Last Call Before Mourning – Purity 757

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.org or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Just one comment before I start. You know, sometimes, you know, I sit down to write these things and I don't know where they're gonna go. I had a different message in mind and then, you know, the testimony takes over. So here we go. You know, I had a whole theme, I was gonna do all these different things, and I start writing and here we are. Good morning. Today's photo of a group of palm trees under a 4 PM sun comes to us from a friend who recently visited the shores of Kahekili Beach in Kanapali, Hawaii. Our friend enjoys snorkeling there and decided to scatter some of the ashes of their beloved grandmother 25 yards off the beach between these palm trees in one of the most breathtaking views on the island. Island of Maui to honor her memory. So now they can visit her every year, and if, if we ever visit Maui, our friend invites us to visit her too. Deciding on— deciding what to do with the ashes of our departed loved ones is a highly personal decision. When my ex-wife's mother died, my family took a trip to the Southwest and spread her ashes in a couple of undisclosed locations in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. Because Mary had deep affections for those areas of the United States and had vague plans to retire there someday. So we honored her memory with the trip and released her ashes to the desert winds to mingle her ashes with the sands that she loved. The spreading of ashes was our way of honoring her wishes, and it was a way of saying goodbye to her. Our relationship with her, although it hasn't ended, has changed. Our relationship with her lives on in our memories, of course, but the spiritual reality of life beyond the grave indicates that we very well may see her again. As far as the departed go, we may not always know if they have a saving relationship with the Lord, but in Mary's case, I can testify that even though she was far from perfect—quite far, actually—I can state When push came to shove and when things were serious concerning the state of her health and the uncertainty of the length of her life, Mary named Jesus as her Lord and Savior. And as funny as it sounds, Mary's health crisis that eventually led to her death was one of those timestamps of my entrance into God's kingdom. In 2010, Mary suffered a ruptured ulcer and had to section— had to remove a section of her— had a section of her intestines removed. The doctors tried to put her back together, but her wounds never really healed. And after a subsequent surgery to put her back together again, after 18 months of being in the hospital, the pain and trauma of that surgery caused Mary to decide to give up the fight and let nature take its course. But before the end, there was a beginning. Mary was in the ICU after her rupture, and I was a full-fledged practicing Buddhist at the time and working construction as part of the splicing crew. I did a lot of flagging of traffic in those days. After Mary's admittance in the hospital, I looked up some Buddhist medicine chants/prayers, I guess, and while I would flag traffic at work, I would speak those unintelligible words and phrases in hopes that their utterances would somehow result in good karma and heal my mother-in-law. I know, they didn't work. Surprise. Oof. So that is the environment in which the Lord decided to come into my life and pull me out of the darkness. Doing Buddhist medicine chants in the morning. I got saved by a Christian gospel radio message in the afternoon of March 19, 2010. But I believe I wasn't the only one the Lord had in mind when he brought me into his grace. So, full-fledged Buddhist gets saved, and his mother-in-law is in the hospital, and it's not clear if she will live or die. Uh, so what do you do? You try to save her too. So sometime after my salvation, I went to my mother-in-law's hospital room and led her through a sinner's prayer to confirm that Jesus was her Lord and Savior. My ex-wife, who had the dubious pleasure of watching the shifting winds of change of her husband's life and personality throughout the years, thought I was absolutely insane, I think, and she wasn't happy about my newfound faith in Christ and my status as a self-proclaimed born-again Christian, as evidenced by her eventual divorce. But it was desperate times with her mom, and even though she didn't quite know what to make of what happened to me, Michelle didn't try to stop me when I told her I wanted to pray with her mother. Mary was a mess. Her hospitalization had done a number on her, and when I sat before her to pray, her voice was a dry, almost soundless whisper, but she was fully conscious and relatively normal after her extended stay and release from the ICU. So she was fully awake and in her right mind, as far as Mary went anyway. Shots fired! What? Um, I kid. Uh, if you knew Mary Sapp, uh, you know what I'm talking about. Um, Mary was an ultra-liberal feminist and protesting champion for almost any disenfranchised group or cause, but she didn't— she did have a semblance of Christian faith as an Episcopalian and even served on the vestry of her Episcopalian church. Before we anoint her Saint Mary, though, let me be clear that it was a liberal church. I was liberal. I went there before walking away from Christianity. The reverends there were good servants of the church. I always enjoyed the liturgical service they performed and the messages they delivered. But Reverend Keith and Reverend Bob were gay. Yup, not like flamboyantly gay, but cohabitating life partner quasi-closeted gay. So yeah, I