In this devotional episode, M.t. Clark opens with a personal update about an upcoming two‑week road trip with his blended family, asking listeners for prayers for safe travel. He then transitions to the third point of his “Steps to Freedom in Christ” series—self‑deception through the belief that one is someone or something one is not. Using Galatians 6:3 as the scriptural anchor, Clark explains how the enemy can tempt believers toward both inflated pride and crushing low self‑esteem, urging a balanced identity rooted in Christ’s truth. He expands the theological point with Psalm 119:75‑76, interpreting affliction as a loving, disciplining tool that matures faith, and references John G. Kruis’s counseling guide for deeper study. Clark also points listeners to A.W. Pink’s teaching on the Holy Spirit’s work in saving faith, and promotes his own podcast, blog, and the “Bible Study with the Cincottis” series for further discipleship resources. The episode concludes with a heartfelt prayer for protection, guidance, and the Lord’s presence during the family’s travels and for all listeners.
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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 skyward view of a large palm tree somewhere on Isabela Island comes to us from Mark Germain, who shared this scene on social media back on July 5th during his epic vacation to the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador. Well, it's Monday, and I share today's palm tree as a visual proclamation of the official start of my 2-week vacation. While I won't be taking a vacation from the blog or podcast, I won't be at my day job for 2 weeks and will be hitting the road in a few hours to begin the road trip to Erie, Pennsylvania with my wife and 4 to 5 of her children. The 5th, Rachel, is on active duty in the United States Marine Corps in Japan. So I would appreciate your prayers for safe travels and the Lord's peace as this will be the largest extended gathering of this cast of characters from our quote unquote blended family. As we will be spending the next 5 nights together as a group, uh, for the first time, bouncing around the coast of Lake Erie. Although I use the term blended family, I will keep it real by saying that we are all still separated on balance and getting to know one another, and are not quite, and may never be, fully blended in a typical sense. Is there anything typical about a blended family? Um, I mean, we are dealing with 2 separate households that are an hour apart, 5 if you count the ex's current residence or properties, and 7 quote-unquote kids spread out in age from 23 to 14 years who are miles apart in terms of personalities and who are currently spread out across 2 continents in physical distance. So I'm not trying to tell you that this is the new Brady Bunch or anything like it. Because I don't even think Alice the maid could tidy up our situation into a neat little package. But when Tammy Lynn and I, uh, realized that we loved one another, we decided to marry, love one another now, and do our best to love and serve one another's families and to meet the responsibilities that come from our complicated lives. So we have put the Lord at the center of our marriage and rely on his guidance to make us the people he created us to be, and to show his love to our loved ones the best we can. We are just two Christians with complicated situations who are trying to do the Lord's— do things the Lord's way the best we can, and we freely admit that we are a work in progress that needs all the mercy, grace, guidance, strength, and love that the Lord can impart. So I'm not trying to tell you that we are something that we are not. And that brings us to our current series on self-deception, where we have decided to investigate some of the ways we deceive ourselves by walking through step 2, Deception vs. Truth, of the Steps to Freedom in Christ, to see what ways we have been deceived by the world and ourselves, and in what ways we have wrongly defended ourselves. So we present the third of the ways, uh, to deceive yourself., from the Steps to Freedom in Christ, which is number 3: Thinking I am something or someone I'm really not. The scriptural reference for this point is Galatians 6:3, which says, for if anyone thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. And that's from the New King James Version. Today's item from the Steps to Freedom in Christ challenges us to honestly look at ourselves and to ask Am I really the person I think I am, or am I just deceiving myself? Now, this is a complicated issue because although self-examination can lead us to discover the lies that we have believed, it can also be used by the enemy to sow seeds of doubt and condemnation to make us unstable in all our ways. Satan would readily accuse us of not being real Christians in the first place, after all, and would happily tempt us to believe that we have delusions of grandeur when we seek to claim our new identities in Christ. Satan would be the first to tell us that we are nothing, or that we are someone or something that we are really not. He would be the first to tell you that pride is a sin if it meant he could cause you to condemn yourself and keep you from experiencing your freedom in Christ, or, or from finding your purpose in God's kingdom. Or he could tempt you into exalting yourself, into believing you are a very important person who is too busy, necessary, or special to humbly follow the Lord. The enemy doesn't care if he knocks you down or lifts you up and will push you to either extreme of pride to make you believe that you are someone or something you are not. So, we have to be balanced and agree with what God says about us in His Word and avoid the equal and opposite pitfalls of conceit and low self-esteem that the enemy would push us towards. Needless to say, this requires wisdom and discernment. We have to accept our new identities in Christ and recognize and remember what we are and where we came from