W. Pink's The Sovereignty of God, as we continue in chapter 3, Sovereignty of God in Administration. And today's number 1 point is God governs and inanimate matter. So even the things that aren't alive, he governs. And if you wanted to see what A.W. Pink had to say about that, go to mtforchrist.org and you'll see that at the end of today's blog post. Well, um, last night I went to a corporate prayer event, Pray Together, Pray Together, at my church in Clifton Park, and it was, it was an awesome event with 4 churches coming together for corporate prayer. There's a lot of people, so unlike those, uh, unlike the prayer, prayer meetings I was used to at my old local church, was relatively small, where people prayed out loud and, you know, got in a circle and prayed out loud. This was a, this was a large corporate event where that would have just been chaos and So what they did is it was silent prayer, which was a little different and sort of nice. Had to be diligent not to fall asleep, but I like the fact that all those people, you know, gathered together with one, you know, one vision, one instruction. Basically, they divided up into different portions with the 4 pastors getting up and directing the people to pray for a certain aspect— personal revival, for doors to open, for workers of the harvest, and for, you know, spreading the light of the gospel. Those were 4 instructions last night, and we'll see what tonight's are. I believe it's going to be for the children and and things like that, things like that. But, um, it was a good way to draw close to God. And you don't do this out of, you know, obligation. You do it out of love. You want to follow where he leads and be a part of what the body of Christ is doing. So, so we just encourage you to, you know, follow whatever, whatever the Lord will lead you to and to continue to seek him and his will and his will only for your life. As always, we encourage people to check out our discipleship teachings, Bible studies, and whatever else we have on our podcast. It's, uh, uh, M.t. for Christ 247 on all podcast platforms, or virtually all, and our YouTube channel of the same name, M.t. for Christ 247. So I hope you check those out. Um, do have to work today, so let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you for all that you do. Um, in our lives. And, uh, Lord, let us never take you for granted. Let us never, um, you know, ask the question, what have you done for me lately? Um, we know that what you've done for us in the past, and that's more than we'll ever need. And we know you're doing that, things in our lives currently, and we'll do things in our lives in the future. So, Lord, we just pray that we remember that, we walk with you in love um, from here to eternity, um, and encourage other people to know that too, um, so they will stay on the path, um, that leads straight to you. Um, Lord, we just thank you for everyone who might be listening or reading today's message. We pray for you to bless them. Uh, we pray for you to come alongside their prayer request. Lord, we pray for you to bless the prayer event, um, that's going on, uh, through Starpoint Church and the other churches involved in And we pray for you to use it as, as a form of revival. Um, Lord, move, uh, encourage people to come out and, uh, draw close to you. And Lord, as always, we pray for you to go before us today. Um, Lord, we pray for you to open our eyes to the things you want us to see, and we pray for you to lead us into the things you would have us do. Lord, give us the strength and guidance that we need today. And, uh, because all we want to do is, uh, represent you in your kingdom, and we need your help every day to do that. So, Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you. We pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.