Continuing in the Grace of God – Purity 1190

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 over a well-traveled white sand beach with green— blue-green surf delivering white foam waves comes to us from Bonnie Schultz, who shared several tranquil beach photos on social media yesterday, presumably from a beach near her home in Navarre, Florida. Florida. Well, it's Saturday, and I share Bonnie's photo because it— it's because of its simple beauty, and because those footprints in the sand remind me of the poem "Footprints" or "Footprints in the Sand," whose authorship is a controversy, with at least 3 people claiming it as their own. I won't share it on the blog today, but will spoil the ending. The poem ends with the Lord explaining that the times that our pathway in the sand of our journey through life seems to have only one traveler are not the times we were all alone, but were the times that he carried us. It's a beautiful poem, but the fact that there is— there seems to be an argument over who wrote it has soured it for me. It's tragically ironic that a poem that is supposed to be about our relationship with God would be a cause for strife. So as an alternative to footprints, I will share Psalm 119:133-35 in the NLT to inspire us. And those words say, guide my steps by your word so I will not be overcome by evil. Ransom, ransom me from the oppression of evil people that I can obey your commandments. Look upon me with love, teach me your decrees. Yes, Lord, guide us, love us, and teach us your ways. Recently, I've been reflecting on some recent interactions I and some of my Deeper Walk prayer minister colleagues have had with people we have been ministering to. In our cohort, we are all currently meeting together to discuss our prayer ministry project, where each one— each of us is putting our training into practice and and giving each other advice and encouragement as we describe our sessions with clients. As we discussed the results of our prayer ministry work, I pondered the reasons why some of our clients seem to be— to benefit greatly from prayer ministry and others seem to be making little or no progress. In prayer ministry, there are three parties: the prayer minister, the receiver or client and the Lord. And as a prayer minister, I'll be the first to admit that the prayer minister doesn't do much. Don't get me wrong, it's important to have a knowledgeable and faithful facilitator who knows the Lord and who is kind, patient, and caring and can help guide the meeting between the Lord and the client. But as I say to my clients after successful sessions, the work in prayer ministry is all happening on your side of the table and I'm just here to watch what the Lord does. Jesus said in John 15:5, "For apart from me you can do nothing." And I know his words are true. Without a relationship with Jesus and God the Father and the Holy Spirit, we do nothing. And I think that is the key to whether or not a prayer ministry session will be successful, quote unquote. What I bring to the table as a prayer minister isn't going to vary much from session to session. I know what I know in terms of prayer ministry practices and will listen for what the Lord has to say in each given situation, but unless the Lord speaks, my spiel is more or less the same. I lead people through the Steps to Freedom in Christ or follow the guidelines of Real Prayer and try not to push or pull a prayer ministry session into any particular direction. As a counselor or life coach, I would confront clients and pursue certain agendas to address situations specific results. But in prayer ministry, we step back and let the client go where the Lord leads them. So if a client is holding back or doesn't want to go there with certain areas of their lives, I don't push it. And the Lord is gentle and loving enough to walk clients to places where they're— they are ready to go. And that's where I believe the success of prayer ministry lies, in the client What a client receives in prayer ministry is wholly contingent on what they bring to the table in terms of their faith, their willingness, their knowledge, and their relationship with God. If your prayer ministry client doesn't know who they are in Christ, know God experientially, doesn't trust the Lord, trust that God will help them, or isn't willing to repent, forgive, or commit themselves to follow the Lord, you won't see much happening on their side of the table. It's perhaps the most troubling aspect of our faith. Why do some Christians have joy and others seem to be grumpy and struggling through life? In our discussions, the insight that we gleaned about difficult prayer sessions or limited results was that the client lacked in one of these areas. Although their presence at prayer ministry session would make one believe that they had a measure of faith, The areas they were not making progress in indicated they may not have much of a relationship with the Lord. They may not have had much of a revelation of God's love, grace, or presence. While they may have believed in their minds, they didn't seem to believe much in their— there didn't seem to be much belief in their hearts. In my morning Bible study, I was reading through Acts 13 with John MacArthur's commentary and was convinced that this issue has been with the body of Christ since the beginning. In Acts 13, Paul delivers a gospel message at a synagogue, and the text tells us in Acts 13:42-45, as Paul and Barnabas were leaving the synagogue, the people invited them to speak further about these things on the next Sabbath. When the congregation was dismissed, many of the Jews and devout converts