Completely Reasonable, Regularly Scheduled Sins of the Flesh Purity 1482

Welcome to the MT for Christ 24/7 podcast. I'm M.t. Clark, and this is today's photo. To see today's photo, go to mtforchrist.com or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter, or watch us on YouTube. Good morning. Today's photo of my canine pal Harley running down Waite Road towards the blazing glory of a rising sun comes to us from yours truly as I captured the scene Saturday while man and dog ran together to get out of the relative darkness of the surrounding forest shade to see the new day in all its glory. Well, it's Monday, and I am rejoicing over the fresh new start of another week because I'm just about sick and tired of being sick and tired from the indulgences of my completely reasonable, regularly scheduled sins of the flesh. As reported previously, I'm in the midst of transitioning from a keto, high protein, low carb food plan to a nutritarian lifestyle. And because I'm in the great in-between, I feel like a man without a country and have been responding rather childishly as a rebel spirit seems to grab a hold of me where I decide since I'm not quite following either food plan just yet, I can just be somewhat reckless with my food choices in the interim. As I use this period of transition to simultaneously clean out my freezer and pantry of what will become forbidden foods by consuming them, and to say goodbye to other foods that have already been given up, uh, that I don't keep on hand. Uh, just like a person who has been sentenced to prison may enjoy some last experiences of freedom before surrendering themselves to the proper authorities, I inexplicably have dove into food cheating and feasting on the weekends, uh, with the excuse that it will be one of, if not the last time I behave this way ever again. Uh, now I realize that may sound ridiculous, but in the past it has sort of been a part of my recovery process with other addictions of the flesh. The moments when you hit rock bottom or when you declare, this is the last time. Can be powerful markers or checkpoints on the road to recovery. So I'm using this short period to mentally mark the time and say goodbye to the things that I have only recently realized are truly not good for me. Thanks to Joel Fuhrman's book Eat to Live, I've realized that, you know, animal-based products are scientifically proven to lead to heart disease, diabetes, and, you know, processed food included with that diabetes and, you know, early death. So in order to prolong my life and give myself help, I'm moving to a nutritarian diet, which is basically a vegetarian diet or vegan diet. Yeah. So I food, I food cheated on the weekend going absolutely hog wild at my father-in-law's 75th birthday party yesterday. And I'm feeling the pain physically from eating too much and am now ready to be a little more reasonable with my walk toward what will be vegetarian/vegan lifestyle. Instead of eating all the meat I have in large quantities because I want to be free of them, I'm going to attempt to cut them back before I completely cut them out by reducing the amounts I have until they are gone. We will see how that goes. But although the fact that I haven't just cut the meat out altogether maybe seem like stalling, in my mind and in my heart, I am serious about walking away from the animal-based foods that I eat. And as much I may recognize, uh, the mourning of their loss. Just like any other toxic relationship, I will be glad when we break up forever. Uh, as for any guilt and shame about indulging in my quote-unquote completely reasonably regularly scheduled sins of the flesh, which really isn't reasonable at all— sin never is— or regularly scheduled for that matter, I don't plan these things. Um, I, I thank God for his forgiveness and his grace. You know, thankfully, I know my failures don't separate me from God's love and that my salvation isn't the product of my performance. It's grace by which I have been saved, and it will be by grace that I will ultimately will be free from my food addictions. Speaking of grace, today's In Touch devotional with Dr. Charles Stanley, um, speaks on the topic, so I'm sharing it on the blog today, where Dr. Charles Stanley writes Grace: God's Second Chance. And Dr. Charles Stanley writes, when we trust Jesus, he pours out his unconditional love upon us. Scripture paints a grim picture of mankind apart from the Lord, dead in our sins, under God's wrath, and subject to eternal separation from him. Through the cross, we are given a second chance to be in a relationship with the Lord. When we trust in Christ, he pours out his unconditional love and grace upon us. Because of grace, we have been justified by faith. Justification is a declaration by God that we are not guilty in his sight. At salvation, Jesus died on the cross and rescued us from the penalty for our transgressions. All our disobedience, past, present, and future, is fully forgiven. We gain this remarkable pardon through the genuine— through genuine faith in Jesus Christ. In other words, by acknowledging God's judgment that we are sinners who need a Savior because we're unable to save ourselves. True faith rests on the belief that Jesus's death atoned for our sins. God accepted his Son's sacrifice on our behalf, and we are fully