before coming to God. We have to try to see the truth that we are a combination of our histories, attributes, and talents of our pre-Christ existence and our new spiritual inheritance. We don't deny who we were, but we recognize that we are no longer the same after coming to Jesus, and that much of what we have— may have defined us before may not be a part of who God is calling us to be. Walking in the Spirit is all about living according to God's truth and accepting our new lives and purposes in Christ, and growing into our destinies in the kingdom of God. So, we must endeavor to see the lies that we believed about ourselves, renounce them, and agree with what God says about us and what He is calling us to be. We do not want to be puffed up or to think too lowly of ourselves. We want to live according to who we really are now in Christ. Today's Bible verses come to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Kruis. This morning's meditation verses come from the section on Affliction, Discipline, Chastisement, and Trials. And today's verses are Psalm 119:75-76. And the word of God says, I know, O Lord, that your judgments are righteous and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me. Oh, may your loving kindness comfort me according to your word to your servant. Today's verses fall under the fifth point of our Counseling Reference Guides resource section on Affliction, Discipline, and Chastisement and Trials. Um, the— and that fifth point is the psalmist was thankful for affliction, for it taught him to keep God's precepts. Today's verses are the third of the trio of verses, verse couplets from Psalm 119, that our reference guide uses to illustrate this point. This last verse couplet, uh, provides a keen insight from the psalmist that reveals that the God of the Old Testament wasn't just a law-giving, judging, punishing God that he is sometimes made out to be. As the psalmist testifies, um, that his affliction was done in faithfulness by a God who was loving and kind. This paradox that God could righteously afflict us mean, uh, as a means to cause us to grow, is an ongoing theme or principle in Scripture. After all, Jesus had to die in order for us to live, so likewise the Lord may have to use growing pains to take us from death to life and from childlike faith to, to become a mature disciple of Jesus Christ. Just as a loving parent will chastise a wayward child to keep them safe or to show them the right way to live, or how a surgeon will cause pain to heal, the Lord may bring the trials of affliction to our lives to mature us in our faith. To see the wisdom of His ways, or to know His enduring love that will never leave us or forsake us. As disciples of Jesus, we should know that suffering can have a divine purpose, and we should seek the Lord's wisdom, presence, comfort, and loving kindness when trials or afflictions come our way. As always, I invite all to go to mtforchrist.org, where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians or counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. Today we continue sharing from A.W. Pink's The Holy Spirit, and we are sharing the last bit of chapter 16, which is on the Spirit working faith. And today's section is on how the Spirit works saving faith. So if you're curious as to how the Spirit works saving faith, you can go to A.W. Pink— well, you can go to mt4christ.org, uh, and see that resource at the end of today's blog post to see what A.W. Pink has to say about that. As always, we encourage a lifestyle of Christian discipleship and experiencing your identity in Christ and your freedom in Christ, and we offer our podcast teachings on Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ to assist you in your walk. They are on the podcast and our YouTube channel, and we encourage that. We also encourage Bible study, as we need to know the truth in order for it to set us free, and that truth is in the Word of God. So we encourage Bible study, and we do a Bible study of sorts, a topical discussion on the Bible, different themes, with Arthur and Susanna Sincotti each week. A little program we call Bible Study with the Cincottis, and the latest episode on the 5 baptisms in the Bible, uh, was uploaded yesterday. So if you want to join our Bible study, you can find it on YouTube or our podcast under the heading Bible Study with the Cincottis. Well, today is the day I'm leaving for vacation, so I'm going to jump in the shower and get dressed before anyone else wakes up. And be ready to go when everyone else is ready to go. I think we got quite some time before that happens, but, uh, I know my canine pal Harley won't want to take a walk, and, um, I want to be ready, um, ready to move when I have to move. So, um, I pray for you if you have to work today. Um, and so let's just pray. Um, pray, pray in general here, um, for everything. Lord God, Heavenly Father, uh, we thank you for another day in your kingdom. We thank you for the blessings of work and rest and how you provided for us all our lives, um, and, um, how you provided us with a job that gives us a vacation. We thank you for that. We thank you for, of course, how you've come in our lives And even during times of trials and affliction, and you showed us your loving kindness and, um, your grace. Lord, we just pray for anyone who's listening today, um, that you would come alongside them in their prayer request and their walk of faith, Lord, and that you would go before us to protect us and guide us in the way we should go as we'll be traveling Throughout the world today, but for us, about 6 hours away from our current homes. So we need you to go with us, Lord. We need you to open our eyes to the things you want us to see and move our steps in the way we should go. It's all we want to do is represent you and your kingdom wherever we go, and we need your help at all times to do that. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, and we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.