to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas, who talked with them and urged them to continue in the grace of God. So it sounds like Paul and Barnabas really made some headway in bringing the gospel. What happened when they went back? Verse 44 tells us, on the next Sabbath, almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of God, the word of the Lord. That's great! Uh, and then verse 45: When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy. They began to contradict what Paul was saying and heaped abuse on him. Unfortunately, even though some of the Jews may have agreed with much of what Paul had said in the previous week, the syna— that synagogue rejected the gospel, leading to Paul to declare in the following verses that he would take the message to the Gentiles. Hey, you can't win everybody. But the thing that struck me about this passage this morning was John MacArthur's comedy on verse 43's phrase, continue in the grace of God, where he writes, those who are truly saved persevere and validate the reality of their salvation, their salvation, by continuing in the grace of God. With such encouragement, Paul and Barnabas hoped to prevent those who were who were intellectually convinced of the truths of the gospel, yet had stopped short of saving faith, from reverting to legalism rather than embracing Christ completely. I was struck by this because I think it really points out the difference between Christians that know their freedom and those who don't. I think that Christians who struggle are intellectually convinced by the truth of the gospel, And whether they are saved or not will be, you know, will be determined by the Lord. But they don't seem to have— they don't seem to have embraced Christ completely. A disciple of Jesus Christ learns from him, surrenders to his teaching, and applies it to their lives. They fully embrace Christ and make living for him their purpose in life. They seek the Lord's wisdom and presence and seek to make him known. They repent of their sins and are actively engaged in becoming more and more like Jesus. They read the Bible continuously and seek to represent God's kingdom wherever they go. Their identity in Christ is the most important thing about them. They know and continue in the grace of God, and their lives are spent walking in the Spirit and in experiencing the joy, the joy of the Lord. As Acts 13:52 tells us, "And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit." Hearing about my colleague's clients who didn't seem to be into it or who still struggle with whatever confounded my mind and hurt my heart because they seem not— seem to not know the Lord at all. My advice to these people would be to surrender or to seek the Lord, or forgive, or to repent, or trust God. But I know those, those are empty words to those who believe intellectually and who may have even had an emotional moment of salvation, but who have not continued in the grace of the Lord enough to become a disciple who has completely embraced Christ and who is filled with the Holy Spirit and joy. If you don't know the joy of the Lord, I am fully convinced that you haven't encountered him or know his grace, or you haven't answered his call to follow him. You've held back. You haven't pursued him in his word, or you have hardened your heart, uh, to repent or forgive others. You haven't completely embraced Jesus and surrendered your life to him as Lord. The original disciples, the apostles, were willing to die for their faith because of— because they knew Jesus was God. Think about that. God. Jesus is God. And ultimately, all paths will lead to a moment where you must answer the questions: did you believe in him? Did you follow him? Did you continue in the grace of God and completely embrace him? If you know Jesus is God, why wouldn't you completely surrender to Him? The most important thing in life, the only thing that will matter, the only thing that will stand, is our relationship with God and our faith in Jesus Christ. How can we hold back on that? Let me encourage you to seek Him, to follow Him, and to continue in the grace of God so you can live and know his truth and his joy that lasts forever. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Crews. This morning's meditation verse comes from the section on children, and today's verse is Genesis 17:7 from the NIV. The word of God says, I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. Today's verse falls— are the first two scriptures that fall under the second point of our Counseling Reference Guides resource section on children. Um, the— and that second point is children of believers belong to God and are in his covenant. Today's verse speaks of the everlasting covenant that God offers to His people, and it is every Christian's hope that their children will know the Lord and follow them into God's Kingdom. Unfortunately, we can't believe for our kids. I can't give my kids the experiential knowledge of God that I have encountered in my life. While I can tell them to do what's right and to trust in Jesus, they have to make that decision for themselves. God's covenant is available to our descendants, so we should do our best to give them an inheritance that will endure forever and teach them of the inestimable value of a life spent living in God's kingdom through their faith in Jesus Christ. 