was married by a gay minister. Wide and deep were the errors of my former existence. So after coming to faith in Christ and understanding that church membership, no matter liberal or conservative, was enough to say, you know, was enough to save you, I wanted to make sure that my mother-in-law was specific in naming Jesus as her Lord and Savior. It is by grace alone and through faith alone in Christ that we are saved. And with Mary's life in question, I wanted to make sure she was in the kingdom. So I sat down in front of Mary and explained that I had put my faith in Jesus Christ and and that I wanted to lead her through a prayer to make Jesus her Lord and Savior. Much to my surprise, she didn't object or smirk, but wholeheartedly, enthusiastically agreed to be led through the Sinner's Prayer. Even though her voice was a whisper, Mary prayed the prayer to forgive— to be forgiven of her sins and that proclaimed Jesus as the Lord and Savior of her life. So when it comes to her eternal destiny, even though it's hard to imagine considering her past, I believe that Mary put her faith where she needed to, in Christ alone, and that she has been saved from God's wrath and is in his kingdom now. After my salvation, I couldn't just assume Mary's, uh, service on the vestry of her liberal Episcopal church meant she had faith in Jesus. Even though I didn't know the scripture verses at the time, I had Romans 10:9-13 in mind that tell us that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture says, whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon him. For whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. In a hospital room with tubes, scars, and a raspy voice that was only above a, you know, only above that of a whisper, Mary Sapp called on the name of the Lord. And because the word says it, I believe she was saved by the Lord's mercy and grace. So as we begin the second day of the work week, keep walking and talking with God. And let's be clear, and let's be specific in who we believe in, and make our loved ones know about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and clear up any misconceptions they may hold about being a good person or having their good works outweigh their bad works. And let them know that salvation and the forgiveness of sins only comes by faith in Christ alone. And let's be bold to encourage our friends, family, and anyone else to call on the name of Jesus as Lord and Savior to be saved. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verse is 1 Peter 1:22, and it says, "You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth. So now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart." Today's Bible verse reminds us of what, what happened at our salvation and the obligation of love that comes with it. Yeah, and the Bible verse clearly states that we were cleansed from our sins, cleansed from our sins when we obeyed the truth. The truth, of course, being that Christ is Lord and Savior. Um, so now, uh, the verse, you know, the verse also says that we must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters, as we are called to love each other deeply with all our hearts. As my testimony stated, we may be called to love difficult people and be called to make sure they are indeed our brothers and sisters in the faith. The greatest act of love, as demonstrated by Christ, is to save that which is lost, to save someone's life. So if we are unclear about someone's salvation, or if we know that they are not in the body of Christ, we must show our love for them by praying for their salvation and by delivering the good news and encouraging their reception of God's free gift. But we are also called to not stop there. We are, we are to love our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ after they are saved too. And that could be difficult. If you ever wondered where you could learn to be faithful, kind, gentle, forgiving, loving, and patient, wonder no more. The place where you can learn to practice those characteristics of a mature Christian is the local church. People are people, and just because we are all saints the moment we put our faith in Jesus doesn't mean we will always act like saints. So the local church is where we can develop godly friendships and relationships that will require the application of our faith. If we love our brothers and sisters, we will be patient with them. We will be kind. We will be faithful in our dealings with them. We will be gentle in our interactions. We will undoubtedly be called to forgive from time to time, and all of that will strengthen our patience. So if you don't attend church, you should. It is the body— it is in the body of Christ where we can grow as Christians. And if we are not taking a chance and putting ourselves out there to show the love of God, we won't grow into the person God would call us to be. It is because of God's love that we will live. And so we should share that love and grow in that love as part of our purpose to be more like him. 