“Fat Tuesday” – Ending Bad Addictive Relationships and Walking in the Spirit - Purity 1597

Welcome to the MT for Christ 24/7 podcast. I am 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 a sunset view from the front porch from my place down by the river comes to us from yours truly as I intentionally changed my after-work course to deliberately go outside to enjoy where I live. And to capture this beautiful moment. Full disclosure, I didn't bask in the moment like I should have, but I'm glad I can now enjoy the fruits of my intentionality after the fact. Well, it's Tuesday. It's Fat Tuesday. Happy Mardi Gras, I guess. But I am not in a celebratory mood when it comes to indulging the flesh. The truth is that ever since my recent vacation to Myrtle Beach, I've been turning a blind eye to my health goals. I've been avoiding the scale and I've been deceiving myself by indulging in foods that I know that for me should be on the forbidden list. A man has to know his limitations. For the food addicts, like any other addict, we have to realize that certain foods or behaviors and/or substances— for certain foods, you know, we're unable to practice moderation. We are only fooling ourselves when we try to live with the things that are poison to our minds, bodies, Soulz and Spiritz. After coming to the realization that I overeat when it comes to portions of nuts or trail mixes on my vacation and cutting that behavior out, I inexplicably started eating Domino's pizzas on the sly since being home after I rediscovered how good pizza tastes after having one on my last day of vacation. So this morning I deleted the Domino's app from— and all the other food apps from my phone. Because I realize that for my peace of mind, my relationship with fast food, which makes me fat quick, has to be over. The addict can't moderate and has to come to that moment of clarity when we must decide that the relationship to the thing that keeps us in a vicious cycle of sin must come to an end. So as the season of Lent begins tomorrow, I am declaring the end of my relationship with Domino's Pizza. Some things lead us to a life in the Spirit, and other things pull us into the sins of the flesh. And for me, pizza is a trigger, and it has to go. Speaking of turning from, you know, about turning from the flesh to a life in the Spirit, uh, the In Touch with Dr. Charles Stanley devotion, from Sunday, uh, addressed that topic. So I'm sharing it on the blog today to encourage us all to walk in the Spirit. And Dr. Charles Stanley writes, walking in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit supplies everything we need in order to follow Christ. And Stanley's devotion, um, references Galatians 5:16-25. And, and he writes, the Holy Spirit is one of God's most precious gifts to his beloved children. The The Spirit takes up residence within believers at the moment of salvation and empowers us, empowers each one to overcome sin and to live for God's glory. However, the Holy Spirit's power can be hindered or ignored. Walking by the Spirit denotes reliance upon him. He leads the way and we follow. As he speaks, we listen. Heed his warnings and obey his directions. His way is a path of surrender, which, though sometimes difficult, leads to fullness of life. God's Holy Spirit not only guides but also enables us, supplying everything we need for living righteously and producing his remarkable fruit in us. Being led by the Spirit should be the natural lifestyle of all sons and daughters of God. We should intentionally seek to maintain an awareness of his presence throughout the day. As we do, we may— he makes us sensitive to the things of God and provides understanding about the situations and people in our life. Take a walk in the spirit today. Learn to recognize his voice by spending time in the word and in prayer. Focus your thoughts on him, asking for his guidance and looking expectantly for his leading. That was from Dr. Charles Stanley, and I say amen. When we make the decision to follow the Lord, we are given the puzzling conundrum of how do I actually do that? God has given us two things to help us: his word and his spirit. We need both to guide us properly. While Bible study should be a part of our daily spiritual practice, the Bible is a big book, and while all of it is true, not all of it will be able to be applied to our lives. Some of it gives us practical advice on how to live a Christian life, like the epistles, Proverbs, and the Gospels, depending on— but depending on where you are in the book each day, you may or may not receive applicable guidance for your walk. And that is why we are to also pray and ask for God's strength and wisdom each day, to call on the Holy Spirit to empower us and to show us the way to go. Our quiet time with God can help us to build a spiritual foundation for our lives. But what do we do for the rest of the day? We walk in the Spirit, which I have come to understand to mean we are intentional about, about seeking the presence of the Lord in our lives and seek his guidance as we go about our day. And we seek to honor the Lord in everything we do. To do what's right according to what's, what's, what God's word and spirit says. Um, we are to seek to increase our spiritual awareness by using the fruit of the spirit of peace as a barometer. If we want— if we aren't at peace, we have to try to figure out why, to ask the Lord to help us. So we should ask the Lord to help us and listen to his voice and our spirit to guide us into a place of peace. As we do this practice, we will learn what people, places, and things unite us with God or draw us away from God and learn to be mindful of what increases our peace and what steals it. And then we can make adjustments to our lives to go to the people, places, or things that our spirit tells us are good. And lead to another fruit of the Spirit, joy. 