I Made It Through Today Purity 784

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 the setting sun dipping into a tree line on the horizon and the sky painted by its light comes to us from a friend who captured the scene last weekend while they were out for a drive. Our friend is walking out of— out their freedom from addiction and the shadows of their past by the light of the Lord's grace. They shared this pic and others on social media with the comments: Took a ride tonight, pulled over, couldn't help but take some pictures of some of the beautiful sky tonight. I had to take a deep breath and look down at my feet. Just know that everything is going to be okay. I made it through today. Well, it's Friday again, and as the sun sets on another work week, let's thank God it's Friday. And let's also thank him that because of him, we can have confidence that everything is going to be okay. As our friend can testify, when we walk with, with him, God can give us the strength to accomplish what we thought was impossible. God can give us the strength to make it through today and every day. It's, it's my sincere prayer that anyone hearing this message on the podcast or reading on the blog would know that God is real. God is alive. God calls us to come through— come, come, come to him through faith, uh, in Jesus Christ. And when we do that, we can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything is going to be okay, because through Christ we are forgiven of all our sins and are given a new and eternal life. The moment we say yes to the free gift of God's grace by making Jesus our Lord and Savior The Holy Spirit comes into our spirit and gives us a life of power and hope that we never had before. Ask me how I know. But the perplexing thing about God and us and the new relationship with him is that even though we have been made new, even though we have been set free, we may, uh, we may not fully understand or know it experientially. Experientially because of our ignorance of the word of God or because of our failure to apply its wisdom to our lives by living according to what it says. Hey, you can't blame somebody for not applying the wisdom to their life if they don't know it, right? And that's why I have great hope for this friend, because they appear to, to have been greatly affected by their new life in Christ, but they also appear to have decided to be as authentic authentic in their newfound faith as they can be, because they are practicing it through prayer and through learning the word, through their devotions, and by— not for nothing— crucifying the flesh by saying no to the ways they used to live. Right now, even though they may refuse the compliment, I would say they are living the life of a real Christian because they have appear to surrender themselves to, to God and are doing their best to seek out his wisdom and follow where he leads. That's the definition of a disciple, a learner who applies the knowledge of his teacher to his life. I would say our friend is on the path of Christian discipleship, or, you know, walking in the Spirit. As much as I am thrilled to see this transition happen and will eagerly cheer my friend on, from the sidelines, I know from my own experience and from having done recovery ministry for 5 years that our friend's victory and freedom will have, will have, will have a lot to do with their love for God, for the God who made them and saved them, and based on their commitment to follow him and walk in his ways. One of the verses that uh, was presented in the Christian Recovery materials that I taught from was 1 Corinthians 10:12, which says, "If you think you're standing strong, be careful not to fall." Uh, when we have a measure of success over our darkness, uh, we are wise to not let it go to our heads and to remember that it was only through, uh, the Lord's grace that we have been able to find this new life. And to be able to stand strong. Uh, like Peter walking on the water, if we take our eyes off of Christ, we will sink. The epistles are filled with encouragements to stay faithful to our calling to follow the Lord, indicating that our life in Christ isn't a done deal just because we said a prayer. Our new life in Christ is eternal. That means forever. We're going to be with God forever. So we don't have to sprint necessarily. We can take our time and learn what he has to teach us and slowly apply his ways to our lives. When we walk in the Spirit, we will experience the fruit of, of the fruit of the Spirit of love, peace, joy, goodness, faithfulness, kindness, gentleness, patience, and self-control. We follow the Lord and study his word and walk in his ways. In real life, like continuously, our minds will be renewed and our lives will be transformed. Like I said, the epistles are filled with the, with the spiritual truth about who we are in Christ and with encouragements to, to live out our faith. So we should read them and slowly but surely apply this knowledge to our, our sense of identity as I— as adopted children of God and to the way we live. For instance, I was reacquainted with this section of scripture in Ephesians, and I'm sharing it in the hope that it will encourage others like it encourages me. Ephesians 5:15-20 says, so be careful how you live. Don't live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don't act thoughtless Don't act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. Don't be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts. And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hey, this is Walking and Talking with God. It doesn't have to be complicated, but to avoid falling, we have to love the Lord and make the daily decision to seek his wisdom, seek his wisdom, strength, uh, and presence, and to walk in his ways. If you do that, you will discover that everything is going to be okay. You will discover you can make it through today. And you can make it through every day, one day at a time, all the way from here to eternity. