Delivering the Good News & Putting Your Hand to the Plow - Purity 1790

Welcome to the MT for Christ 24/7 podcast. I am M.t. Clark, and this is today's photo. Good morning. Today's photo of a pair of seagulls hovering over the waves of an unknown body of water as the sun begins to set on the horizon comes to us from an unknown Facebook friend who shared this lovely scene on social media back on April 8th, 2022. If this is yours, let me know and I will photo credit you on the blog after the fact. Well, it's Friday and I am rejoicing this morning because I am in the midst of a series of 4 freedom appointments that will conclude on Sunday. One down, 3 to go. And because I will be able to find my rest later today in the presence of my wife, uh, Tammy Lynn. Ministry and the physical therapy— ministry and physical therapy has been my full-time jobs as of late. And even though a good deal of my time this weekend will be spent doing prayer ministry online, I'm not upset about it because I consider it my purpose and an honor to be used by the Lord to help people to come before him in prayerful repentance. Leading people through the steps to freedom in Christ is the culmination of my delivering the good news of the gospel and the possibility of victory, freedom, and healing in Christ. So it's good to be busy even on the weekend. Since being saved in 2010 and being progressively led to new levels of freedom and maturity in Christ since then, it is simply I, I simply can't stop delivering the continuous message that speaks of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and how our faith in Christ gives us the power to live an abundant life of peace, righteousness, and joy. Of course, the promises of God in God's word are conditional, and other— in order to receive the abundant life of freedom, peace, love, and joy, you have to put your faith in Jesus, and you have to put your hand to the plow and put forth some effort to allow God's plan for your life to unfold. The Christian life requires study and action. We have to renew our minds through learning the wisdom of God's word, but we also have to put what we learn into action or into practice. I can deliver the good news of what God can do for you 24/7, as is my intention, but the good news doesn't do anything unless you receive it. Beyond the blog and podcast, I share encouraging Christian texts with about 30 guys each morning. Uh, with— while I receive positive feedback on occasion, I have no idea how many of these men actually read the text I send. All of them have histories of problems that the Lord has helped them with or is in the presence of helping them with. Uh, they are all Christian men, but just because they are all Christians doesn't mean that they have experienced their freedom in Christ or that they are putting their focus on their faith.. My texts are intended to give them some encouragement to earnestly seek the life that the Lord has for them, but I'm not sure if the good news I'm sending is being received. But I send it anyway because I know what a difference our faith can make. I know what can happen when you shift your focus to God's way. Speaking of shift, uh, focusing on Jesus and putting your hand to the plow, the In Touch with Dr. Charles Stanley devotion from Wednesday addresses, addressed these topics, so I'm sharing it on the blog today to encourage us all to pick up our plows and follow Jesus. Dr. Charles Stanley writes, put up— put your hand to the plow. In order to reap a harvest of faith, believers must keep their eyes focused on the Lord. And he, uh, Stanley references, uh, Luke 9:61-62 and continues to write. Most of us probably don't fully appreciate Jesus's choice of a plow to illustrate a a life dedicated to God. The ancient plow, shaped much like the ones widely used until the early 20th century, was a single wooden blade attached to two handles. A mule pulled the apparatus forward, but the farmer also had to do a great deal of work to push and guide the path of the plowshare. Using such a device, one without an engine, is no easy task. The simple machine bumps and jerks as it tears up the ground. The only way to make a straight line is to stay focused on the work and keep your eyes forward every single second. When believers trust Jesus as Savior, they put their hand to the plow. The idea is for us to follow the Lord in absolute obedience, always keeping our eyes focused on him. That's how we stay on the right path and eventually reap an abundant harvest of faith. Is there anything in your life drawing your attention away from the Heavenly Father? Believers who focus on past failures and present distractions end up all over the place in their Christian life and often miss out on the peace and joy that can be ours in the Savior. Follow the Lord earnestly, and he will help you do what's needed to bring forth much spiritual fruit. And that was from Dr. Charles Stanley. I say amen. It might not be super clear here, but Stanley offers us the answer to all of the problems of our hearts and minds. Anger, anxiety, lust, greed, depression— I put greed twice— greed, bitterness, and fear don't stand a chance against a Christian who puts their hand to the plow, who puts their focus on Jesus, and who chooses to obediently follow his teachings and wisdom. There is no problem of the heart or mind that hasn't been defeated at the cross or been addressed by God's word. But the victory that is ours for the taking and the freedom we seek needs to be apprehended through the context of our relationship with the Lord and the truth that he has spoken. The truth sets you free, but knowing about it intellectually is not enough. We need to focus our attention on God and his truth and then choose to live our lives according to it. We stop doing the things that God's word warns about— warns against, and we start doing what it recommends. And we continually draw our attentions back to God to receive his love and guidance. A life focused on God and dedicated to obeying him is a life that is marked by peace, righteousness, love, and joy. So don't let the world, the flesh, or the devil distract you. Put your hand to the plow and see where God's plow leads you. 