In My Room 28 Day Joy Challenge – Day 16 – Purity 1072

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 sun shining through the treetops over an unknown trail comes to us, to a currently unknown Facebook friend who shared this scene on social media back on June 3rd, causing me to save it to my phone's photo archive. Well, despite my short investigation of the usual suspects, our Facebook photographer remains a mystery. So if this beauty belongs to you and you would like me to give credit where credit is due, give me a heads up and I will update the blog after the fact to let everyone know who was fortunate enough to capture this slice of heaven that I have taken the liberty of calling Sunshine Along the Path. So there. Well, it's Monday again, and while even though I have to go back to work and won't be able to go hiking along some wilderness path, I was happy to find this sunny view after this past weekend's less than sunny weather. But I enjoyed my time off all the same because I have learned the fine art of finding peace and joy in my life that is more a product of walking in the spirit spirit rather than manipulating things and walking into favorable circumstances. Recent circumstances and this past weekend's weather have demonstrated that there is some truth to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's quote of, "Into each life some rain must fall, some days must be dark and dreary." But I choose to remember the words of Christ in John 16:33, where Jesus assured us of the peace that was available through him. He said, "These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." In Christ, we can have peace and joy regardless of our circumstances, and when we look at life through this perspective, we can find beauty in the most unlikely of places. And that brings us to our current series where I'm walking through the 28-Day Joy Challenge because we are encouraging ourselves and others— you— to find peace in our lives by increasing our capacity for joy and by building our emotional resilience through simple practices of quieting and appreciation. The 28-Day Joy Challenge is based on Dr. Marcus Warner and Chris Courcy's latest book, The The Four Habits of Joy-Filled People, and you can sign up to take it for free and purchase a variety of books from Warner and Cursey on the topic of joy by going to fourhabits.org. So let's jump into Day 16, which will direct us to look at something beautiful and to savor the moment. And so the 28-day challenge says, Day 16: Savor the moment. Welcome to Day 16 of the 28 Days to Joy Challenge. Today's encouragement: Do you ever find it hard to see the good and beautiful things in life? The good news is that by practicing with us, you are training your brain to more naturally seek out things to enjoy and appreciate. Just like looking at a field and focusing on the flowers, we can enjoy instead of the bees that can sting us, we learn to notice joy when it crosses our path. Enjoy stopping to smell the roses with us today. Today's practice, Exercise 16. Today we practice looking for beauty and appreciation around us. How this exercise will benefit you: increasing our joy trains our brains to look for good things in life and relationships. As you create a strong feeling of appreciation in yourself or others, you will reduce unpleasant mind states and stress. Exercise steps: Find a comfortable place to sit where you can look at something beautiful. It may be in nature, like a sunset, a tree, or water. It may be something in your immediate environment, like a piece of furniture or the decor. Focus on what you enjoy about this moment. Share your thoughts with a friend or family member. Have fun with this exercise. We pick up tomorrow with more joy practice. And that's from our friends from 4habits.org. And so, okay, I sat down to today's— to do today's joy practice with absolutely no idea of what I was in for. And after reading the instructions, I was a little disturbed that I didn't know what I was going to look at. It's instruction to look at something beautiful and nature made me think of taking the practice outside for a moment, but I quickly dismissed that idea as impractical. I didn't know what the weather was like outside when I sat down to practice, but I know it would have been cold and dark, and I was not about— I was not up for taking this practice outdoors. So I consider the other suggestion to look at a piece of furniture or the decor of my immediate surroundings, but didn't really think that anything I was looking at was necessarily necessarily aesthetically pleasing, so I was at a loss of what beautiful thing I was going to look at. I thought about looking at a photo on my phone but thought that would be cheating for some reason and looked around the room again. My eye caught the David Jeremiah calendar over, over my desk and the mountain scene that was on display for the month of June that features a waterfall and a multicolored sky and that has the caption "Faith that Trusts" and thought about focusing on that. Well, my car keys are hanging on the hook that holds it and they were obscuring my view. After considering it for a few seconds, I gave up. As I was sitting there about to give up on seeing anything beautiful, something amazing happened. My mind and my heart moved to appreciation of the room itself. I do love my place down by the river and I spend quite a bit of time in this room and so my perspective shifted to see the beauty of the place that was not based on something— some beautiful circumstances of the place. And instead, my mind focused on the meaning behind what I saw in my humble bedroom. The room itself represents freedom, independence, and peace. I'm safe here. I can rest here. I can work here. And then I consider my furniture, and I realize that the hodgepodge collection of used furniture in my room were all pieces that represented different relationships and chapters from my life. The bed frame was from my deceased ex-mother-in-law's bed frame, originally a light purple, repainted black when I prepared for my new life to make it my own post-divorce. The dresser was my maternal grandfather Zippy's. The dining room cabinet that has become a bookcase was my paternal grandfather's and grandparents, uh, Matt and Mabel's. The humble assemble-it-yourself bookcase was purchased and assembled by me during my college days. The nightstand is all that remains from my childhood bedroom. The desk was from my ex-mother-in-law. It was my ex-mother-in-law's Aunt Helen, used by my stepdaughter Janet for a time, and became the family desk after the move to Craryville, and mine after the divorce. The Emerge office chair was a first Christmas gift from my wife Tammy Lynn, and the blue sitting chair was a freebie from a hotel that closed that was carried out for me by Mike, a volunteer for my father-in-law's charity Adopt a Soldier. So although I wouldn't