Crossroads – Daily Spiritual Disciplines of our Walk - Purity 1152

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 boardwalk pathway stretching out into the distance over the pristine blue stillness of Spencer's Gulf comes to us from Dave Vaughan Photography, who shared this photo from Port Germaine, from the Port Germaine Jetty in South Australia on September 19th. Reporting that Dave was standing over a mile away from land when he captured this shot with an electronic ND filter to provide full disclosure for this exposure. Uh, well, it's Thursday, and I share Dave's epic photo from the land down under as a visual encouragement to get on or to stay on the path of Christian discipleship, to walk in the Spirit, to put your faith and trust continually in Jesus, and to follow him into the life he has for you. So what does that entail? Well, certainly prayers. Prayer is the means by which we talk to God to report what's going on in our lives, although he already knows, and to ask for and receive his help. For the person who has put their faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior, the Lord has given the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit to provide us with guidance for living. I'm not making this up. Jesus told us this himself in John 16:13-14, where he speaks. He, speaking about the Holy Spirit, said, however, when he, the Spirit of Truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will tell you things to come. He will glorify me. For he will take of me, of what is mine, and declare it to you. The Holy Spirit guides us into all truth. He speaks, he speaks with Jesus' authority to give Christ glory and to take what Jesus wants to say and declares it to you. Not to make it— you're too excited, but this passage also says that the Holy Spirit will tell you things to come. These are the words of God, and they are true. God speaks to us through the Holy Spirit in us to lead us and to guide us through life. But we have to have an active relationship and conversation with the Lord to hear his voice. While hearing God's audible voice has been known to happen, it is more likely that the Holy Spirit will, with his still, quiet voice, will speak to us with a still, quiet voice in your thoughts, motivations, and intuition. Mental, cognitive, visual, motivational, and verbal feelings that point out general or specific principles of scripture or impulses to do good things are the ways in which I have heard the Lord's voice while walking in the Spirit. Walking in the Spirit isn't just some quasi-mystical attitude toward life. It includes a heartfelt surrender to do the Lord's will. And to know him more. Walking in the Spirit includes repentance, progressively turning from our worldly, fleshly ways to actually do what the Word of God says. It means obedience to God's Word and will. We are not just asking the Lord to bless us or to reveal to us mysteries. We are asking for and following his instructions. Last night I led the Celebrate Freedom Growth Group as we reviewed CR's Crossroads lessons, which was about establishing a daily routine where one could take inventory with God, read the Bible, and pray. Amazingly, what I would consider to be a foundation of the Christian disciple's life isn't presented in the Christian Recovery Program until Lesson 19. However, I don't mean to criticize. In fact, I love the way the CR program keeps it simple and gently leads participants to slowly and fully consider putting their faith in Jesus, to trust God to help them, and leads them to do a spiritual inventory before it suggests diving into the fundamental spiritual disciplines of developing a quiet time with God. Frankly, someone beset by addiction and other hurts and habits and hangups needs to take the baby steps of faith. And learn to walk before they run. While Bible study and prayer are encouraged throughout CR's program by implication, if not by direct suggestions, in the Crossroads lesson, the program rightly encouraged the participants to make the decision to full-time and regular— to a full-time and a regular commitment to following the Lord through a daily time of reflection, prayer, and study. At this point in the program, the participants, if they have done all the work prescribed in the previous lessons, would have established over 4 months of sobriety and would have done some major work in resolving the pain of their past. And the crossroads they reach is an answer to the question, um, now what? Unfortunately and understandably, some people enter into recovery with short-term goals. A sort of wait-and-see attitude. Some decide that they will try sobriety for 30 days, 75 days, 3 months, or whatever, and see how they feel when they get there. But they haven't quite come to the decision or the realization that true freedom, um, requires the decision for the old man to die, meaning that we never go back to what we escape from. And the best way to form that intention to never go back into bondage again is to become a slave to Christ, to make the daily decision that your life will be one of following the Lord one day at a time, progressively, forever. The Crossroads lesson, uh, encourages us to live out our lives in Christ authentically by doing what Christians do. Ideally, we pray and read the Bible every day as part of our, our relationship with God and allow the fruit of the Spirit to grow in our lives by knowing and obeying God's word as best we can, little by little, bit by bit, today and every day. The idea of making these spiritual disciplines part of our daily routine can seem alien to those new to the faith or new to the idea of being more than a believer, but it should be encouraged because unfortunately if we are lax in our pursuit of God, we will stagnate and will, will likely go back to the world and fall short of the peace, love, and joy that God has for us to experience when we decide to walk in the Spirit. The more you know God, the more you