forgiven. Grace gives us peace with God because we've trusted in Christ. We've been adopted into the Heavenly Father's family and have his favor forever. Through grace, we have been offered a fresh start. May we make full use of this opportunity by passionately pursuing God with all our heart. That was from Dr. Charles Stanley, and I say amen. You know, in Christ we have a new life and a fresh start. In the life of a disciple, this is really good news because just like Jesus's original disciples, we may not fully understand what it means to follow Jesus, and we may default to our old worldly or even sinful ways of doing things. But we are saved by grace through our faith in Jesus, not by our performance. So if we go astray Because we are accepted in Christ, we can reestablish our harmony with God by simply going to him in prayer, confessing our failures, asking for his forgiveness, and recommitting ourselves to following him in obedi— with obedience. Because we have been forgiven by an infinite God, we have been given an infinite amount of grace and a fresh new start each new day. S— uh, because God's mercies are new each day, they're— they are there for us if we need them to start again. So as we begin a new week, whether you are walking tall in God's righteousness or seeking to get back on track after an unexpected setback, rejoice, because God's grace gives us a fresh new start each day and the opportunity to experience the newness of life in Christ every time we remember our rescue. Thank you, God, for your grace in a new day to experience, experience it once again. Amen. And, uh, today's Bible verses, uh, come— or today's Bible verse comes to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Cruis. This morning's meditation verse comes from the section on friendships, and today's verse is Proverbs 13:20 from the NIV. The word of God says Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm. Today's verse falls under the second point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on friendships, and the second point is friends affect us for better or for worse. Today's Bible verses— or verse draws— draw out— draws out the conclusion, um, are out the consequences of the company we choose to keep. If we walk with the wise, we will become wise. If we are a companion of fools, we will suffer harm. My life bears witness to this proverb's truth because I have suffered and caused others to suffer from the foolish things I've learned from fools. And I'm happy to report that I have become wiser having walked with others who were generous enough to share their wisdom with me. As Christians, we are to represent the kingdom of God, and so we must be discerning with our relationships. Are the people that you spend most of your time with fools, or are they wise when it comes to the things that matter most, the things of God? Our relationships are a choice, and if they are causing us harm or stopping us from growing in wisdom, we should choose to stop the pain by setting boundaries or choosing to walk away if we discover we are— we are— our relationships are keeping us from being the people God created us to be. Oh boy. Um, if me— anyway, as always, we, uh, we encourage Uh, all to go to mt4christ.com, where we always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist our brothers and sisters in Christ with our walk, and where we offer our Christian life coaching and prayer ministry services. But today we are— we continue sharing from According to Your Word: Morning and Evening Through the New Testament by Stephen F. Alford. And then Alford's devotional, he prompts us to read a chapter of scripture, and today's chapter is Revelation 3. And from that chapter, he shares a portion of verse 8, which says See, I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it. And Stephen Alford writes, these words were written to the church in Philadelphia, but they are words that can be appropriated today without doing injustice to the context. When the Lord opens a door, no one can shut it. What a grand thought. There are three reasons given which form the basis of an open door. You have a little strength. Verse 8. All power belongs to Christ. He said this on the great Ascension Day. When he gives the power, he opens the door for the use of it. You have kept my word. Verse 8. Here is another condition for an open door, the keeping of God's word. God always honors the servant who is faithful to the word with an open door. And you have not denied my name. Verse 8: If we deny him, he will deny us. If we suffer, we shall reign. And Alfred ends by praying, oh, to have the eyes to see the doors of opportunity which the Lord opens. Amen. Amen. And you know, just to recap real quick, you know, to realize that we have little strength and that we need to rely on God's strength and we agree to keep his word and actually keep it, and we don't deny Jesus. These are the conditions for God to open a door for you, you know. So we acknowledge God's strength and lordship and wisdom, and we don't deny it. And, uh, so we, we seek, we seek the open doors that God opens to us, and usually those doors lead to repentance and a change of lifestyle. You know, from our completely reasonable, regularly scheduled sins of the flesh. Um, you know, the reason I came up with that particular