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verse is Proverbs 23:4-5, and they say, don't wear yourself out trying to be— trying to get rich. Be wise enough to know when to quit. In the blink of an eye, wealth disappears. For it will sprout wings and fly away like an eagle. Today's Bible verse shares the wisdom that we should not wear ourselves out chasing after riches, and it speaks to the fact of how material wealth can disappear as if it— as if our cash can grow wings and fly away like an eagle. Haha! I simply have to— I simply love or you simply have to love, I don't know, the Word of God. Little did I know it, but I was being well-versed in biblical wisdom with my experiences on the earth. I specifically remember a time in my life when I lamented over trying to pay to support my family and have the lifestyle I wanted and said something to the effect that as soon as I get it, The money just flies out of my pockets. So yeah, money comes and money goes. We shouldn't wear ourselves out trying to be rich. We should be wise enough to know when to quit the striving for riches. But at the same time, we should avoid the extreme of jumping into poverty by quitting everything. Today's verse— verses are making a case for contentment, not homelessness. They are advising us to give us, to give up the pursuit of the lifestyles of the rich and famous that makes us wary, and instead to be happy with what we have. Wait a minute, you might say, that isn't in all those verses. You are correct, but that is why we have to study more than just, more of the Bible than just a couplet from Proverbs. As Christians, we should know what Christ and his apostles had to say about how to live. And, and for us Christians in this modern era, we can really streamline our search for wisdom by searching for Bible verses about blank on Google to help us to see what God's Word says on a topic. Contentment seems to be what today's verses teach, teach us, so I did a search contentment in the Bible, and the first result is an article titled "10 Key Bible Verses on Contentment." I'm sharing the link for it on today's blog. And not surprising to me, 9 of the 10 verses on contentment are from the New Testament. You know, Christ came to make things clear about the Word of God, what our relationship with God meant, and how we are supposed to live. Jesus' teachings were intended to give us wisdom and new life by explaining the principles that God established and were in the Old Testament. So know when to quit chasing after riches that will tire you out. Instead, pursue the rich wisdom in God's Word. The wealth we receive from God's Word is something that we can hold on to, and if we continue to seek, seek it, God's wisdom wisdom won't grow wings and fly away. As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org, that where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers in Christ with their walk. Uh, today we continue sharing from Clinton Arnold's Powers of Darkness, and today's heading, uh, is the supremacy of Christ. And The powers are Christ's captives. So that— this rounds out chapter 7 of Clinton Arnold's, um, Powers of Darkness. And it's, it's good news, you know, Christ is, um, victorious. And, uh, you know, the, the powers are his captives. So we have the— he has the— he's been given all the power, you know, as, as he said in his word Christ has been given all authority in heaven and on earth from, from the Father. So every, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess, even the spiritual forces of darkness, at the— when he comes back to earth. So we can, you know, we can know, you know, we can know that everything is going to be okay, but that is prefaced on our relationship with the Lord. Not only do we have to come to faith in Christ, but we benefit greatly when we follow him, you know. So that's why we, you know, recommend this, the Christian path of discipleship, as we say, which really just means, you know, following the Lord and living like a Christian. So we encourage you to do that. That's why we do the blog. That's why we do our podcast. Um, that's why we share the teachings we did back in 2021 at our local church. We recorded them and we present them on, on the podcast in our YouTube channel. And we did 3 classes for Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ. And, um, it's great material that's drawn from the word of God and the teachings of Dr. Neil Anderson to help explain, you know, who we are in Christ and, you know, what being a Christian is all about and how it's a spiritual reality that's with us every day, not just for an hour on Sunday. Like I said, it's all based on the Word of God. We highly revere the Word of God. We read a