Full Disclosure vs Being Vulnerable in a Healthy Way – Self-Deception Series 33 - Purity 1122

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 mammoth hump of rock and sand looming over a dry desert-like landscape under blue skies comes to us from Jodi Musmacher Osuch, who shared this scene from her trip to Palisade, Colorado yesterday on social media. But don't let the dry-looking grass fool you. Palisades is part of the Grand Junction Metropolitan Statistical Area and is known for its wine vineyards and peach orchards. And it's a 182-day growing season, an average of 78% sunshine help make Palisade the peach capital of Colorado. It might be dry in Palisade, but the farmers apparently know how to utilize their situation to prosper. And unlike its Rocky Mountain High neighbors, Palisades only sees 14 inches of snow per year. From someone in upstate New York who can sometimes expect to see 14 inches fall from the sky in one snowstorm, that doesn't sound like a bad deal at all. Well, it's Wednesday, and I share today's photo as a visual reminder that we have arrived at hump day once again. And today I'm looking forward to sharing a little bit of my story, uh, where the Lord looked at my broken condition and bondages and decided that he could make the best of a bad situation. And turn things around to see the fruit of the Spirit grow in my life. But God is patient, and he wasn't going to drag me kicking and screaming into his kingdom and the abundant life he wanted for me. When the time was right and when I was ready, he showed me the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and saved my soul, and later showed me that he had even more joy for me to experience by going into recovery and repentance on the path of Christian discipleship. So the, uh, Celebrate Freedom growth group at Starpoint Church meets again tonight, and after my 2-week vacation, I am looking forward to seeing some familiar faces and a few new ones as I joyfully receive the reports that some newcomers joined our group while I was away. God is doing something with our group. He is showing others what he has shown me. I'm not sure what the others are seeing, of course, but I know that when I went into recovery, I was shown that my Christianity meant something. It meant I was part of God's kingdom, and as a member of his royal family, it meant I was one of his people, and I was called to live and act like it. I was called to follow Jesus and be conformed to his image, to leave my former darkness behind and walk in the light, as he is the light of the world. Perhaps most importantly, God showed me that my hopes to be like Jesus wasn't some vain aspiration. My freedom and victory was actually possible. While I could never have done it on my own, I learned a little, a bit about what it meant when Jesus said, "All things are possible with God." I never thought I could give up drugs and alcohol, and frankly, I didn't want to because I thought it was impossible. But God showed me that when I trusted in him to help me, he would be faithful to give me the strength and guidance to overcome. And when I decided to walk with Him, He showed me that He would never leave me or forsake me. So, I took that step of faith into Christian Recovery back in 2015, and I have been walking and talking with God into progressive freedom ever since. And so, I have made it my life's purpose to tell others to put their faith in Jesus and to follow Him with the way they live their lives. It has been an amazing adventure so far. And I look forward to seeing how God will move in the lives of the people who come and keep coming to celebrate— to the Celebrate Freedom Growth Group at Star Point Church. But I, I'm not going to lie to you. The path of freedom in Christ was never promised to be an easy one, and it must be freely chosen and pursued. You have to love the Lord to follow him, and that is something that may not be clear to most Christians. And so we try to encourage and instruct them to understand that they must believe it to receive it. Our victory comes down to faith in God to help us, and that our relationship with God is a love relationship. We do his will because we love him and don't want anything to get in the way of the harmony of our relationship with him. In the final analysis, we choose God over the world, the flesh, and the devil. If I had to give one final instruction to encourage people in their faith walk, I might echo the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:33, where he said, "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." Speaking of final instructions, 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 may have been deceived by the world and ourselves, and in what ways we have wrongly defended ourselves. While we have reached the end of this series on self-deception by going through all 31 points of the ways we can be deceived by the world, ourselves, and the ways we wrongly defended ourselves, I've decided to continue this series by sharing the closing instructions that immediately follow those 3 sections on the ways we can be deceived. After we have confessed all the ways we have been deceived and prayed to receive God's forgiveness, Neil Anderson writes, the wrong ways we have employed to shield ourselves from pain and rejection are often deeply ingrained in our lives. You may need additional discipling and counseling to learn how to allow Jesus to be your rock, fortress, deliverer, and refuge. And he references Psalm 18:1-2, which says Uh, in the New King James Version: I will love you, O Lord my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my strength in whom I will trust, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. Anderson continues by writing: The more you learn how loving, powerful, and protective God is, the more you'll be likely to trust him. The more you realize how much God unconditionally loves and accepts you, the more you'll be released to be open, honest, and vulnerable in a healthy way before God and others. I love how Andersen stresses our relationship with the Lord and how our faith comes down to trusting God and being open, honest, and vulnerable before Him and