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 Um, today we continue sharing from A.W. Pink's, uh, the Arthur Pink Anthology, which is, uh, I, I guess a collection of tracts that Arthur Pink wrote. And today we're sharing from, uh, a tract entitled Another Gospel. And, um, it's a long tract, so we cut it up into 5 pieces. And today's part 3 of that, um, that, um, tract. So if you want to read the middle of, uh, that tract, you can go to M.t. Clark and you'll see that at the end of today's blog post. And if you want to see the previous two, you just have to go to the previous two blog posts to get those. And parts 4 and 5 will come out on Monday and Tuesday if you're reading those. And at the bottom of our podcast— our blog post every day, we do encourage people to check out our Victory Over the Darkness Bondage Breaker and Freedom in Christ series of discipleship classes on the MT for Christ 247 podcast. It's also on our YouTube channel, and I'm greatly encouraged recently because just yesterday I got 2 comments on some of those teachings that tell me that, you know, someone's listening or someone's watching. So we really appreciate the feedback. Um, as it encourages us in our walk of faith. You know, we put all this out there to encourage people and to tell, tell people about who they are in Christ and about how they can have freedom in Christ and overcome the things that, you know, make us struggle. When we know the Lord, you know, it's the most important thing about us, and he gives us the power to overcome. It doesn't have to be complicated, but you do have to surrender. You do have to seek the Lord and seek to know him. You know, the things of this world are going to pass away. So I don't know what your hobbies are, but if one of them isn't Bible study, there's an issue. It's a heart issue. Like, why wouldn't you— you know, again, the big revelation is there is a God, he is real, he sent Jesus. And he invites us into his kingdom. If we realize that, why would we invest anything in the things of this world? You know, don't get me wrong, we can all have our pastimes, but one of our— one of our interests should be into knowing God and knowing what he has to say and following him and sharing that. I mean, it's the most important information we have, you know. That God is real and He loves you and He will save you and He wants you to come into His kingdom. That's a message that should be on our lips continuously because of the great, you know, the great consequences that come, you know, from that. You know, if you don't know that, you're lost. You know, the Lord wants us to save people. Not that we're going to save them, but, uh, we might be the catalyst that brings somebody into the kingdom. But if we're not following the Lord ourselves, you know, we're not going to, uh, we're not going to add to his kingdom work. And it's not all about us, but it is about our relationship with God and meeting his purpose for us. So I can only encourage you to follow him and evangelize, you know, to make disciples. Why? Because that's what Jesus told us to do, and so we do it to the best of our abilities. Like I said, we really, you know, without God we can do nothing, but we should do something for his kingdom, um, you know, that he could use us. Anyway, it is Saturday, and today we're going to be doing some, some community service work for Operation Adopt a Soldier. I guess. And then we're going on a hike, so we're gonna try to serve God and serve man and enjoy His creation today, you know, to do good works. It might be in the name of Operation Adopt a Soldier, but, you know, I wouldn't be out there doing anything good if I wasn't following the Lord. It just wasn't the way I was before Christ. All I cared about was taking care of myself, and that's the big orientation in life when you don't believe in God. That's— you take care of yourself, you know, you don't worry about any other— anyone else. You worry about yourself and, you know, please yourself and, you know, manipulate things to please yourself, manipulate people to please yourself. But, um, there is a God, and it's not about us, it's about him and his kingdom, and that's what will ultimately stand. So we want to be part of that and, uh, to rejoice in it. So we encourage you to do the same. Today is Saturday, so if you don't have to work, you know, or even if you do have to work, find time to thank God for what he's done in your life and follow him in the way you should go. And teach your children well because because they need it more than us, probably, because at least we have a measure of faith. Our kids, you know, we don't know if they know, and they need to know. So be an example by following the Lord so one day they can say, "Hey, I'm gonna follow him too," because God's given us the covenant that lasts forever, and it's available to our kids. And they need it desperately. Well, that's it for today. I'm gonna pray and deal with the dog who's been shaking and waiting and coughing now for me to, you know, deal with him. So let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. We thank you so much for all that you've done in our life. We thank you so much for the revelation that you've given us of your truth and the severity of the seriousness of what the gospel means. And Lord, we thank you for giving us new life. And, um, we just pray for our friends who might be listening or reading our messages that tell, tell them about you. We just pray for that you would bless them in their walk and come alongside their prayer requests, Lord, because we all need your help. And, uh, Lord, we just pray for you to go before us today, protect, protect and guide us, um, into today's leisure activities, and, um, lead us to a place where we can give thanks and appreciate all that you've given us today. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, and we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.