“Please keep following the Lord… and helping me on this path ” - Purity 946

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 some skeletal flash-illuminated roadside trees in the foreground of a purple and pink sunrise on the horizon comes to us from Coach Vern Cross, who sees the day and captured the morning by sharing his views near his home in Hudson, New York on social media yesterday. Vern shared a bunch of photos yesterday, and I'm sharing a second one on the blog that came a little later in the morning that shows a lighter view of the sky. The old adage is "red sky in the morning, sailor take warning," and it proved to be true yesterday as the pink sky proved to be an omen of the snow, sleet, and rain that would come come later in the afternoon. So if you knew that saying and kept your eyes on the sky, you would know what was to come. Coach Cross keeps his eyes on the skies and is quite active in pointing to what's going on in his community. Cross's gaze may scan the heavens because he appreciates the beauty of God's creation, but he is well grounded with life on Earth. He knows what's up and how things are, but he is a constant advocate for better things. He is a positive influence in the lives of many because his heart is for his community and family. His desire is to encourage others to believe that they can realize their potential and accomplish their dreams, a fact that is demonstrated by the way he lives his life every day. He walks the walk, and for that we thank him and encourage him to keep on walking and leading others by his example. Thank you, Coach Cross. Well, it's Friday, thank God, and I'm sure Vern doesn't think much about doing the right thing and being a positive influence. He just does it. He takes what the good Lord gave him and he uses it for good the best he can. We do not— we don't always realize that people are paying attention to what we do. And we don't always know when our behavior, words, or actions can impact others. How many of us parents cringe when we see our kids repeating the same mistakes we have made or take on our less-than-good habits? Yikes! Sure, that you decide to learn from me. So how we live our lives is obviously important. Not only do our words and actions impact the consequences of our lives, because we don't live— our lives, because we don't live in a vacuum, they can also impact others. And if we are living lives where we are trying to do the right thing, that can positively impact everyone around us. I was humbly reminded of this fact this in my own life this morning as I opened another envelope from the Box of Love, a box of messages my wife compiled through throughout 2022, uh, and delivered to me on our anniversary on the first of the year. In the envelope from January 19th, 2022, Tammy Lynn had thanked me for helping her with a situation I don't fully recall a year later, but her comments went on to say He, meaning the Lord, amazes me in all he does, he has done in me and, and you thus far. Please keep following the Lord and helping me on this path. Please keep following the Lord and helping me on this path. After my divorce, I made the decision to follow the Lord in all things. And when we, when we decided to entertain the pot— when I decided to entertain the possibility of being Well, no, actually, when we, me and Tammy Lynn, decided to entertain the possibility of being engaged and eventually married, I made it clear to Tammy Lynn that the most important thing about her to me was her faith, and that I tried to impress upon her that the way I live my life, this walk of faith, wasn't an act or a phase that someday would pass. I had made the decision to follow the Lord even if that meant I would walk alone through life. So if she was serious about me, she had to be serious about the Lord. One of my biggest fears in contemplating becoming involved in a romantic relationship was that I would be deceived, that I would find some woman who would seem, who would seem to be a Christian, but who would later prove to be just going through the motions, leading to disappointment and unhappiness. Fortunately, Tammy Lynn's heart to follow the Lord is true. She may be somewhat new to walking in the Spirit, but her faith is genuine. Her faith looks better than mine sometimes, but this is all somewhat new to her because so few of us actually live their lives, you know, few of us actually live their lives by faith. Her faith life is thriving because through the Freedom in Christ discipleship courses, she learned about who she was in Christ, and through the Steps of Freedom in Christ, um, she was set free from all the personal and spiritual baggage of her past. She learned these things through the classes I led, but in getting to know me, she has learned that our very lives are continuous lesson in Christian discipleship. We live according to who we are in Christ, we overcome and we keep going. A lot of this life of faith can, can seem not so glamorous. Prayer, Bible study, reading Christian books, and going to church regularly may not seem to amount to much. But the thing is, when these disciplines form the framework of your life and the Lord's will guide your direction, the day by day that seems pretty normal moment to moment proves to form a pathway to an incredible journey with God as we realize, usually after the fact, that the Lord was moving us through difficult times to the good things He had prepared for us. Looking at the path behind is amazing. But looking at the day-to-day stuff, you can easily lose sight of the fact that God is moving you forward. It can seem like you are going nowhere. The enemy is always— and the enemy is always there to offer his discouragements and to tempt us to turn to the worldly things to comfort us and give us peace. But it is only in following the Lord faithfully that we see his plan materialize. So if we step off the path, we eventually realize the error of our ways and get back on track. This process of focusing on your faith walk can really occupy your time, and you can easily be concerned with just staying on track. But because we don't live in a vacuum, others can see us and what we are doing, um, and see us and what we are doing and be inspired to walk like we walk. Tammy Lynn saw me. Honestly, I think she was the only one who really did. And she wanted what I wanted, a life of being true to our faith. So she followed and pursued me, and now we walk together, hand in hand with the Lord. Her faith encourages me, and obviously, because of her note, I know that my following the Lord encourages her. She wrote: Please keep following the Lord and helping me on this path. That is what we are to do as Christians. We are to keep on walking and talking with God and helping one another as we go. So, keep walking that walk and talking that talk. As long as it is, is the Lord we are following, we can know we are headed in the right direction. And we just may leave a path behind us that others can follow into God's Kingdom. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verse is Romans 8:28, and it says, 'And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.' Today's verse is the quintessential verse for Christian encouragement. It points to God's sovereignty, and the conditional promises of good that come to the faithful. Did I say conditional? Yes, I did. While God positively loves all of His creation and desires for all men to be saved, not all men will choose to be underneath the Lordship of Jesus Christ and thus will face God's wrath for their sins. This verse is not the "everything is going to be alright for everybody" verse. I am not sure about dogs, but not all men go to heaven. Not all people choose to live at peace with God in His Kingdom. As the verse states, God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them. It states the good comes to those who love God and are called to to his purposes for them. Those who love God would put their faith in Jesus. Those who are called by God would meet his purposes for them by being reconciled to God through Jesus. Jesus was sent to save us from God's wrath. Our purpose in life is to find peace with God through Jesus Christ. When we put our faith in Christ, we have a new and eternal life with God. That's the ultimate good that God is working towards for all of those who love him and are called to his purposes. But that's not all. God is sovereign, remember? That means he shapes the history of life in his universe. That means he can choose who to bless and who to curse. His word directs us to, to faith in Christ and living according to his will. When we do that, we are blessed by it. But beyond the positive consequences of obedience, God's sovereignty rules over circumstances, and paradoxically, He can sometimes— He can and sometimes does choose to allow bad circumstances to be used for good. So if you are in Christ, be encouraged. We have ultimate— we have the ultimate good of life everlasting in God's kingdom., and we can even hope for good things to happen here on earth because God loves us, we love him, and are answering the call he has put upon us. As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.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 Sovereignty of God, and we're continuing to share from chapter 4. We're slowly sharing that chapter. We're currently in the section underneath the Sovereignty of God, the Son and Salvation. So that will continue with a couple more paragraphs. And so if you want to stay on track with that, that book, you can go to mt4christ.org and see what M.t. Wright has— or, hey, no, wow, not M.t. Wright, but A.W. Pink has to say about all that. And we'll be sharing the conclusion of that section tomorrow. So you can get all of that, that second section of chapter 4, um, on the blog today and tomorrow, uh, in the previous days. Anyway, as always, we encourage the life of faith because we, we walked it. We found faithful men of God, uh, who, who read the word, who live by the word, and we learned from their example. You know, I didn't know how to live a Christian life, and so luckily I listened to people like Billy Graham and my old pastors, basically about how it's done. And the instructions are pretty simple. You know, basically after I got saved, Billy Graham's advice was to try, you know, repent of your sins if you did sin, to confess it to God. And, uh, he encouraged prayer and reading the Bible every day. Um, it's very basic advice. Um, doing it, on the other hand, is not so basic. You actually have to wake up and decide to do it, to set time aside to pray and read the Bible. And so when we follow that example that countless Christians have done in the past, that's when we can grow. But it's not just reading a book and praying you know, for stuff. It's, uh, it's making a decision to follow the Lord with how we live our lives moment to moment, day to day. And when we do that, then, then we, then we find that pathway, we find that narrow road, um, that leads to the life that Christ talked about, the life of abundance, um, where the fruit of the Spirit grows. So we encourage that. Um, how do we encourage that here on the blog? Well, and the podcast? Well, we, we share our old teachings from Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ, uh, that we, we taught back in 2021 at our local church. Those podcasts are available on, on the podcast and our YouTube channel, M.t. for Christ 247. So we encourage you to check those out. We also share a Bible study, uh, that we do once a week with Arthur and Susanna Sincotti. All of our previous studies are out there for your enjoyment. And actually did a series on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's discipleship. So if you wanted to hear what Bonhoeffer had to say about discipleship, you can find those on the podcast and the YouTube channel as well. Well, it is Friday, and I am thanking God because at the end of the workday, God willing, I will make my way to my countryside home and be reunited— be reunited with my with my wife for the weekend. So, you know, when you got that at the end of the day, you can really have hope. And I got hope for other things. And so we're in it right now. Last night we were doing the Deeper Walk International prayer ministry cohort. So that looks like it's going to be demanding. So, but it should be a blessing as well. But, uh, yeah, there's going to be some reading and some writing involved, so we'll have to do that and try to stay on track with everything else we do in our lives because, uh, you know, we don't want to— we don't want to let things go, um, not when we're— when we're following the Lord with what we do. So, so let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, thank you for all the things you do to lead for the good, that all the people for all the people who love you and are called according to your purpose. Lord, we can have hope, um, because of that verse and because of who you are. Lord, we just thank you for that. Lord, we pray for anyone who might be listening or reading the message today, Lord, that you would come alongside them, that you would bless them and move their paths to good things. Lord, we pray for you to come alongside them and their prayer requests. Lord, we pray pray for you to come along tonight. Our prayer request we've made for our friends this morning, um, for, uh, for healing, as my brother Bob Griffin, Fred Dimmick are all covering. My father's recovering as well for medical procedures and/or ongoing medical issues. And, uh, we pray for you to be with them, and we pray for you to be with the people listening today as well. And as always, Lord, um, we're just We're just trying to do the right thing by you, by following your path. You decide what's right, and that's the way we want to go. And, uh, so we just pray for you to go before us today and help us and guide us. Lord, we pray for you to open our eyes to the things you want us to see today, and we pray for you to move us into the path that you would have us walk. Lord, all we want to do is represent you here on the earth and share the goodness and of your love. So help us to do that, Lord. We ask for your guidance and your strength as we take another day on the path of Christian discipleship. Lord, we thank you, we pray, we praise you, and we love you. And we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.