Jesus’ Revolutionary Way of Living - Discovering New Levels of Freedom - Purity 1182

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.org or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Good morning. Today's painting of an autumn forest pathway comes to us from Phyllis Seguin, who shared a photo of her finished work of art on social media a couple of days ago and generously gave me permission to share it on the blog. Thank you, Phyllis. Well, it's Thursday, and it has been my habit to share photos of pathways as a visual encouragement or reminder to get on or to stay on on the path of Christian discipleship. And I thought sharing Phyllis's beautiful fall painting of a pathway through the woods could meet that purpose and simultaneously give honor to Phyllis for her artistic talents. About a year ago, Phyllis led members of her family through a paint and sip activity, and I was the only male member of the family to give painting a try. It was the first time I had ever done anything like that, I was glad I stepped out of my comfort zone and was pleased with the results, as that dark full moon scene painting is currently hanging in my bedroom in my place down by the river. That experience, along with many others I have had since putting my faith in Jesus Christ, demonstrates the great benefits that can— we can experience when we step out in faith and try something new. The old adage of you can't teach an old dog new tricks may have an abundance of evidence to support it, but the exceptions prove that saying to be a lie. I'm not sure about dogs. Maybe we don't have the patience to train them or retrain them properly. Shots fired. But I know that people can change, can change, usually for the worst, unless of course, uh, they allow the Lord to transform them into the people he created them to be. Last night I led another meeting of the Celebrate Freedom growth group at Starpoint Church, and although we had a lot of shows due to illness and other obligations, I was reminded of the, of the value of giving people a place to be able to honestly report on the activities of their lives and to be given an environment in which they can ask God for help and receive support as they choose to make a change with the way they live their lives. As a leader of a group like this, I reap the benefits of watching people discover that the Lord is alive and well and encouraging them to experience their freedom. As people report on receiving new insights and new levels of peace, patience, joy, or self-control, I assure them that these things have been found because they decided to trust God and seek to live a good and righteous life. By choosing to trust God to take them out of the darkness, the Holy Spirit turns the lights on, illuminating truth and filling their lives with the fruit of the Spirit, I point out that what they are experiencing is God working in their lives, and I encourage them to keep following the path they have started on, because if they keep on, quote-unquote, "walking and talking with God," they will progress and grow day by day and eventually realize that they and their lives have been transformed. It is a blessing to be able to encourage people to discover their identity and freedom in Christ As a leader, I also have to realize that my value or worth doesn't depend on the weekly meeting attendance or the progress of the people in the group. I can't fix anyone or make anyone have faith, so I have to be content just to speak the truth in love and trust that the Lord will move in the lives of those who choose to follow him. It's quite simple. If you earnestly follow him, renew your mind, and seek to do his will with how you live your life, you will be changed. If you hold back or refuse to agree with what God says in some area or other, or set a limit on what you are willing to do in following the Lord, or simply decide to stop following Him, you will not be changed. Those who think that there is nothing more to change or to grow in often end up going astray and losing the freedom they had. So seek the Lord, love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and strength, and don't stop surrendering yourself to following his will for your life. Make no mistake, following Jesus is a revolutionary pathway. Accepting Jesus's way is accepting a different way of living, the way of truth and love. His light exposes the world's lies, corruption, and hypocrisy. It exposes just how blind we were to it all. And the revelations we receive when we choose to follow Jesus are progressive. We see more and more of the truth about the world, about ourselves, and about God as we go. In my testimony, I progressed from an agnostic/atheist/Eastern mysticism practicing unbelieving addict to a believer. Then a follower, then a sober follower, and then a sexually pure sober follower. And now I have taken on my food addiction earnestly in such a way where, unlike in the past where I would yo-yo back in my weight and dive back into binge eating and overeating in general, I feel that I have been given a new opportunity to remain free and to progress further into physical personal physical health than I have ever gone before. I see the sin of not taking care of my body, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and I see the lies of calling evil what is good in terms of food. I see how comfort food doesn't provide comfort. I see how the foods I thought of as good are not good, not just intellectually but on an experiential basis. Recently, I told my accounting— accountability partner that I had quote unquote cracked the code of my food addiction because I've discovered the foods that I can eat on a regular basis that satisfy me and that don't leave me feeling bloated, guilty, or heavy. I know the costs of food, of the foods I choose, and the cost of not monitoring what I eat. The awareness of what I eat and how much I eat and how it affects me has been somewhat of a breakthrough. And even though I could have probably told you how I quote-unquote knew these things in the past, this time it feels like I have the option of not forgetting and going back into the darkness of a lifestyle that is defined by guilt, shame, and obesity. I have been walking down a pathway of increasing peace, joy, and physical health and it looks like I can choose to stay on it, and that's what I intend to do. It seems only fitting that the guy who was leading a small group that encourages change and growth will experience it for himself. I have to be honest, because, because of some of the disappointments I encouraged with recovery ministry in the past, I had more or less confessed that I was done with recovery ministry. And I suppose with the blend of discipleship/freedom prayer ministry techniques I try to bring to the table at Celebrate Freedom I guess you could say I am done with recovery ministry. But apparently the, the Lord knew I wasn't done with the recovery yet. I still had battles to fight. I still had victories to win. He had more freedom for me to experience. And here I am in the best physical shape I have ever been in, in my life, uh, because I was willing to lead the charge toward freedom. Only to discover I was also called to take on a new challenge to experience a new level