others. Andersen instructs us to be open, honest, and vulnerable with others in a healthy way, mind you. While God knows everything about us and accepts us completely, knowing our whole story, others may not be able to handle the truth. And while we are to be open, honest, and vulnerable before the Lord, we should be wise and discerning with what we share with others. Some people are not trustworthy, and it would be unwise and unnecessary to tell absolutely everything about us to absolutely everyone. Even though I pride myself on providing full disclosure by speaking the truth in love and being as transparent as I can be, I understand that there are details about my past and present life that are nobody's business but my own. And while God knows about them, I will only share the details of my life that I feel will be helpful to others, not cause others undue harm, pain, or embarrassment, and will be received with reverence and respect. Of course, I know that when I trust people with the details of my life, I run the risk of someone wittingly or unwittingly divulging the things I have said in confidence. But if that happens, I'll own it and do my best to explain how the things I did before coming to Christ and before I went into recovery were done by a person who no longer exists, or who was wrongfully— woefully ignorant of the ways of living according to the word of God. And that while I do my best to follow Jesus, I'm still a work in progress. But I don't take sin lightly. Uh, don't believe in the need to relapse and am progressively learning to fully surrender and conform my thoughts and lifestyle to that of a disciple of Jesus Christ. So as far as it concerns me, I try to be wise and vulnerable in a healthy way with the things I share about my life. Jesus called us to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves and had his own inner circle of disciples: John, Peter, and James. That were afforded special access to the details of His life because of His trust in them, and we should be wise in the way we grant access to the details of our lives through our relationships. Some people won't be walking with us for long. Some are tares among the wheat. Some are false converts, and the enemy would love to use them to cause strife and division in the body of Christ by openly telling sensitive things told in confidence. So, be wise and discerning in what you tell to whom. You don't have to share all the dirty details of your story to tell others how the Lord set you free. And even though we want to be open, honest, and vulnerable before others, we have to consider others too when we want to be transparent in a healthy way. I wrote more than I expected with my comments on Anderson's final instructions of Step 2 of the Steps to Freedom in Christ. Can you blame me? Uh, the man's instructions are based on the word of God and are gold. So rather than pressing ahead and sharing the rest of these final instructions here today, we will share them tomorrow. So our current, current series on self-deception will continue to be concluded tomorrow, featuring Anderson's comments on the twisting of the concept of faith and truth itself. Today's Bible verse 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 Affliction, Discipline, Chastisement, and Trials. And today's verses are 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 from the New International— a New International Version, uh, the NIV. And the word of God says, we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experience in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. Today's verse falls under the 19th point of our Counseling Reference Guides resource section on Affliction, Discipline, Chastisement, and Trials. 19. Paul says that he suffered under great stress so that he might rely on God more. Today's verse gives us a picture of a Christian giving full disclosure and realizing that his trials had the purpose of causing his faith to grow, as his desperate situation caused the Apostle Paul to rely more on God. When the going gets tough, The Christian relies on God. While there is a measure of truth to English political theorist Algernon Sidney's sentiment that God helps those who help themselves, that phrase is not a Bible verse. Although used by Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanac, that phrase is not in Scripture. While man can do much and is expected to act on his own behalf in following the Lord's will, Scripture indicates that we are to rely on God. I am sharing a link to Open Bible Info's 100 Bible Verse— verses about rely on God on the blog today in case you need to be reminded that it is the Lord we must trust in. From that long list of verses, I like Jeremiah 17:5-6 from the New King James Version. That verse says, thus says the Lord Cursed is the man— or cursed, yeah, cursed is the man who— cursed, cursed, cursed is the man who trusts in, in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord. For he shall be like a shrub in the desert and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness and a salt land which is not inhabited. Thus says the Lord here, guys. That's God telling us this. Trusting in man or making our flesh our strength is a departure from God and results in experiencing suffering. And in today's verse, Paul was telling it like it is by admitting to his great suffering that caused him to despair of life itself. He thought he was dead, and it sounded like he wanted to die. But he survived, and he realized that suffering caused him to rely on the One who raises the dead, the Lord God Almighty. So, do what you can to fix problems and to help others, but never put your whole trust in your own strength, cunning, or abilities. We are to rely on the Lord, and only when we trust and follow Him can we truly see what a good, good Father and mighty God He is. As always, I invite all to go to mtforchrist.org, 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, and, uh, today we continue sharing, um, from chapter 20, uh, which is on the spirit cleansing. And today's section is called The Awful Warning. So, so if you want to know what the awful warning is, uh, and what, uh, you you