Our Biography with God & the Foundation of Praise - Purity 1519

Welcome to the MT for Christ 24/7 podcast. I'm M.t. Clark, and this is today's photo. To see today's photo, go to mtforchrist.com or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter, or watch us on YouTube. Good morning. Today's photo of the sun shining over the Skodak Creek, the green grass of my front lawn, and the black asphalt of my driveway comes to us from yours truly, as I was thrilled to capture the moment and appreciate the beauty of where the Lord has brought me once again at my house down by the river on Sunday, December 1st. Well, it's Tuesday, and as much as I may be challenged by the chilling temperatures when I work outside in December, I know that the conditions are normal, uh, for this time of year, and I suffer a lot less when I accept the weather for what it is and focus on the good things in life and my relationship with the one who gave me life and who sovereignly put me where I am in life. While we do have a measure of free will and can choose our own path to some extent in life, uh, the pathway to peace and joy, if we wish to experience them in a continuous and significant way, requires us to seek and find the Lord and to make peace with him through faith in Jesus Christ. We all have our own life story. Where we were born, the things we encountered, and the choices we made at different times in life make up the content of our story. And as compelling as any story may be because of what happens from one moment to the next, we all instinctively know that a story is only as good as the ending. While macabre and macabre, yeah, macabre or shockingly tragic endings may be be acceptable when we watch suspense, action, or horror movies. Nobody wants to suffer or be shocked in the story of their lives. I used to be an atheist, and when I was, I believed that the story of everyone's life ended the same. You die, the end, roll the credits, and fade to black. According to my atheistic worldview, life was meaningless and morality was subjective. What we did or didn't do in life was without consequence because time and death would erase us from existence. So with that nihilistic worldview of life, I lived it up. I did what I wanted to do as much as I could. My life was all about breaking the rules of men and avoiding the negative consequences of my supposedly bad behaviors. But I was living a lie. Not only did I have a double life as a seemingly law-abiding citizen by day and an alcoholic rebel by night, I was also living with the wrong view of life. There is a God, and he revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ. The Christian religion wasn't a well-crafted myth created to enslave us with social mores. It was the truth about life and ultimate reality. Of course, I didn't discover this on my own. Tragedy sent me to seek for meaning, and in the search, God showed up to show me once again that I was looking for love and meaning in all the wrong places. Like the Apostle Paul, who thought he was doing everything right by persecuting the early church, I thought I was right for believing that Christianity was a lie. Paul got knocked off his horse and was literally blinded by the light of his encounter with the living Christ. And I had the scales of atheism and Eastern mysticism removed from my eyes by a Gospel Radio message. But Paul and I were never the same. Both Paul and I were never the same. It took us a while to get going, but the Lord revealed himself to us through his word and his spirit and showed us the truth of ultimate reality. And to give us a purpose to share and show the love of God to others by encouraging others to put their faith in Jesus and to turn from the darkness of their wrong ideas and their personal sin. Each of our stories are different, but they both involve God coming into our lives and changing everything, uh, uh, which led us to testify about him. And to give him praise. Speaking of praise, the In Touch with Dr. Charles Stanley devotional for today speaks on the topic, and I'm sharing it on the blog today to encourage us to share our story, our biography with God, with others, and to drive us to praise the Lord. Dr. Charles Stanley writes, the foundation of praise. Worship is the natural response to knowing and loving the Lord. Throughout the Psalms, David spoke about God's specific attributes and actions. This collection of songs and poems can be read as a biography of God, one that relies on the language of praise and adoration to tell his story. Learning about the other person's character is the basis for genuine love, and since our ability to worship God grows out of our love for him, That means the true root of praise is knowledge. This is why God instilled in every believer a longing to know more of him. We, we satisfy that desire by spending time with the Lord and observing how he works to meet our needs and provide blessings. Discovering each new facet of his character deepens our understanding of him and our awareness of why he's so worthy of our praise. As believers, we have a biography of the Lord to share. It's a story of accumulated praise, not only for the ways he has intervened in chaos, comforted in tragedy, and blessed abundantly, but also for the lessons we've learned in the process. We should share our adoration of him with the world so others might come to know love and praise the Savior. That was from Dr. Charles