say that any individual piece or the overall decor of my room would be considered beautiful, I realized that it would— that it as a whole was a mosaic of my life and the story of how the Lord put all these old shabby pieces together to make something precious to me. So I sat and I basked in the beauty of what the Lord has done in my life, in the love past, lost, and present that I have known. So I felt really good to see the forest for the trees, to see the beauty of my life as a whole that went beyond the individual pieces. I have found peace and joy because the Lord has led me here and he has worked all things together for good. So what about you? Uh, what beautiful thing do you have in your life that you can appreciate Apparently beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes the story or relationships behind the things that surround us give them a meaning and a beauty that is unseen by others. Even though they may be common to others, they are beautiful to us. So look at the beautiful things around you, appreciate them, and realize just how beautiful your life is when you consider how all the pieces have come together to make your own masterpiece. As always, I invite— well, no, I always jump to that, or not always, I occasionally jump to that. But today's Bible verse comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verse is Matthew 11:28, and it says Take, uh, let's see. Then Jesus said, come to me, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. I am short on time today, so I will say this. My room may be comfy, but no matter, no matter how much sleep or relaxation I could find there, without a covenant relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ, I would never know rest. The Prince of Peace gives us peace, forgiveness, and a new life. We are— we no longer need to fear death or condemnation. That is, that is the rest that Jesus, only Jesus, can give us and that we all desperately need. 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 today's section from chapter 9 is on the work— it's on the work of the Spirit, and it's about the Spirit's operation in the elect. It's a shorter section, and I would say, you know, I haven't read it, but I would say the Spirit's operation in the elect is: A, we get saved, we get moved to you know, make Jesus our Lord and Savior because of the Holy Spirit, uh, moving. And, uh, we get, uh, moved to, you know, follow Jesus, to, to be sanctified. Um, you know, that's two of the things that come to my mind. Uh, as for what A.W. Pink had to say about it, you have to go to mtforchrist.org to check that out. Well, as always, we recommend a walk in the Spirit. It's this perspective shift. It's a new life. We have the new life in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit lives in us, but we still have to choose to follow, to choose to live on this, to live on the spiritual plane with God by interacting with him. And we do that through a daily, you know, daily spiritual practice of resting. You know, solitude can play into it, being by yourself, enjoying nature. You know, reading the Bible is always good. You get the word of the Lord, his wisdom, his word for you. Prayer— you get to talk to the Lord. And from just doing what's right, you know, to be moved by the Spirit to do, to be compassionate, to, to do good works. This, this defines our life, and it's wide open. So it can be, you know, your life might look a whole lot different from mine, but it should have some common spiritual disciplines in it, I would I think. Otherwise, you know, it's a little unbalanced. We need to have balance. You know, it's not all prayer, it's not all Bible study, it's not all good works, it's not all just, you know, serving the church, not all ministry. It's this huge mosaic of, of, of all those pieces put together differently, designed by you and God as he moves you. So that's the life we try to um, you know, encourage people to walk into, to know their— know who they are in Christ and experience their freedom in Christ. If you don't know what that's like, we suggest you check out our discipleship classes that we put on the podcast or our YouTube channel for Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ. It can help you alleviate any spiritual personal conflicts, and we found them extremely profitable in our life. So, um, you know, the work is, is Dr. Neil Anderson's, based on the word of God. So we point to that because we found it helpful and we, we taught it. So, um, there you go. We also recommend Bible study. And if you don't have a formal Bible study to share the word of God with other, other people, we, we offer a Bible study, um, you know, through this podcast. It's called Bible Study with the Sencatis, and we did one yesterday on reconciliation. There were some technical difficulties, but we, we, uh, we managed to carry on, and that, that episode is available now on YouTube and our podcast. We're running out of time, so rather than just plug away at what we've done, we— let's pray because we have a new day ahead of us and new things to do. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you for all that you've done in our lives and how you've brought all these pieces together to give us a new life of freedom and peace and joy. Um, and it all be— and it all came through you, um, as we decided, you know, just to follow, um, the call that you put on our lives to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior and to, to just agree with you, um, that your way is best and, uh, to follow what the word of God says, and to follow the leadings of the Spirit in our lives. Lord, we pray for anyone who might be listening or reading this message today, that you would come alongside them and their prayer request and help them to see the beauty in their lives, um, and to make the decision to follow you in spirit and in truth. And, um, Lord, we just pray for you to go before all of us today, me included, uh, to show us what you want us to see, to see those, uh, beautiful things in this world, and, you know, practically to see the things we need to know. Oh, watch out for that. Um, well, we need as much, you know, guidance and support and strength that you can give us today. Um, so we'll take it, and we're asking for it humbly. Lord, um, lead us in the way we should go today and show us the things we need to do, because all we want to do is represent you in your kingdom. The world's tired of, of, uh, the hypocrites, um, who say, who say one thing and do another. And Lord, we don't want to be that. So show our hearts, you know, how we can be more authentic in our faith, um, and help us to walk it towards that and to claim new ground of victory and freedom in our lives, um, as we want to surrender everything to you for your glory. Uh, Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you. We pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.