might want to know. It sounds pretty awful. Um, let's go to emptyforchrist.org and see what A.W. Pink is trying to warn us about. And, uh, so, you know, so if you, if you're interested in that warning, receiving that warning, go to emptyforchrist.org and you'll see that at the end of today's blog post. Uh, as always, uh, we, we, we issue the awful warning that without Christ we will perish. And, um, that we, if we accept Christ and don't follow him, we will suffer. Um, so, so you sort of got to take both steps. The first faith, the salvation, you know, step to faith in Jesus Christ and salvation, and the second step to repent and, and to follow the Lord in the way he, you live your life, and, um, to experience who you are in Christ and to experience your freedom, uh, over the world, the flesh, and the devil. So that's more than just saying a sinner's prayer, isn't it? So you might need additional discipling and counseling, as, as, as Dr. Neil Anderson says, to, to overcome those lies that we've been deceived by the world of flesh and our— and the way we wrongly defended ourselves. And so we offer our, our, our teachings that we did from Dr. Neil Anderson's books on Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ. On the M.t. Clark 247 podcast and our YouTube channel. And we share those— they're audio teachings, be advised— because they were transformative in our lives. And we were called to start a freedom ministry and share them at our local church back in 2021. And because it was a post-COVID zone, people suggested doing it remotely somehow. The only technology I had at the time was, well, a podcast using my cell phone. So that's what we did, and we shared them, and people are checking out or clicking on those teachings up to this day. What a blessing! I don't know how much they're getting out of it— depends on how long you listen— but those are out there and available if you need to know who you are in Christ and are pursuing your freedom and repentance from the spiritual and personal conflicts that you might be suffering from. So we do that because we have experienced it, and like I said in today's thing, though, we're still a work in progress. Just yesterday, I had the day off and had my course set to do some spiritual things, But, you know, as the morning progressed, I got temptations to go to Red Lobster and eat endless shrimp, to go to the movie theater and watch a movie about Dracula and eat a bucket of popcorn and drink soda. And then I was tempted to go to get Christian fast food by going to Chick-fil-A. None of those things are illegal, but I have health goals and they sort of fly in the face of those. And because I was on vacation, I sort of let my guard down in terms of the flesh a little. And so the flesh was trying to reestablish itself to lead me into temptation. So luckily I won yesterday, but I had to go to some Christian resources to remind myself of who I am. You know, and I was, you know, it was really a guidance by the Holy Spirit because I was not feeling it at all. And so I humbly submitted to the Lord's call to go examine a book that I've had on Kindle for a long time. And I have to thank Lauren Ross-Killey for her book, Christian-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, in which it's a basic problem, you know, She teaches Mindfulness of Christ, and the first exercise basically made me realize that my quote-unquote problems were not unique, and that I was not alone. And then it prompted me to think of some good things in my life. And I had a lot to ponder about those good things in my life. And that turned everything around. You know, basically that pull of the flesh to go you know, comfort myself in some way, was replaced by contentment and who I am in Christ. So we're fighting the battle every day. We're trying to be healthy. I have a sleep apnea mask, and I want to lose weight so I don't have to wear it anymore. So the struggle is real. You know, I've been free from alcohol and drugs and sexual immorality for a while, but you know, that flesh manifests in all kinds of ways. And, you know, we can pursue other goals after we've established victory instead of worrying about falling into the old ones. We can stand in our victory and our freedom and pursue new things and new purposes in the Lord. So that's what we do. We fight the fight and we keep going forward to see what the Lord has for us. And currently it's this recovery discipleship group at my local church in Clifton Park. And it's studying to be a prayer minister for Deeper Walk International, or being a certified prayer minister by Deeper Walk International, where we teach, well, one thing, the steps to freedom in Christ and lead people through real prayer where we invite God into our experience to heal our emotional pains of the past through inviting him in through prayer to heal our memories. Deep stuff. So there's lots to do, and, um, I, you know, what that is for you, I don't know, but the Lord's got something for you to do too, something that'll give you peace and purpose and meaning to your life, to make your Christianity meaningful. So that's about it. I got to, I got to pray because I do have to work my day job before all that tonight. But I'm looking forward to it and looking forward to the day. So let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Thank you for the freedom that you've given us through Christ. And thank you for the purpose you've given us through these ministries and these opportunities to love people who need help. And, uh, to, to work on ourselves. Lord, we pray for anyone listening or reading today's message, that you'd bless them and come alongside them and their prayer request and their walk of faith, because, Lord, we all need your help. And so we pray for you to go before us today, open our eyes to the things you want us to see, and lead our steps in the things you would have us to do. Because, Lord, all we want to do is represent you in your kingdom and become more and more like Christ as we go. So we need your help desperately. And, uh, so we, so we thank you, we praise you, and we love you, Lord. And we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.