First Things First – Purity 1056

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 cross at the peak of some high grass underneath a blazing sunset situated perfectly between the clouds comes to us from Brianne Kilmer, who captured this scene presumably somewhere during her travels in Columbia County and shared it on social media back on May 24th. Brienne appeared to have spotted this scene while driving, as she shared several shots of this scene from the various vantage points along the roadside and shared them all to encourage her friends on social media. Just like Brienne, I hope to encourage my friends— that's you— to keep your eyes open to the beauty in this world and to recognize that it has all been provided for us by a God who loves us so much that he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to teach us the truth, to pay for our sins, and to give us new and eternal lives when we put our faith in him as Lord and Savior. Well, it's Wednesday, and I thought Brianne's picture was a beauty. And while it doesn't feature a hump per se, I thought it was— I thought that its cross and setting sun were centered enough to visually represent our arrival of— at the mid— eh, at the middle of the work week, and that its unspoken message of hope in Christ was a great representation for the hope and new life that I will be encouraging others to walk into at Celebrate Freedom tonight. One of the missions of my blog, and the reason that I highlight photos of God's creation, is to convey the truth that God is present in our world at all times and that we can know him and interact with him. In my walk of faith, I discovered just how real, present, available, loving, and powerful the Lord is when you decide to seek him and follow where he leads. Although I resisted the Lord and fled from him, uh, most of my life, he revealed the truth of Jesus Christ to me when I was least expecting it. And I slowly answered His call to seek His truth, His presence, and to follow Him. When you know the love of God, that Christ died for me, for you individually, to save us, it compels us to know more about God and the truth of His kingdom. But at that point, you still have free will. You can give as much or as little of yourself to your walk of faith. You can decide what you will do with your new life in Christ. You can decide just how far you want to take it. As someone who was deceived by the world system, the quote-unquote facts of life, and a false religion, I thought I had it all figured out. So when God interrupted my life to let me know I couldn't have gotten it more wrong, I decided to completely surrender to his will and began to seek the truth of God of God's word and tried to live out my newfound faith and learned that for every step of faith I took towards God, I was rewarded. Hebrews 11:6 reveals this truth. It says, but without faith it is impossible to please God— oh, please him— for he has— for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. I had faith. I stepped out in faith and believed that God was who He said He was, that He is, and so I diligently sought Him and continually— and was continually rewarded with knowledge, blessings, His presence, and eventually a whole new life. But it didn't happen all at once. After I learned that God was loving and good enough to save a quote-unquote wretch like me, I followed, and after I was rewarded with the confirmation of the reasonableness of my faith and with the joy of my salvation, I decided to keep following Him, come what may. I answered the call to find a Bible-believing church where I could learn more and serve. It was there that a Christian Recovery Group began and called me out of the darkness of my sins and into the ministry of overcoming and encouragement. I sought the Lord and was rewarded with victory and freedom over my addictions. But God has kept calling, and I have kept following, and now know that this journey of faith never ends, and it will go on throughout eternity, as I will follow the Lord all the days of my life and encourage others as I go. The latest chapter of the unfolding saga of my life in the Spirit is the Celebrate Freedom growth group at Star Point Church. And even though, uh, we will only be meeting for the fourth time this evening, I have already been rewarded and blessed by the opportunity to tell a little of my story and to bless other Christians with the good news that God not only loved them enough to save them from a godless eternity, he loves them enough to save them from themselves and the lies they believe— have believed that caused them to choose the world's ways over his. I have received positive reports that this group has been a blessing to the people who have attended it, and I will continue to encourage others to know the Lord and to follow him into the life that only he can give them. Tonight we will be singing First Things First by Consumed by Fire, and I pray that the chorus will be a proclamation of our intention to follow where the Lord would lead us. The lyrics say, I don't want to love what the world loves. I don't want to choose what the world does. I only want you. I only want you. First things first. I seek your will, not my own. Surrender all my wants to you. Keep the first things first. To live your truth walk your ways. Set my eyes, Lord, I'll fix my face on you. All my desires reversed to keep the first things first. In Christ, all our earthly desires can be reversed. We can choose to do what God would have us do, to seek his will, not our own, to surrender all to God and to fix our eyes on him. To follow and to walk in his ways and to live our lives for him. And it only requires a simple decision to put first things first by following the Lord and his truth to the life of meaning and purpose that he wants us to know continually, progressively, forever. Today's Bible verses come to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verses are Luke 12:6-7. The words of Christ say, "Are not 5 sparrows sold for 2 copper coins, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear, therefore; you are more— of more value than many sparrows." Today's verses tells us that we matter to God. To God, we matter. He knows every detail about us, and we matter to the Lord so much that He showed us the truth of who Jesus is so we could be saved and set free from the lies of this world to experience a new and eternal life. This is one of those too much truths, as in, this is so big, Lord, This is just too much. Am I to believe that the God who made everything and created countless living creatures and who knows everything knows me and loves me and cares about me? It's just too much, Lord. But it's true. God does know us. God does love us. God does care about us. And God has called us to know His Son, His truth, to live it and to share it with all the earth. It might seem too good to be true. It may seem to be too much, but it is all true and it is all good. Thank you, Lord. Yeah, so he knows the hairs counted on your head and all the sparrows, and he cares about you. So that's great news. Um, as always, uh, we invite you to go to mtforchrist.org where we share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist our brothers and sisters in Christ with our walk. Today we continue sharing from A.W. Pink's The Holy Spirit, and today we start sharing from chapter 6, which is the very first part of that chapter. Um, basically