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 peacemakers, and today's verse is 1 Corinthians 6:1, which says, when one of you has a dispute with another believer, how dare you file a lawsuit and ask a secular court court to decide the matter instead of taking it to other believers. Today's verse is the first of two passages of scripture that fall under the, uh, 24th point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on peacemakers. That 24th point is: If a legal dispute develops between you and another Christian, do not turn to unbelievers for help. Rather, seek the help of one or more fellow Christians. Today's Bible verse encourages us to seek the help of other Christians to help us to resolve conflicts with our Christian neighbors. In our overly litigious society where lawsuits are common, this idea may seem a little, uh, seem like a foreign concept. What does someone's professed faith have to do with my legal rights? They did wrong, they did me wrong, and I'll sue their pants off. Um, for anybody who has to deal, who, who has had to deal with lawyers or had to pay their for their services, I can't imagine you would be quick to sue. But when someone does you wrong, you may not think that faith could make a difference, but it could. So when we have disputes, we should see if there is common ground between our offenders and us to negotiate a peaceful compromise. Utilizing a mutually agreed-on Christian arbitrator could resolve the issue peacefully. So don't ignore the Bible's teachings. While we can't guarantee that every professed Christian will be agreeable to making peace, the Holy Spirit could convict their hearts to do what is right. So don't be quick to sue and try to be a peacemaker instead. As always, we encourage everyone to go to mtforchrist.com where we always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist our brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. And today we continue sharing from Day by Day Along the Way by J.E. Adams. It's a 365-day devotional, and we're on day 289, where Adams shares a portion of Acts 5:11, which says, great fear came over the whole church and over all who heard these things. And J.E. Adams writes, the death of Ananias and Sapphira was a tragic incident in the young church's history that served a salutary, salutary purpose at the outset of the Hebrew nation a man was put to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath. That showed early on that God meant business when he set forth his will. Here in the early days of the New Testament kingdom, God was again demonstrating that fact. What will it take for the American church to recognize how serious God is about his work? A grand-scale persecution of the church? Some judgment on an outstanding leader of the church? Something now unimaginable? Who knows but God? But surely something is needed to make people stop playing church and get serious about their faith. God is. We need to be. Do you agree? Fear may help. God knows that and is not hesitant to strike fear into the hearts of his people whenever it is necessary. It is better, however, not to awaken his anger by lying to him or others. Amen. Amen. Yeah, when God laid down the law, you know, he, he made it clear that you had to obey it. You know, the Old Testament is filled with, uh, stories of where people suffer because they decided not to follow the Lord. And, um, you know, the New Testament is no different, um, with Ananias and Sapphira deciding to, you know, just hold a little money back to your, you know, from the thing and tell everyone you gave all the money when you didn't have to do that. Um, it was really a, uh, you know, well, well, the text tells us that basically Satan sort of inspired the whole thing, and, um, because of that they were struck dead. But I, I like the fact that it's like, what will scare the American church into, you know, believing and stop playing church? Well, I don't know. Um, there was 2020, you know, they shut down everything and shut down churches when they left casinos open. Um, that sort of stirred up some people's faith, you know. John MacArthur was, uh, you know, God rest his soul, was, uh, was really shined in that moment where he took on the government and, you know, kept his church open, um, throughout it. There's a documentary on that and, uh, it shows you. But, you know, what that 2020 did was it draw— drew a lot of people away from the church, and it did make some churches stronger but some of them closed their doors after that. And their latest thing is Charlie Kirk, you know, a Christian political pundit, was recently killed. He's a true Christian from what I can tell from, you know, what he had to share. Maybe the way he shared things about truth and