Stanley. You know, today's message from Stanley really goes beyond just giving praise. It's about seeking to know God more, interacting with him, and telling the story of what God has revealed to us and done for us in the process of our seeking to know and follow him. Praise is just the natural response of our engagement with the Lord because he is so good. So don't forget your story, your biography of what God has taught you and shown you throughout all the days of your life. We have all walked our very unique pathway through life, and God was with us from the beginning, even if we didn't know it. So continue to seek the Lord, reflect on your journey together, rejoice over it, praise God for it, and tell somebody about it. The word, the word says we overcome by the Lord, by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. So be sure to do the second part of that overcoming recipe. Tell the story of how God saved you and how he continues to guide you through life to not only do what's right, but to also know and love him more. 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 homosexuality. And today the verses we're sharing are Genesis 19:4-5 from the English Standard Version. The word of God says, but before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house. And they called to Lot, where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them. Today's verses are the first of two passages of scripture that fall under the third point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on homosexuality. And that third point is: Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed on account of their unrepentant sexuality, or homosexuality. Um, today's Bible verses introduces a scene of what would have been premeditated homosexual gang rape if the Lord didn't intervene. I'm pretty sure that even the most fervent homosexual would have difficulty passing this activity off as a normal lifestyle. They would undoubtedly take objection to rape as being character— being characteristic of homosexuality and may even agree with the punishment of people who perpetrate such acts of violence. They would state that homosexuality is just an alternate form of expressing love between persons and that it is acceptable between consenting adults. The problem with that— the problem is that God doesn't just condemn violent acts of sex. He condemns all sexual acts outside of a covenant marriage between a man and a woman, especially homosexuality. And he commands that we repent of our sins and come to Jesus to be forgiven and set free. Jesus is the pathway to peace, but it also requires repentance. So whether you're gay or not, God directs you to leave sexual immorality behind and to live according to his sexual ethics. Are natural, pure, and loving. As always, we encourage everyone to go to mtforchrist.com, where we always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist our brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. Today we continue sharing from Day by Day Along the Way by J.E. Adams. It's a 365-day devotional, and we're on day 18, and where Adams shares a portion of Proverbs 11:5, which says, the righteousness of a person with integrity makes his way straight. And J.E. Adams writes, the word integrity has to do with having all things together. A person of integrity is growing spiritually in every aspect of his life. Growth is neither sporadic nor irregular. If his life were compared to the slices of a pizza, each slice would be of roughly the same size and contain approximately the same ingredients. I say roughly and approximately because in this life nothing is perfect. James, telios, person, one who is complete and entire, and entire, James 1, according with the Hebrew tam, integrity, and describes the same quality of righteousness. All of scripture concerns itself with such integrity. The straight path upon which every believer walks is the one that leads to God. If a believer finds his path winding rather than straight, something is wrong. If the way becomes hilly or deviates, examine, examine all the areas of your life to discover what is lacking. Quality in living depends upon whether there is integrity in every sphere of life. This means you may not neglect any area but must in all things serve him from your heart. Amen. And, uh, yeah, that's the surrendered life of a Christian. And, you know, it might challenge us that Jay Adams tells us, you know, that our path should be straight and there shouldn't be hills or valleys. Um, you know, there will be things beyond our control, but if we're following the Lord, you know, Jay Adams is sort of right. You know, we would just stay the course and do what's right in every circumstance. Uh, it's only when we deviate away from what God tells us is right is where we suffer those negative consequences generally, or someone else's sin we can also suffer the consequences from. And so we agree with Jay Adams that, um, we're to take every area, every sphere of our life, and, uh, to give it to Christ. And that is why We always ask the question, have you fully surrendered to God? You know, have you put your faith in Jesus? And how do you believe? Do you know who you are in Christ? And do you live by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit? Um, are you trying to do God's will for your life in every area of your life? Um, we, we recommend The Surrendered Life because we found great peace