phrasing is because I talked to someone yesterday at the party, um, who talked about their periodic falls into drunkenness that just seemed to happen all the time, uh, that nicotine use. And, you know, they talked about, you know, asking me how they get over an addiction, but then they described their pattern. I said, well, that's not really— it doesn't look to be an addiction addiction. It looks to be a choice. You don't fall into these things on a daily or even weekly basis. It's more or less a periodic thing once in a while that you get together and you are tired of, quote unquote, being a good person anymore and want to be bad. Um, that's a choice to sit. It's not an addiction, but— or, you know, perhaps it is, but it's on, you know, it's, it's one that has a little more control than a normal one. But the response is, you You say no to that completely reasonable, uh, regularly scheduled sin by not doing it. This year I'm not getting drunk at the Christmas party. This year I'm not getting drunk at New Year's. I'm not drinking anymore, period. You know, that's, that's how, that's how freedom is, is, is found. Not by, you know, deciding that drunkenness on a, on a, on a periodic basis isn't a sin. You know, drunkenness is one of the things that'll keep you out of the kingdom of God according to, you know, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. 10. And, uh, that was one of the things that caused me to go into recovery. Um, luckily I didn't have to worry about not being a good person because— or, you know, or wanting to be bad because that's what I was. Um, you know, completely consumed by the addiction, you know, like every day. Like, what was the point of trying to be good for a week or a month or whatever? Because I wasn't good, you know. There was no illusions there. And so don't let your completely reasonable, regularly scheduled sins make you think that your sin's reasonable or acceptable. It's not acceptable in God's eyes. He calls us to repentance. And so we ask the question, have you fully surrendered to God? And when you do, you decide not to do them, the, those, those little peccadillos, those, uh, you know, little, little sins that we do on the, on the regular that, you know, oh, we we really don't want to do them. But so we only do them once, once every 3 months, or once a month, or once a year, you know. That's just playing with the devil, you know. So we don't do that. Um, we fully surrender to God and ask him to take those things away from us altogether, you know. We separate ourselves from our sins because the Lord calls us to. And when he calls us, he, he usually calls us to, uh, ministry, um, to deliver a message for Christ in whatever way you can, by being an encouraging word. It church or where you are at work, or in my case, uh, they'll call you an actual ministry where you get an opportunity to lead at your local church. Where I lead the Celebrate Freedom support group at Starpoint Church on Wednesday evenings, it's for Christian recovery and discipleship, and we meet at 6:30 PM on Wednesday evenings. Uh, you can meet us there if you're in the upstate New York region and can get to Clifton Park on a Wednesday night. Um, However, if you can't, you know, there's no reason to, you know, surrender to your completely reasonable, regularly scheduled sins, because we believe that you can find or increase your freedom in Christ by joining one of our YouTube channel, uh, classes, uh, um, basically for Bondage Breaker, The Victory Over the Darkness, Freedom in Christ, Celebrate Freedom Discipleship. And, you know, we also you know, would encourage you to— so get good teaching, but then get in relationship to a local church and other believers that will walk with you as you walk out of the darkness into God's light of a new life away from addiction and sin. Um, you know, so there's that. And so we always ask the question, are you ready? Are you ready? Well, are you empty for Christ too? Are you ready to be empty for Christ? You know, that's just surrendering yourself, offering yourself to the Lord in his service, letting his Holy Spirit come in you and, um, you know, filling you with the good things of God. Uh, if you are empty for Christ, we say thank God, keep, keep on walking and talking with God. And if not, we just encourage you to pray, um, because when you pray, things happen, and, uh, God makes a way when there is no way. So that's why we pray every day, like right now. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you for your mercy and your grace that we need every day, because we don't walk perfectly, and you, you convict us in our hearts of what's wrong, and sometimes we don't listen. Uh, Lord, so we need your help and your strength to change us. So let us surrender to you and help— let you help us today. Uh, Lord, we pray for anyone who's listening or reading today's message, that they would they would make that prayer too, that they would, uh, ask for your help and that you would come alongside them and help them and, and answer their prayer requests, Lord. Um, because we all need your help, Lord. Uh, we want to follow you into the life that you have for us, and, uh, we need your help and guidance and strength for that. Lord, we're asking today. Um, Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.