the chapter is on the Holy Spirit during the Old Testament ages. So if you want to see how the Holy Spirit was revealed in scripture in the Old Testament, uh, A.W. Pink will show you how. And you can just go to mt4christ.org and you'll see that resource at the end of today's blog post. And as always, we encourage a life of Christian discipleship where it doesn't really end. It doesn't just show up for Sunday during a worship service, that your, that your life is defined by daily spiritual practice of prayer, Bible study, and just trying to follow the Lord's will. And, you know, surrendering to that. And, you know, what's that look like? Well, it looks like you're a responsible steward to what the Lord has given you, and you try to fix things, fix the problems in your life and around your life, try to help people and help yourself, all of that. And you do it for the glory of the Lord. You walk and talk with God. You walk in the Spirit, you ask God for guidance and strength. That's how, that's how it's supposed to be. And if you're not doing that on a daily basis, you're walking without the Lord. You know, you're all alone and doing it in your own strength. And, uh, I'm here to tell you that you don't have to do it that way. You're not alone when you have Jesus as your Lord and Savior. You have the Holy Spirit in you the moment you put your faith in Christ. And he wants to guide you, but you have to seek him and know him and follow him. And, uh, we know what's right according to the word of God, but we don't always do what's right. Um, we know we're saved, but we don't always feel saved. Um, you know, we know we're blessed, but we don't always feel blessed because this world and circumstances would draw us away from the knowledge of the truth and have us focus on the negative things in this life instead of the great promises that we have in the Lord. And so, so we do the blog and the podcast to encourage people in their faith, and we also provide people with the discipleship classes that we did back in 2021 at our local church on Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ that are all available on our YouTube channel. And our podcast. And if you wanted to take a deeper dive into those studies, which are based on the Word of God and Dr. Neil Anderson's work, you can contact me at mt4christ247@gmail.com, and I'd email you the, uh, the class materials that I handed out with that class so you can be equipped. Those classes teach you about who you are in Christ, teaches about the reality of the spiritual forces of darkness that would seek to deceive you. And they teach you a process of repentance, the steps to freedom in Christ that lead you to resolve all the spiritual issues in your life. But those issues are resolved through repentance and the decision to live for God and to follow him. So we encourage that because we did it and we're still doing it. And we're, like I said, we've been continually blessed because we've sought the Lord, and we're going to keep doing that until we drop or until Jesus comes back, whatever comes first. Because there's just no, there's no, once you understand this way, the way of the Spirit, once you understand what God has for you, you're never going to choose the world over it again. Not that we'll walk perfectly, But we'll keep going back to the Father, and we'll not only get victory, but we'll seek new victories over different areas of our lives. Instead of going around the old, you know, same old mulberry bush over and over and over again, we'll understand our freedom and victory over something and then just walk past it and never go back to it. My life is a living testimony of that. I was thinking, you know, our group is a recovery/discipleship group, and I was thinking this morning, you know, some people say that relapse is part of recovery. I said, yeah, I suppose, but it's sort of like saying that driving into trees, you know, crashing into trees is part of driving. Yeah, it's an unfortunate thing that can happen, but it's certainly something we shouldn't accept as normal. It was something we should definitely avoid. Yeah, people crash into trees all the time, but we'll try to take steps to avoid that, and it doesn't have to define our travels, you know. So as I say, you know, as part of our ministry, and I don't— you know, there's no condemnation for anyone, okay? But when we seek to follow the Lord and make that decision to surrender to the Lord, you know, relapse becomes a non-negotiable thing. We just don't do that anymore for two— for several reasons. Because it's not who we are anymore. We know how stupid it is, and we don't want anything to get in the way between us and our relationship with the Lord. We're not going to choose anything over him. And when we have those three things ahead of us— knowing it's stupid, knowing it's not an doesn't define us, it's not who we are anymore, and the fact that it gets in the way of our relationship with God. When we have those 3 things, you know, the chances of us crashing into a tree are a lot less. We're not going to relapse, you know. And as I say, you know, relapse may be a part of recovery, but it doesn't have to be a part of your freedom. And You know, but there's grace. We can fall down if we want, you know, if we so choose. But why would you choose that? So don't choose that. Choose life and choose to follow the Lord into the new life he's got for you. Yeah, anyway, I have to choose to go to work today because I don't want to get in trouble. And I made a choice to surrender a vacation day to use in October. So I have to work this one day this week when I should have the whole week off, but I chose that for a better opportunity in October to go to the Deeper Walk Conference in Indiana. So that'll be an adventure, but we got to wait for it. So we'll keep going. We'll pay the cost today for the day off we have tomorrow. And, and that's what we do. We do the good work today knowing that it'll contribute to our futures, you know. And one day of following the Lord leads to the next, and we keep doing it until, until we see him face to face. So let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you so much for all that you do, uh, for us and all that you did for us. Um, you sent Jesus Christ to, to teach us the truth, to die on the cross, and to give us the hope for eternal life. And then you revealed it to us personally and brought us into your kingdom and gave us new life and a hope and a future. And Lord, we just thank you for that. We pray for anyone who's listening or reading this message, that they'd be blessed and they would know this truth applies to them too, and that they would walk in the newness of life that you've given them. Uh, Lord, it's because it's a decision to follow you, and it's a decision to seek you, and And Lord, just help us to continually make that decision every day as we only want to seek, you know, to represent you in your kingdom here on the earth. But Lord, we need your help. Um, so we, we just pray for you to come alongside us today, um, and to, uh, lead us in the way we should go, open our eyes to the things we need to see, help us to do the best job we can, and, um, just, just be there for us, Lord, because we're going to be turning towards you um, I'm sure. And we, we want, we want to, we want— and if you want to speak to us, we will listen. Uh, Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.