Bend, Don’t Break… Or Go Ahead and Break it! Purity 874

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 the sun captured between clouds and framed perfectly between the seasonally decorated posts of a front porch comes to us from a friend who shared a series of photos of their newly constructed home. While my friend didn't share their new address, judging by the distant horizon, I would guess that they didn't move far far from their previous place, and that this view is of an easterly direction toward the Hudson River and the distant Berkshires. But that only narrows down the location of their new homestead to be possibly in the Ulster, Greene, or Albany County areas of upstate New York. My friend's husband is a humble man of God who I worked with on a vacation mission trip to flood-affected areas in Louisiana back in 2017, and I knew him to be highly skilled in the areas of construction But the other photos that his wife shared of their new home show that he is a master craftsman, as the photos she shared could have been lifted from the pages of Better Homes and Gardens. Well, it's Friday again, and as much as we might like the excitement of going away for the weekend or going away for vacation to distant lands, in the end there is really no place like home to find comfort and rest. And I, for one, am looking forward to the end of the workday as I will make my way north to be with the one who gives me a sense of home no matter where we are, my beloved wife, Tammy Lynn. And our home and our love for one another, we married with two households. While we may have to be patient to arrive at a date when we dwell under the same roof on a permanent basis, we knew that we were meant to be together. And I was just telling her last night of how I couldn't imagine and didn't want to imagine a life where she wasn't my wife. They say home is where the heart is, and my heart is with Tammy Lynn now until the day the Lord calls me home. Well, as much as I can find peace in the presence of the Lord and my wife, I am currently in a season where the demands of work, ministry, and family are all coming together in a way where there is scarcely a moment to kick back and enjoy all that the Lord has provided me with. The Freedom in Christ course I facilitate only has 3 weeks remaining, and I am now in the season of leading the participants through the steps to freedom in Christ. I'm also currently presenting an informal walkthrough of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's discipleship on the Empty for Christ 24/7 podcast and the YouTube channel on Thursdays. Tonight and tomorrow, I'm volunteering for Operation Adopt a Soldier's Harvest Festival. And the week after next, I am hitting the road to volunteer, uh, volunteer in an Evening with David Jeremiah event at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York on November 11th. And 2 weeks after that, it is Thanksgiving. So while we are, we are coming to the end of October on Monday with All Hallows' Eve, in my mind I'm contemplating just how I will have to simultaneously take care of the things before me, but also keep an eye out for the next thing to be adequately prepared when they arrive. Uh, the Bonhoeffer study I am doing is a labor of love, but it requires time to adequately absorb the material and to create a new PowerPoint presentation for each session. So to stay on top of things, I have started creating the next one as soon as I complete creating the PowerPoint that I'm going to present. The one I did last night was long, 40 slides, and the total program ran longer than any of the other ones I've done thus far. And it was my goal, it was my goal to try to keep it close to an hour. So you could imagine the stress I was feeling when I slapped together the barest bones of the next PowerPoint presentation for, for the next study when it came in at 50 slides. While normally my tendency is just to press in and get her done, I realized that because my time is also being divided by volunteering and with Freedom appointments, uh, that I was going to have to do something else, especially when I saw those 50 slides. It's all too much, Lord, is a common lament, uh, when you are walking in the Spirit. But just like the Lord will show us a way of escape to overcome and avoid temptation, he also will cause us to think outside side of the box, to consider alternatives to just pressing in. Generally, it is, it is good advice to bend and not break, right? So I thought of postponing the Bonhoeffer study for a few weeks until things settle down, and I still might do that. My decision to do it was born out of a desire to highlight the material and encourage others to get on the path of Christian discipleship, and even though I desired to have it done at a particular time, I'm not really under any deadlines with it other than the ones I put on myself, so I might take a break from it if I determine I need to. But this morning, while I rose to start my day, I had the conviction to forego my normal workout and to take a look at the PowerPoint I had started. So I went against my normal discipline, and as I struggled to figure out what to do with this behemoth of a PowerPoint presentation, An idea suddenly occurred to me: cut it in two. Instead of trying to figure out a way to trim it down or bend it, I got an intuition to break it. Now, for anyone who has put presentations together before, as, as good as an idea that might sound, in reality sometimes you can't break it because there is no middle point that would give you two good halves. The content might not be so easily divisible. But of course, I walk in the Spirit, and I didn't think this idea to break it was my bright idea. So although I had this feeling to cut it in two, I was skeptical that I would be able to do it in a balanced way. But sure enough, as I went through the material, I realized that there, there were four chapters in this presentation, and the dividing point just happened to be right in the middle of the presentation.. All I had to do was save a copy of it, change the design to the new copy, and delete the first half of the new copy to have another PowerPoint, PowerPoint for a subsequent lesson. And as the PowerPoint for next Thursday— and as for the PowerPoint for next Thursday, I just had to delete the second half to be at a point where I could start to get 'er done for next week's lesson. And all of this took a relatively short time to figure it out. So what was one big headache became two lessons and launched me into being prepared possibly a week in advance, or at the very least on track, granted with an additional week. But the solution in last night's extended session showed me the limits to keep things in, and it told me that instead of being captive to self-imposed deadlines, I could and should keep things fresh, and that less was more. Um, bend but don't break, or if it don't bend, break it. Get her done or take your time. Take a rest or keep on going. Do it now or do it later. Less is more. In contemplating all these things, um, I realized that we have freedom, and when we walk in the Spirit, the things we don't we do don't need to be so rigid. In Christ, we are accepted. Although we have, have ideas of good works we can do, none of our accomplishments will cause God to love us or accept us more. So if things get hectic, remind yourself of that. God loves you. God accepts you. The way the Spirit operates to reveal truth to us and to guide us in a way that will keep the fruit of the Spirit flourishing in our lives from those things, we can see that there are no deadlines or commitments that we put on ourselves that will make us more loved or accepted. Christ came to give us life and life more abundantly, but he also came to give us peace. So your life is— if your life is getting too abundant, remember to listen to the Holy Spirit and he will show you way of escape and guide you in the pathway to peace. I'm out of time today, but that's okay. I have peace with that, and we're just doing what I can, and we'll keep walking and talking with God to stay there. So there's no Bible verse today, and as always, we do share basically from a resource on the blog. It's from uh, T-shirt, Bonhoeffer's Discipleship, and the section Retribution or Revenge concludes today. So if you want to check out that resource, go to mtforchrist.org and you'll find at the end of today's blog post. That's it today. So I'm going to say a quick prayer. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, thank you for showing us the way of escape to make things easier, to not, you know, to not bend but break it, and to think outside the box to find to find ways to get her done and to have peace all at the same time. Lord, we just pray for you to go before us today and bless the people listening to this podcast, um, that you would lead them in the way they should go. And that we pray for that, for you to come alongside their prayer requests, Lord, to help them in their lives. Um, Lord, we pray as always to go before us because we need you to do that, and we need you to show us the way to go. Open our eyes to the things you, you want us to see today. And, uh, you know, at the end of the workday, lead us home. And, uh, we just want to say we thank you, we love you, and we praise you. And all these things we pray in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.