public policy and different views about life could have been done better, perhaps. But His faith was genuine from everything I've seen about Charlie Kirk, and it's really inspired, you know, what some people are calling a revival. I'll believe it when I see it because, you know, these things are usually a flash in the pan and sometimes it fires people up for the wrong things. But I would love for it to start a revival and to make people put their, you know, put their focus on Jesus and put their hand to the plow to follow him and be obedient. That would be wonderful. And that is why we always ask the question, have you fully surrendered to God? In every life there's sin, but, um, guess what? Um, the Lord leads us out of sin and death. And so whether we recommend the pathway of Christian discipleship to lead you out of the darkness into the light and further into your maturity in faith, um, so that's why we do the podcast, because we aren't the person we used to be, um, anymore. Fully addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex, and, you know, secular entertainment in the world. Um, the Lord's done a mighty work in me, and I see what he can do through prayer ministry all the time. So that's why we do what we do. We just try to encourage people to walk in their faith and find the healing and freedom that Christ has for us. And one place you could do that with me is at the Celebrate Freedom support group at Starpoint Church. It's a Christian recovery and discipleship group. We meet on Wednesday evenings at 6:30 PM, and you can, you can, you can register for the group by going to Starpoint Church's website and finding the support groups page and finding Celebrate Freedom and registering, and we'd see you on Wednesday night. Speaking of Celebrate Freedom, did you know I wrote a book? I did. It's called Celebrate Freedom: 7 Steps of Discipleship, and I also wrote a second book called Celebrate Freedom: Discipleship course. The second book comes from the first, so if you wanted to save your money, you can get all the— well, not all the material from the leader's guide, basically, in the first book. But both of these books are available on amazon.com for Kindle. Celebrate Freedom Discipleship course is available for paperback. That first book, I've just got to work out some editing formatting issues, and then I'll submit it for paperback. I want to try to make sure it's in good shape. But those are available at amazon.com, so I'd be psyched if you went and bought a copy. That'd be awesome. Beyond that, if you wanted to do a discipleship course, we're hosting the Grace Course online just for Tuesdays, 6:30 to 8:30, from November 4th to December 23rd. Join today by going to M.t. Clark.com group coaching events and give us your information, and we'll see you there. There's a $100 registration fee that pays for the access to the, the Zoom meeting and goes to support our ministry, so we greatly appreciate it. However, if you didn't want to pay anything, there's— that's okay. You can, you can, you can get lots of teaching and encouragement basically through our, our podcast and the playlist that we've made through the years. You can find those in mtforchrist.com, or you can go to our YouTube channel M.t. for Christ 247 to get those messages. Anyway, beyond that, if you appreciate what we're trying to do and encouraging people to live a discipled life, you can go to mtforchrist.com to give us a donation today. We'd appreciate it. Beyond that, we end every little message with the question: Are you empty for Christ too? Are you punk? Well, anyway, that's Dirty Harry. Sorry about that. I don't know what that is about. What does that even mean? Well, it means, are you trying to empty yourself of the things of this world and be filled by the things of God and God's Holy Spirit? We hope the answer to that question, of course, is yes. If so, we say awesome, keep on walking and talking with God. If not, we encourage you to pray, because we know if you seek the Lord, you'll find him. And if you put, uh, if you put your faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and decide to follow him, that's when things can really change. And we know because it happened to us, and we know that prayer works. So we pray every day, like right now. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we just pray for a successful Freedom appointment this morning. We pray for you to bless all the parties that'll be there: the prayer minister, the encourager, and the participant, Lord, that you'd work through them to bring a new level of freedom to the participant's life. And, uh, Lord, we pray for safe travels after that. Get me to my wife's house. I miss her, and I pray for her as well. Bless her day and give her healing and strength and resilience and whatever she needs, um, until I see her. And, um, Lord, I just pray for you to, you know, bless our time together tonight. Give us— give me some peace and rest after the Freedom appointment and, uh, the strength, uh, to get up and do it all again tomorrow. Um, we thank you, Lord, for this great life you've given us through Christ. And we thank you, um, Lord. We also pray for you to bring this life of Christ to other people. So anyone reading, watching, or listening today, Lord, we pray for you to bless them and their walk of faith and their prayer request, Lord, because, uh, we all need your help and we're asking. So, Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.