in repenting of our sin., you know, sexual sin. I'm sexually pure. All sexual activity is, you know, between me and my, my wife, um, Christian, you know, marriage. And, um, you know, my— the, the darkness of my addiction days are over as well. I walked away from drugs and alcohol, and now I'm even, you know, bringing in, you know, under, under the sphere of food, uh, I'm bringing that into subjection to be more self-controlled in the way I eat. And not to be a food addict. And so we're making great strides in that, but we're not perfect. And, you know, we encourage the lifestyle of faith, and sometimes you need help with that. And there's people out there who are willing to help, other Christians who are willing to help you. And one of those Christians is me, as I lead the Celebrate Freedom support group at Starpoint Church on Wednesday evenings. It's Christian recovery and discipleship as we teach you how to walk in the Spirit and live by, uh, live by faith, live a Christian life where you can walk away from those hurts, habits, and hangups for good, where you can be set free from your sin. Um, we're in Star Point Church on Wednesday nights, the K-3rd grade classroom, and anyone is invited to come, uh, and join our fellowship. And we encourage you to go to Star Point Church's website and to register for Celebrate Freedom under support groups. Beyond that, we just enjoyed the third installment of Grace for the Holidays last night. It's an online teaching and support group for men. We're meeting on Mondays from now until the week of Christmas, and we're going through the Grace course together. So far we've learned about God's grace, we've learned about, you know, how we're innocent and how we don't need to be ashamed anymore., because of what God has done and his grace has done for us. And so we're continuing the study. We invite any men who are interested, uh, to join us. You know, we're past— we're at the halfway point, so it's not too late. But you could join us by going to mtforchrist.com and going to the group's coaching page and signing up, registering for Grace for the Holidays. We invite you to do that. And let's see, uh, we also invite you to join our Freedom in Christ course that we're doing online Tuesday nights in the new year. We begin on January 7th, but there is a catch. You must register by December 10th. And there, you know, I got 7 guys signed up for a class that's going to have 12 people in it at most, so there's only so many spots available. We encourage you to go to ficm.org to sign up for the course I'm leading, or for one of the other courses. It's not just all men's groups, there's groups for ladies, different classes being taught by Freedom in Christ Ministries that we encourage you to go check out. Um, beyond that, whether or not you want to sign up for a class or not, you know, the cost of our playlist is free. And so we believe you can find or increase your freedom in Christ by joining one of our podcast classes on YouTube. We've done, um, studies on Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ, as well as our very own Celebrate Freedom discipleship course. Um, we share these and many other playlists on our YouTube channel to encourage people. And if you want to see the ones that were created by me specifically, uh, you can go to mtforchrist.com and look at our YouTube playlist page where you see every, every series we've done. Um, let's see, beyond that, we always ask the question, are you empty for Christ too? Being empty for Christ just simply means being fully surrendered to God's plan and will for your life and to grow and, and to grow in that, uh, to surrender more and more of your life to the Lord and to find out the meaning and purpose that he has for you. And so we, if you say, yeah, I'm empty for Christ too, we say, great. Keep on walking and talking with God. If you're not so sure, we just encourage you to pray and ask the Lord to help you, um, to reveal himself to you, to make Jesus your Lord and Savior, and to follow him. Um, we know that prayer changes things. Um, it's changed my life, and I've seen, seen it work, um, seen God work, uh, through prayer. And, uh, so we pray every day, like right now. Lord God, Heavenly Father, we thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you for all that you do, and we thank you for how you came into our life and revealed yourself to us and saved us from our sin and gave us an eternal life that, uh, that begins now and, and will go on forever. And Lord, we just thank you for that. Thank you for the blessings of this life. Lord, we do pray for our wife Tammy— my wife Tammy Lynn, uh, today, as she suffered an injury yesterday pulling a muscle in her calf. We pray for specific healing to that injury, Lord. Um, we accept your will in this regard, but we, we are petitioning you for that healing right now in Jesus' name. Uh, Lord, beyond that, we do— we pray for you to go before us today, open our eyes to the things you want us to see, and lead us in the way we should go. So all I want to do is do your will on earth, Lord, and, uh, I need a lot of help with that. And so we're asking for it, Lord. We're asking also— asking for help with our— any, anyone who's reading or listening to today's message, that you come alongside them and their prayer request and their walk of faith. We're praying for you to help them too. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.