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, um, Today the section we're sharing basically looks at some of those, some of those portions of Scripture where magic and, and magic and other things are— well, magic is highlighted really. The sections today examine Simon the Magician in Acts 8, Jewish Magician and the False Prophet in Acts 13, and the Spirit of Divination in Acts 16. I love Clinton Arnold's examination of the scriptures to show what these passages were talking about. It describes the text and the culture that lies behind the text, what was happening in that first century when Paul was having these interactions with these different individuals that were documented in the book of Acts. And so, and it shows, you know, the truth of the spiritual reality of this, of the powers of darkness. And it's interesting. I was just reading some of it last night. It was like, wow. So if you want to see what I'm talking about and see what Clinton Arnold's writing about, go to emptyforchrist.org and you'll see that excerpt from from Clinton Arnold's book in the bottom of today's blog post. So that's that. And as always, we encourage people to walk in their faith. And if you walk in your faith, your testimonial will keep on going. You know, our faith is an active faith. It's not about going to a church building once a week. It's about living it out and having interactions with our loved ones And then you get to retell the story when the Lord puts it on your heart. And, uh, you know, and then your testimony goes on, their testimony goes on, and on and on and on it goes. So we keep walking in faith and the power of the Holy Spirit and watch, watch him, his work be done by him. Um, we just get to be witnesses and, and be faithful. To proclaim that God is real, God is alive, and it's through faith in Christ alone that we're saved, and that faith has power, and it has the power to change hearts and minds and save souls. So we got to use that power. So what is he talking about? How do you do this? How do you do this thing as a Christian? Well, um, to try to help, we share our teachings from our discipleship classes for Power for Power. Basically, the 3 classes that we did in 2021 were Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ. They're available on the podcast and our YouTube channel for your listening enjoyment. So we hope— they're based on the Word of God and the work of Dr. Neil Anderson. We hope that you utilize those to help you grow in your faith. We also encourage Bible study. We read some today that we were going to share, but, uh, that got sidetracked. Um, so I guess you have to do your own Bible study. But if you want to be part of our Bible study, we do a Bible study discussion each week with Arthur and Susanna Sincotti. We share those on our podcast and our YouTube channel. So if you wanted to take part in a Bible study by just sitting in You can listen to the topical discussions that we have each week. And so we invite you to do that. And obviously I invite people— the basics of Christian discipleship. Here we go. Tell the truth, you know, worship the Lord, and, you know, read your Bible and pray. And I would say do that every day. In some way. And like I said, your prayer life should be, you know, you living in the context of God, living in his presence all the time. How do you do that? You turn to him and talk to him. Wow, Lord, I can't believe this. Lord, help me do this. Our Father— you know how many Our Fathers are set at the top of telephone poles? Quite a few, I can tell you. To give me strength and patience, uh, just to calm my spirit, to calm my soul sometimes in the precarious situations that I might face aloft or on the ground. I, I just sometimes just say the Lord's Prayer, you know. Talk about childlike faith. Anyway, um, that's what we encourage, a life of faith. So it's Tuesday, let's go out and get it. Um, and let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, thank you for bringing the remembrance a time in my life where I was faithful, and, uh, and, and, and just that small act, um, was rewarded with, um, with, with someone else, uh, agreeing, uh, you know, agreeing to make you Lord and Savior. And, uh, I'm not going to claim my part in their salvation, Lord, because we know you're the one who moves hearts and minds. Um, but we thank you for, for that remembrance. We thank you for Mary's Mary's testimony and how it's become my part of my testimony. Um, and Lord, we just thank you for all the people in our lives, the people listening today, because today these words will go out and they become part of their story, um, and they can share it and they can, and they can, you know, they could go on and, and, and have a story of their own. Lord, and how we're all tied together through our Savior Jesus, and, and how that we're never alone because we always have you and we, we always have each other, even if it's just remembering someone's testimony, someone's story, someone's example of faith. We're all tied together in the body of Christ, and it's not always easy to walk in that body, but Lord, we know that it's good because you're there. And, uh, Lord, we just pray for the people listening today that they'd be blessed. We pray for healing for the people who need it. Or do you know you've heard our prayers this morning? We pray for you to come along beside those and the, the prayers of the people out there today listening. Lord, we pray for you to go before us because we desperately need your help and guidance in life. We need to stay in your presence so we don't lose our hope and get drawn astray into the chaos of the world. So Lord, let us, let us be faithful to, to follow you and to talk to you as we go about our day today. Or we pray for you to go before us, set things up, open our eyes to what we need to know, what we need to see, and, uh, and, and what we need to do as your representatives here on the earth. Lord, we thank you. You so much for the salvation you've given each and every one of us, and how that, that life-giving spirit that you've given us, uh, through the power of the Holy Spirit doesn't go away. Uh, it only grows more and more as we grow closer to you and, and our following of you. So, Lord, we thank you, we praise you. We pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.