God is Good but am I “good” with God – Purity 765

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 pathway by the ocean comes to us from a friend who visited the Sebastian Inlet State Park at Melbourne Beach, Florida, back on June 20th. Well, it's Thursday again, and as is my habit, I share this photo of a pathway as an encouragement to get on or to keep going on the pathway of Christian discipleship. Which is my little euphemism for following Jesus, or walking in the Spirit, or seeking the Lord and His will for your life, or growing in your faith, or developing your personal relationship with God. If you notice, each of these concepts describes a present and continuous journey. They pres— describe a process more than a possession. Although we have Christ or are in Christ when we put our faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, Christ called His disciples to follow Him with their lives. Although our faith in Christ gives us a new and eternal life and makes us "good with God," it doesn't mean we are done with God. Although Christ said that it was finished as He died to pay for our sins on the cross, He was resurrected to life again, and He is not finished with us. The Christian life is to be lived. The Christian life is a process of becoming more like Jesus through the process of sanctification while we discover our purpose in Christ, which is to walk into the good works that the Lord has prepared for us. So while we have attained much with our covenant relationship with God that was established forever, When we put our faith in Christ, there is much more to discover and accomplish in our lives of faith. The Apostle Paul, who had accomplished much in his life as a disciple of Jesus, said in Philippians 3:12-14, not that I have already attained or am already perfected, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do: forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. So, as Christians, we are to keep reaching forward to those things which are ahead. In our walk with God. To answer the upward call of Christ, we are to keep going onward and upward as we seek to grow in spiritual maturity and to do good works for the kingdom of God and for his glory. Unfortunately, many of us grew up in liturgical traditions of Christianity, uh, and were exposed to a form of cultural Christianity. Where faith was viewed as a possession more than a process, a religion more than a relationship with God. In a religion, you perform certain rites to be a member of that religion, and there is a sense that once you meet the requirements of your faith tradition, you are "good." Once you meet the requirements of your religion, like baptism or confirmation, there is nothing more to do. In the tradition I grew up in, the rite of confirmation was often followed by a steep decline in church attendance. Once you were confirmed, you met "the minimum qualification of faith" that was required by the church, or at least that of your family's expectations. "Grandma wants you to be confirmed." Well, thank God for the grandmothers and grandfathers that required obedience to the precepts of of the church tradition, but unfortunately the emphasis on meeting religious requirements was often accompanied by a lack of discipleship and resulted in a next generation of practical atheists. We can't force people, even our family members, to have faith. We can't teach someone to have a personal relationship with God. As much as we can all gather together in a congregation for a worship service, our relationship with God is personal. It's one-on-one, and if you don't have a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus, where you know God and He knows you, no amount of religious duties performed or traditions adhered to are going to make you "good with God." While we can't see the hearts of men like God can, even we can observe that some members of our church seem to be going through the motions, or are utterly disengaged and bored with the worship service, and seem more filled with joy when they leave the house of worship than when they walk in. And it's a joy that is not necessarily a result of the pastor's edifying message or the worship team's performance, as it is a joy born from the freedom from God's presence to pursue worldly or selfish desires. The whole concept of viewing yourself as quote-unquote "good with God" for performing minimum requirements reveals an ignorant or immature faith that at best will result in a fruitless life of selfishness, or could result in a rude awakening when the Lord that they paid lip service to declares that even though they thought they were quote-unquote "good with God," they weren't with God at all, and that He never knew them. Unfortunately, many of us grew up in these church cultures where our relationship with God was like a game, where if we followed the rules for the most part, we would win. Unfortunately, many of us were raised up in families of spiritual infants who liked to play dress-up on Sunday mornings at church but never brought faith home, who were more childish than childlike in their faith. And who may have been playing make-believe more than believing and trusting in the Lord in a real and significant way. Because of my experience with the goings-on around the church building of my faith tradition, when I heard a message that proclaimed salvation through Jesus Christ alone, part of me was amazed at God's great love for us that didn't require us to jump through a bunch of religious hoops to be one with him. God only required that we leap into His grace through an act of surrendering to the Lordship of His beloved Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Even though I knew my salvation was assured, I didn't want to declare myself as "done here" in my relationship with God. I didn't want to leave the presence of such a kind, loving, and holy God. I had found the safety for my soul. And I wanted to bask in the wonders of its joy and to pursue the One who had pursued me all my life. In the process of seeking to know God more, and to know who I am in Christ, and in discovering how one could live in His presence and in His ways, I discovered that our faith wasn't a set of rules, it wasn't a game. Our faith is a relationship with the God of all creation who wants His love for us to pour out into our lives and into the lives of all we come in contact with. So, rejoice over the fact that your faith in Christ has made you "good with God," but long to stay in and to grow in the goodness of God by walking and talking with Him. We are good with God, but we are not done with Him, and neither is He done with us. Our life of faith, our relationship with God, is to be pursued. And it is not for His good that we pursue it, it is for ours and for all the lives that we can touch with the assurance that God is good all the time and all the time God is good. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verse is John 15:10. And it says, when you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father's commandments and remain in his love. Today's Bible verse encourages us to follow in Christ's example and how our harmonious relationship with God is maintained with obedience. Yesterday I shared a couple of verses from Deuteronomy on Facebook to encourage Bible study and to reveal God's revealed will for our lives and the reason why God calls us to obedience. Deuteronomy 10:13 says, "And to keep the commandments of the LORD and his statutes, which I command you today for your good." Here the LORD, speaking through Moses, informs the nation of Israel of the requirement of obedience to his commandments has a reason. Our obedience is for our good. Christ's words here tell us more about how our obedience to God's commandments are good for you. When we obey Christ's commandments, which contain all the wisdom of the Old Testament Law and Prophets and his simple instructions to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves, we remain in Christ's love. When we are obedient, we remain in harmony with God because we are doing his will on the earth. When we obey, our words, thoughts, and actions are representing God's kingdom and demonstrating our love for Him. When we obey the Lord, we have no guilt or shame and can have joy knowing that we have peace with God and are doing nothing to disrupt it. When you obey, you can rejoice in the transformation that the Lord has brought to your life and continue to experience the wonders of God's love. As much today as when you first believed. So feel the love of God and remain in it by walking in obedience to the commandments that are pure and holy and were written with your good in mind. 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 Clinton E. Arnold's Powers of Darkness. And today we start chapter 4, which is on Judaism, and, um, and it also includes a section called Demons and False Gods. And so if you want to read, uh, about what Judaism was like in the first century church when Paul was writing his epistles, um, check out today's resource. It'll It'll give you that context that can really help you understand where Paul was coming from and some of the things he said about the powers of darkness in his epistles. So go to mt4christ.org and check out the bottom of today's blog post to see that resource. As always, we share Christian resources in abundance on our, on our blog. We've, through the years that we've done it, we've shared lots, lots of books in their entirety on the, on the website. So if you wanted to research something of particular interest, if you go to the website, not necessarily on your phone, but if you go to the website, the desktop version of the website, there's lots of labels on our on our, on our main page to take you to different, different areas of interest and all the posts that are related to it. As always, I do encourage people to buy the resources we share to support the authors and their good work, and plus it's a lot more convenient to have them all. But if you use our blog as a daily practice, you'll be able to read entire books as you read our blog post. So that's why we do that. And why do we do that? Because we, we learned a lot in our journey of faith through the years, and a lot of it was hard-fought for wisdom and knowledge and a lot of study. And we encourage study of the Bible, particularly by sharing our Bible study that we do once a week with Arthur and Josephine Cotty, where, you know, Christians get together and talk about different, different topics and how, you know, God views those topics through the wisdom of His Word and how we are to deal with and how do we— how are we to live as Christians. You know, there's lots of areas of interest, but are they going to help you live a Christian life or are they just trivia? Yikes! And all of the information about our faith, our church history, and different points of doctrine and everything are worth studying, but in terms of application, sometimes you have to wonder if you're just collecting facts and figures about your faith rather than, you know, how I am going to be transformed by my faith. You know, how can I practice my faith and benefit myself and those in my lives from it? Will quoting church history necessarily help someone? It could if you can explain how it's helpful. So we make that push for application, and that comes through a life of discipleship, not only believing, you know, the things of the Bible, but to understand them and apply them to our lives. And so we, we provide instruction on basic Christian discipleship with our studies on, uh, from Dr. Neil Anderson, uh, for Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ, which are all available on the podcast and our YouTube channel for your edification. So we invite you to check those out, and we always invite, you know, As much as we invite you to check out our teachings, we invite you to enjoy your personal walk with the Lord because it's your relationship and your responsibility to pursue it. And so we encourage that. So I think that's enough for Thursday. Tonight I'll be enjoying my final session of the Men's Freedom in Christ discipleship group on Zoom. And that one's actually entitled "What's Next?" Why? Because there's always something new happening in our lives of faith. You know, what's happening? You had faith yesterday, are you gonna have faith today? And on and on it goes. So we always looked ahead and try to answer that upward call of Christ to live like him. And so we invite you to do that today. And we'll, although we have the day off today, It'll be filled with activity, I'm sure, as I try to figure out what to do with the day. But there's lots on the plate, so I won't be lacking for activity. Either household maintenance or work geared for preparation of ministry will be performed today by me. So I think we all need prayer every day, right? So let's do that. Lord God, Heavenly Father, we thank you for another day in your kingdom. We thank you for the riches of your your grace and the wonders of your love that you poured out into us by revealing to us the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that through faith alone we could be saved and be good with God. Um, but we, we realized, uh, in that reception of Christ as our Lord and Savior that you are good, and it's good to stay in your presence. So Lord, we pray today for everyone listening, um, that they stay in your presence, Lord. We pray for you to bless them through the answers of their prayers and for you to reveal yourself to them each and every day in a new, new way to draw them deeper into their purpose in Christ. Lord, we pray for you to go before us today as we go about travel and go about our business and go to work or whatever we have to do. We just pray for you to go before us, to open our eyes to the beauty of this world, to the wonders of, of, of our, our identity in Christ and our purpose in your kingdom, Lord. Um, so open our eyes, show us what we need to see, and, and, and direct our steps into the things you want us to walk in, Lord, because we need your help and guidance every day. And we, we deeply appreciate your presence, uh, in our lives to give us hope and joy and peace that doesn't, doesn't run out. So Lord, we thank you for allowing us to remain in your love and to experience your love on an ongoing and continual basis. And we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.