grow. The more you follow, the more, the more of the fruit of the Spirit you will experience. I know this to be true because I answered the Lord's call to follow Him and was encouraged by my brothers and sisters in Christ who did so before me and assured me that the Word of God was true and God would help me when I trusted in Him. When Christ died to save us, it was forever. He gives us eternal life when we put our faith in Him, and so it only makes sense that our walk of faith, uh, here on earth is supposed to be continuous. We step out in faith to be welcomed into God's kingdom, but we are, we are continuously called to take the next step in following where the Lord wants us to go. My path has led to victory over my addictions, into the mission field on more than one occasion, into a new marriage, and into the continuous ministry of encouragement and freedom. But none of those things would have happened if I had decided to not do the basics of our faith. Reading God's Word, praying and meditating about it, and doing what it says. So we encourage you to continue, deepen, or establish that quiet time with God. The more time we spend in his presence, the more we benefit and understand the meaning and purpose of our lives. So keep walking and talking with God, and take your walk seriously by showing yourself the Lord and others that you were serious about Bible study and prayer. Today's Bible verse come— well, verses come to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Cruis. This morning's meditation verses come from the section on anger, um, and, uh, today's verses are 1 Corinthians 13:4-5. And the Word of God says in the NIV, uh, love is patient, love is kind, does not envy, and does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no records— record of wrongs. Today's verse— verses fall under the fourth point of our Counseling Reference Guide resource section on anger. And that fourth point is seek the way of love. Today, today's, today's verse comes from the Bible's love chapter and indicate— and indicates that anger doesn't play much of a part in the way of love. Love is not easily angered because it keeps no record of wrongs. This points to forgiving from the heart. When we truly forgive someone, we make the decision to never bring up the record of wrong from their past to be used against them. We essentially take people off of— who have offended us off of our hook and put them on God's hook. We surrender their debt to God's collection agency and trust that he will do what is right in regards to their debt. They will either have their offenses paid for by Christ like us, or there will be hell to pay when they enter into a godless eternity. It is loving, kind, and humble to forgive, and it provides the one who dispenses it with peace and patience. So act in love, forgive others their sins as you have been forgiven, and it will be help— and it will help you to be kind, patient, less self-seeking, and consequently a whole lot less angry. As always, I invite all to go to M.t. Clark.org or 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 A.W. Pink's The Holy Spirit as we continue sharing from chapter 25 on the Spirit assisting. And A.W. Pink addresses the question of why we need help. Um, and if you don't know why we need help, you can go to emptyforchrist.org and see what A.W. Pink has to say about that at At the end of today's blog post, as always, we encourage people to follow the Lord on the path of Christian discipleship, or walking in the Spirit, or living by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit. That's a complete surrender to, you know, God's will for our lives. The more we decide to follow, the more we know we're following a good purpose for our life that's not corrupted by our personal desires, or at least we can try that. Anyway, today's a big day. I just got word my stepson was in the emergency room last night with apparently an earbud in his ear. I don't know how that happened. I can only imagine that Benjamin fell asleep with his earbuds on and the rubber part got lodged in his ear. So kids, if you use earbuds, don't stick them in your ear so far that the rubber part's going to get lodged in there and cause you a great amount of pain. Um, yeah, so we, we're praying for, for healing. Uh, you know, it hasn't been removed and he has been sent home. From the emergency room, as Tammy Lynn has reported to me this morning. So we pray for Benjamin's complete healing from the pain that he suffered. And if that wasn't enough, we're dealing with my wife's dental infection. You know, basically that's caused inflammation in her face and her ear and, you know, basically sent us to the emergency room on Sunday. So we're— today's the day. Tammy Lynn's going into surgery later today. So we're asking for prayer for Tammy Lynn's procedure to be successful and for the Lord to guide it and to bless it and for her to be completely cleansed of the infection and completely, you know, that this would lead to complete healing. And that's what we're praying. We're praying that today. We're asking for anyone listening or reading this message, although I'm not writing about it on the blog, to pray with us. And that's what we do as Christians, right? You know, that's the— you know, as I've grown in my faith, I wasn't always the biggest prayer guy, and now I'm studying to be a prayer minister, which is sort of funny. But now, I mean, what do we do when something happens? What do we do? We go to the Lord. We go to the Lord in prayer. This is how we walk and talk with God. As soon as I hear a bad report or whatever, I go to the Lord and ask, you know, pray. Now, they might not be 5-minute soliloquies of prayer or anything like that, but I bring it before the Lord's attention. I do try to, you know, I don't try to manipulate the Lord, but, you know, definitely let him know that I know who's in charge. And, you know, so we're praying for Tammy Lynn. And this, you know, yesterday