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 loving and serving others. And this morning's meditation verse is Matthew 16:24, which says, then Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Today's verse is the first of 3 passages of scripture that fall under the 8th point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on loving and serving others. That 8th point is Jesus commands us to love others in the manner in which he loved us, to imitate him. Today's Bible verses, uh, tell us plainly that we are to follow the example of Jesus, pick up our cross and follow him, right? Due to technical difficulties this morning, I am really short on time, and so I'll simply say that God is love, Jesus is God, and if we are to follow Christ's example, we should do good works like he did and love our neighbors as ourselves, as he commanded. Pretty basic, but not easy necessarily. As always, we encourage you to go to mtforchrist.com, where we always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist our brothers and sisters in Christ for their walk. 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 96, where Adams shares a portion of Proverbs 5:6, which says, her tracks wander, but she doesn't know it. This woman, the prototype of everyone who leads an unstructured life of unrighteousness, wanders. That means she leaves the path of righteousness, joy, and peace and wanders into the paths of sin, misery, and trouble. But she doesn't know it. Why doesn't she? For two reasons. First, the consequences have not yet come home to roost. Second, she deceives herself. How does she do this? Because she is concentrating on the short-lived pleasures that Moses rejected. She doesn't ask the important ultimate questions about life. She ignores warnings and turns the other way whenever she might have to face the inevitable. She wanders and thinks that wandering is freedom, but as we have seen, wandering means leaving God behind, living in a way foreign to him and his kingdom in which true lasting joy and peace are found. You should wander, be sure to stop and wonder. Otherwise you will be like her, a wanderer, but one who doesn't know it. Amen. Amen. And that sort of hits close to home here, um, basically, um, you know, in terms of, you know, my goals of, of being healthy and, um, you know, getting to a more ideal weight, um, for my height. Um, I have to be disciplined and realize what things work and what things don't work towards that goal's accomplishment. And quite frankly, for the last year, I've been up and down in the same 15 to 20-pound range and not progressing any further. And there is, you know, and I'm learning a lot because I'm learning what doesn't work. And sometimes I'm learning what doesn't work again and again and again. Like, I sort of knew, um, eating whole pizzas by themselves, you know, for meals probably wasn't the, you know, wasn't, wasn't wisdom in terms of my flesh. And but really was in a place where I deceived myself and was just sort of, you know, not looking at it. And I was trying to hide it and didn't want to say anything. So last night I confessed to my wife what I was doing just so I could be free, um, of the lies I was living. I deceived myself and it was, um you know, deceiving, you know, others. Others, I guess my wife, you know. Um, yeah, we have the two household situations still. Um, we try to come into one place, and so I have a lot of time on my own. And if I want, I can do things without her knowledge. And, um, that's a lie, and that's not how you're supposed to live. And some people might, you know, balk at what I'm saying about this food stuff, and you know, and say, you know, give yourself a break or whatever. But it does— it steals my peace. And that's like when you know you're living in the flesh. And, you know, that's how it was, you know, all my life. When I knew drinking and drugs and sexual immorality weren't right, I just turned a blind eye to it and said, oh well, that's the way of the world, you know, that's what I want to do, and that's the way of the world, and, you know, there's nothing wrong with it. Except for one thing, I didn't have any peace. You know, I was in a vicious cycle to all these, you know, things of the flesh. And I realized that I'm much happier when I'm healthier and I have established peace with the Lord and I'm walking in it. That's why we always ask the question, have you fully