little bit of it every day and try to apply its wisdom to our lives the best we can, and we do that through Bible study. We, we also share a Bible study that we do once a week with Arthur and Susanna Zinkati. And if you want to check that out, that's on the blog, the podcast, and the YouTube channel, basically under the heading Bible Study with the Zinkatis. And last week we did the study on peace at any cost. And so if you want to hear us discuss that topic and what the word has to say about it and what we had to say about it Go to the blog and, well, the podcast and the YouTube channel and check them out. Um, it is Friday, um, but it's not a typical Friday for me because I have to work Saturday. But you know what, there's still joy, uh, in the fact that it's Friday, um, even though I have to work tomorrow, because this is the day the Lord has made and we will rejoice and be glad in it, as the word says. Um, You know, I can be happy for the people that do have the day off tomorrow. You know, they're going to be pretty psyched about today, um, and I could be psyched too because, uh, I'm gonna go and earn the money that's gonna help me to live the life I want to live, um, to support myself and my family, or, um, and accomplish the things I want to do, you know. And that's why we work, you know. The Lord, the Lord doesn't call us to be, you know, in poverty. He doesn't call us to be super rich. He calls us to contentment. And that's why we shared that link to that article today. If you want to check it out and see the 10 verses on contentment, you'll see that that's what really God wants for us. So let's try to be content with what we have. We've been given everything. Through Christ. We've been given life and life more abundantly. We've been given the promise and hope of heaven. But more than that, we can— we've been given the, the fruit of the Spirit. If we would just walk in the Spirit, we can experience it. So that's, that's the beauty of our faith, is that it's not just some set of theological truths or a set of rules. But it's a combination of truth and wisdom that we're to apply to our lives to obey the Lord. To rep— you know, why do we obey him? So we'll do what's pleasing to him and we'll represent him here on the earth. So it's my prayer that, you know, whoever's listening to this will, uh, you know, keep, keep walking and talking with God. It doesn't have to be complicated. Just keep going and don't rush after it. It's a walk. So walk after it one day at a time, little by little, bit by bit. Let the Word renew your mind. Let it renew your heart. You know, part of that, those verses in Ephesians was to sing songs. What's that? That's praising the Lord, you know, in song, saying thank you, God. You know, it was all about thanksgiving and praising and worshiping the Lord. So a lot of us do that in a local church, but we can do that all the time. Christian radio is a thing, podcasts are a thing, and, you know, Christian playlists are a thing. So, you know, let music that reveres the Lord and praises the Lord be on your— on your iPhone or on your Android phone. And You know, make it part of your soundtrack of how you live your life, and you'll be continuously giving praise to the Lord, reminding who you're— who you yourself of who you are in Christ, and giving you motivation to, to keep walking. You know, um, that's how we do this. Um, it took a long time to discover it, and, uh, the world will reject you and, and tell you not to live that way. But I'm here to tell you, brothers and sisters, that this is the way of peace. And guess what? It wasn't the way I found it. It was what the Word told us to do all along. We would simply obey it and follow it. Um, follow what Jesus told us. Life is good. Um, life is wonderful. So I pray that you're experiencing that, and, uh, and don't forget, this is, this is your life. And so you, you live out your faith, you pray, you study the word, you apply it to your life, and watch, watch, watch the man in the mirror— man or woman in the mirror— change. And watch your heart turn from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh that knows how to love. It's all good. Anyway, um, you know, what do we do as Christians? We pray. So let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Thank you for the positive testimony of our friend who's walking the walk and talking the talk. And we just pray for you to be with him as he goes, goes forward, Lord. And we pray for all of the people listening today, Lord, and their struggles and their walk of faith, whatever they might be facing. We have friends who are, you know, friends and family who are suffering financial problems or health issues. And Lord, we pray them today. And we pray for the prayer request of everyone who might be tuning in to this podcast whenever they might hear it, because it's being recorded today on July 15th, 2022. But we know, Lord, that your, your, your word works at all times in all seasons. So we hope this, this word of faith goes forward and encourages other people to keep going. Um, we thank you, Lord. We praise you, and we just pray for you to go before us today and, uh, to open our eyes to the beauty of this world and what you've done in our lives, and to lead us in the way we should go. All these things we pray in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.