she took a nap and she experienced what I could only call demonic sleep paralysis. And if you don't know what sleep paralysis is, you can Google it, but that's the state where you sort of become, you know, unable to move, and you're in a dream state. And, you know, basically, there are various theories about it, but one of them is, you know, the demonic spiritual forces of darkness are afflicting you. And she had a dream where she was being strangled and beaten up, basically. And in the dream, someone was outside the room and and saw what was happening to Tammy Lynn and, you know, said that she needs help. And they broke into the room and basically pulled this, this person or whatever off of her in the dream. And, you know, so what's that? Well, if we believe it's demonically inspired, when, when we get rescued from that, we have to believe that that's a product of, uh, of the Lord. You know, the Bible talks about Daniel offering up prayers and that, that, you know, his prayers were heard, but, you know, basically the Archangel Michael had to fight off some demons before he was able to show up and, you know, deliver. And so it sort of points to the reality of the battle of the spiritual forces of darkness that's happening. And when we experience things like that and we don't just wake up but get sort of an intervention. You know, we have to believe that that's the Lord or the product of prayer, um, or both, you know. So I appreciate your prayers for my wife. I think they, uh, they, they helped yesterday in her dream, as you know, we're sort of being shown that, uh, we're under spiritual attack, but the Lord is with us, um, you know. So that's You know, as daunting and frightening as those things can be, the fact that we're provided with rescue shows us that the Lord's with us. The Lord might be opposing us, but the Lord is with us all the same. And we thank God for that. And so I don't know if this sounds crazy or not, but this is— I could tell you more, But yeah, the Word of God clearly points out the interference of the spiritual forces of darkness in our lives, and we take spiritual warfare seriously. That's what our ministry is about, Freedom Ministries, not just being free of our sins, but free of the spiritual beings that lead us into temptation and afflict us with oppression in our minds. And our bodies sometimes. So that's that. So I think that's all the news. Tonight we, we have our prayer ministry with Deborah Walk International. I'm looking forward to that fellowship and learning more as we enter into what will be the last leg of it. Basically, we're entering the end of Course 3, and Course 4 starts next week, and that's when I become a full-time prayer minister where I'm going to start proactively offering prayer ministry to anyone who wants it, I guess. It's part of the schooling, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna seek, seek to help some people. I have a few people in mind specifically, but I'll listen to the Lord's guidance and see who he brings. Who needs healing or needs freedom or who wants deeper, a deeper level of freedom and healing. So if that's you and you need prayer ministry and you're getting this message, I have to think it's divinely inspired. And, uh, and if you're, you're asking for prayer ministry, going through the Steps to Freedom in Christ, or, you know, doing some real prayer to take care of past traumas you can contact me at mtforchrist247@gmail.com, and we can arrange to interview you and get your information and prayerfully consider, basically, that we could provide you with that service. This would be free of charge for the moment, as I'm just a student. But after that, I think I'm going to take big steps into becoming a quote-unquote life coach, as that's what's been on my heart lately as we've gone through this schooling, that this is all for a purpose and, you know, to step out into it. I have the degree in Christian counseling, but I might have to play the life coach game here in New York State because of the licensing difficulties, but We'll see how it goes, and we'll take it step by step, one day at a time, walk by faith to see what the Lord has for us. So it's an exciting time, and I'm not surprised the enemy has come against us as we develop, um, you know, as we do our Celebrate Freedom ministry at Starpoint Church, and as we take these steps, um, to be fully trained, you know, to, uh, to equip and to help people experience their freedom in Christ. Anyway, that's a lot. Today's a day at work, so, you know, that's— this is just my hobby. We have a day job to worry about, so let's, uh, we're not going to worry about it. We're going to walk confidently through it, but we should do that with prayer. So let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Thank you so much for all you do. We do pray for our wife Tammy Lynn today, that you would you would bless her and guide her through this, uh, this, this procedure today. We pray for you to bless the dentist and all his staff to, to provide expert care. And of course, we know you're the healer, Lord, so we ask for your hand to be upon it. And Lord, we pray for anyone who's listening or reading today's message, that you would bless them and come alongside them and their prayer request and their walk of faith, because Lord, we all need your help. So we pray for you to go before us today, open our eyes to the things you want us to see, because we can't fix things unless we know the truth. And we need your help too, so we need you to show it to us and guide us. Uh, let your— allow your Holy Spirit to guide us into the things we need to know and the things that'll come, that'll come that you want us to walk into. So we ask for that guidance today. That's all we want to do, Lord, is represent you in your kingdom here on earth and be faithful to point to Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, and we love you. We pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.