surrendered to God? Do you know the Lord's peace? Do you have peace? If you don't, that means there's a problem and you need to find the Lord's peace for your life. And it begins with a relationship with Jesus Christ by putting your faith in him as Lord and Savior. But then it continues to follow him by picking up our cross, the things that are our burdens, and following him and laying down the things that hold us back. And we've done that to great— you know, I have great victory in my life, but there's still areas that need to be worked on. And there's still— there's a better life, the more abundant life that Christ invites us to.. And it's a good life and it leads us to peace and purpose. And part of my purpose besides throwing myself under the bus every time I fail, um, is I lead the Celebrate Freedom support group at Starpoint Church where I'm an expert in the hurts, habits, and hangups and how you can struggle. But I also, um, encourage people to ask the Lord for help because, um, also an expert in knowing about that because God has helped, helped me greatly. And so I encourage others to do the same thing. Follow, follow the Lord, and he'll lead you out of those hurts, habits, and hangups and into a good life of peace. Um, so if you're in Upstate New York and near Clifton Park on a Wednesday night and you get to our meeting, we invite you to come. Um, but if you're not available, you know, for that time and, you know, place, um, the good news is I'm doing, uh, I'm doing a series on on Christian Recovery on YouTube. It's called Christian Recovery Celebrate Freedom with M.t. Clark, where I'm teaching everything we teach at Celebrate Freedom. Our introductory lessons, the ABCs to Celebrate Freedom, and then I'm going through every lesson in the Celebrate Recovery manuals to encourage you in your, in your walk of faith into recovery. So if you'd like, check that out, share it, like it, and you know, check out our other playlists that we have online. Um, we've done studies in the past for Victory Over the Darkness, Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ, and among many other series. They're all intended to encourage you in your faith and help you to find or increase your freedom in Christ. So check out those old podcast classes on YouTube. And, um, beyond that, we're doing more than just YouTube. Well, this is more with Zoom, uh, we're doing the Grace Course, uh, beginning April 1st, 2 weeks before Easter. We're teaching about grace, and it's going to be an 8-week study. Um, we provide access to the Grace Course videos. We encourage the students to buy the Grace Course Participant's Guide, and then we meet once a week to discuss what we learned each week. And that's what we'll be doing if anybody signs up. No one has signed up yet, and we're going to— we feel the Lord put this on our heart. So again, how do you walk in the Spirit? You listen to what he says and you do it. And if no one shows up, you guess rightly, oh, that wasn't the will of God, because otherwise someone would show up. But sometimes we have to be humbled, and this might be a time of humbling for me, or it can be a great time to encourage people. With about the grace of God, um, if anyone should sign up. So we encourage anybody out there who's interested in learning about God's grace or experiencing it to sign up today for the class that begins on April 1st. Beyond that, if you do appreciate what we do, we'd appreciate your help. Um, we have ministry costs, and, um, we'd appreciate your help with those. Um, you can donate to us by going to mtforchrist.com, our donations page, where you can donate via Venmo, Cash App or PayPal. We would appreciate any help you can give. Thank you. Um, yeah, and, and we always end each message by asking the same question twice, um, by saying, are you empty for Christ too? What does that mean? Well, it means are you fully surrendered to God and doing his will for your life? And if you are, we say great, keep on walking and talking with God. If not, uh, we encourage you to pray and seek the Lord, because we believe that God answers prayers and that he will, uh, he'll be found if you seek him. So we encourage you to, um, to do that. And, um, we pray every day because we know it works. And so we're going to pray right now. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. We thank you so much for all that you do for us, Lord, that you're with us even when we make blundering mistakes and hide, hide hide the ugly truth from ourselves and, um, live like we don't— we're not supposed to. Lord, we just, uh, ask for your help and your guidance and your strength today to lead us on the right path, um, to lead us the way we should go today, because we need your help. We're, we're, we're desperately wicked and, and weak in some areas of our lives, and we need you to help us. And, um, we're asking for that help today. Also, we pray for anyone who's listening, reading, or watching this message, that they'd be encouraged in their faith and that you would come alongside them and bless them and their prayer requests too, Lord. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.