of freedom, peace, and joy for myself. So don't believe the world's lie that you can't change. While there may be some truth to the adage that people don't change, the higher truth is that God can transform people when they put their faith in Jesus, receive a new life, and choose to follow him to experience it. So don't follow me, follow Jesus, and see just how much freedom, victory, truth, peace, and joy he has waiting for you on the pathway he invites you to take. Today's Bible 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 bitterness, resentment, and hate And the verses we're sharing today are Matthew 5:43-48 from the English Standard Version. The word of God says, and this is Jesus speaking, so the word, the living word says, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate yourself, hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends his rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Is perfect. Today's verses fall under the 11th point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on bitterness, resentment, and hate. And that 11th point is: Jesus commands us not to hate our enemies, but love them and pray for them. Today's verses display the revolutionary ways of thinking that Jesus invites us to consider and to apply to our lives. Love your enemies. Talk about a paradox. Jesus calls us to follow him in his pathways of peace, and the only way it is possible is through knowing him. Only when we have come to faith in Jesus can we experience the peace of being forgiven and being reconciled to God. It is only with this eternal insight can we see this true state of our enemy. As not someone to be hated, but as someone who is much like us in our broken state and who is to be pitied, prayed for, and showed compassion. In Luke 22:34, Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do," when he was being crucified. Christ's compassion shows that he understands that evil is ignorance of reality. If we realized the evil of what we do, we would repent. And so we are called to love where there is hate. We are to forgive where there is offense. And we are to pray for the ones who seem to have no hope. I don't know about you, but I considered myself to be spiritually hopeless, a sinner on the highway to hell who was unwilling and incapable of change. But the Lord knew that even the likes of me only needed to know him to see the truth of his love, and to see the truth of his love, to be changed. So love your enemies and pray for— pray that they too will see the light and one day become a member of our heavenly family. And as they see the error of their wicked ways and put their faith in Jesus. As always, I invite all to go to mtforchrist.org where I 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 as we begin sharing from chapter 32, Honoring the Spirit. So if you want to read the introduction to that section, uh, from A.W. Pink's book, go to mtforchrist.org and you'll see that resource at the end of today's blog post. As always, we encourage a lifestyle of Christian discipleship. And also at the end of today's blog post, you'll see a message saying join the Victory Over the Darkness, the Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ series of discipleship classes via the M.t. for Christ 24/7 podcast. Those teachings are all based on the word of God and the, the writings of Dr. Neil Anderson of Freedom in Christ ministries. They were life transformative for me somewhere along that recovery pathway, and I became, you know, forever changed through the Steps to Freedom in Christ and, you know, experienced a new level of freedom because I had some measure of freedom. That's the good thing about our freedom in Christ, it can increase in different areas in different ways. But after I got my freedom, I said, you know what, I got to share this message of freedom. People don't know this, and that's why we do the blog, to encourage people that a Christian life that's lived 24/7 is possible, and it's a good thing. It's not, it's not a chore, it's not an obligation, it's the abundant life that Christ called us to. But, and it You know, I'm challenging, you know, the point of the podcast is to challenge people to believe this. It's not, you know, your religion, you know, this thing that we have with Christ is not necessarily grandparents' faith. You know, it's similar, you know, depending on your grandparents, I guess. But, you know, your faith has to be personal and you're supposed to follow. And the more you surrender to the Lord, the more you experience the fruit of the Spirit when you walk in the Spirit. So we encourage you to, you know, test it and go follow, follow the Lord into what he would have you do. His truth will expose the wickedness of your ways and the subtle evil that permeates this world system. Things that we think of harmless are not harmless. Things that we think are good is actually evil. But we don't know it until we come in line with his truth from, you know, that's laid out in the Bible quite clearly. And, uh, you know, more than a mental ascent, we're gonna have to have an experiential knowledge of that. And that's possible when we walk in the Spirit. The Lord gives us these revelations and these insights and gives us the power to overcome and change when we walk with him. So we encourage that and Even though we have to work regular jobs, we can do this. And that's what I have to do this morning, as it's another day in the life of, uh, you know, somebody who has to, you know, work a job to support himself. So we do that, and we do it gladly. We know many people who are not blessed with the ability to work and who would be very happy to work, and so we, we go into work content and, you know, expectant to do the best job we can to represent the Lord, you know, as best as we can. You know, that's all we want to do. So let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the freedom we found in you. We thank you for your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, who died to save us, who washed away our sins. And gave us life everlasting, uh, when we put our faith in him. Thank you for the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit that illuminates truth and guides us into all truth, and who causes us to do what is right, uh, when we decide to walk in the Spirit. Lord, we pray for anyone who's reading or listening to this message. We pray for them to be blessed, for you to come alongside them in their prayer request, and to guide them in their walk of faith. We all need your help, and we're asking for that for ourselves too, as we would love for you to go before us today. Lord, open our eyes to the things you want us to see and move our steps in the way we should go. Lord, you're, you're Sovereign God, so we know everything that happens is, is under you. And, uh, Lord, we just pray for that you, you arrange things so we do things skillfully today. To follow your will for our lives. And, uh, Lord, we just need your help, so please give it. And, uh, Lord, we just want to represent you, and we need all the help we can do with that. So we pray that for myself and everyone out there today. Well, we just, um, we thank you, we praise you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.