Rationalizing Between Right and Wrong - Self-Deception Series 30 – Purity 1119

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 a pillar of cloud and a fiery sunset on the blue horizon over a dusk-darkened roadway comes to us from yours truly as I captured this scene yesterday during an early evening walk on Waite Road near my countryside home in Easton, New York. Well, it's Saturday, and as all All my weekday summer vacation days have expired. I find myself walking between the dread of walk— watching my time off in vacation dreamland come to an end, and the relief that comes from the realization that your regular routine is going to resume to bring you back to life and back to reality. Famous actress Helen Hayes, who is only one of 15 people who have won at least one Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award, is also known for having said, if you rest, you rust. And while I am far from being the hardest working man in show business— James Brown, rest in peace— I can relate to the late actress's sentiment because while I have enjoyed the, the relative relaxation I have experienced recently, I feel that it has caused my resolve in some areas to rust and waste away. While I was diligent to hit the hotel gym in the wee hours of the morning last week while on the road in Erie, Pennsylvania, Uh, this week my physical exercise has been reduced to one short hike with my wife, a day of walking around the exhibits at the Adirondack Experience Museum, followed by a tour of Italy at the Olive Garden, mind you, and daily leisurely strolls up and down Waite Road with my canine friend Harley. This week of vacay has seen no HIIT workouts, no mini circuits with V Shreds Vince Sands, or, uh, no Tabata and no serious— and some serious slippage with the food choices I have made. Chips, candy, soda, and movie theater popcorn. Oh my, say it isn't so, M.t. Uh, I wish I could say it wasn't so, but this week I found my resolve and maintaining my health goals has rusted away. I wish I could say I have good reasons for slipping up, but when we compromise what we know is right, there really is no good reasons for doing what is wrong. Uh, surely I could say I'm on vacation, I'm taking a break, or I could tell you how the facilities, environment, and attitudes at Tammy Lynn's Countryside Estate are severely lacking and not conducive to one's physical health. But in truth, those would just be excuses, rationalizations, reason I use to excuse my poor decisions and behaviors. In the end, we are each personally responsible for and suffer the consequences for the things we think and do, and the reasons we give to excuse our deviations from right to wrong are just lies we tell ourselves. And that brings us to our current series on self-deception, where we have decided to investigate some of the ways we deceive ourselves by walking through Step 2, Deception Versus Truth, of the Steps to Freedom in Christ. To see what ways we have been deceived by the world and ourselves, and in what ways we have wrongly defended ourselves. So we present the seventh of the ways to wrongly defend yourself, which is number 7: rationalization. The Steps to Freedom in Christ describes rationalization as making excuses for my own poor behavior. I'm on vacation. I need a break. Everyone else is doing it. I need this. I'm weak. One time won't hurt. No one— no one needs to know. I can do what I want. You see, I need this because X, Y, and Z. All of these, no matter how simple or complex I want to make them, are all rationalizations, making excuses for poor behavior. While my excuses, the that I am on vacation, there's no space to exercise here, and I'm just— and it's just for this week may seem like some valid reasons for my decision to rest and not worry about it and do things that I know are not healthy. But those rationalizations aren't true. They don't actually prevent me from doing what is right or give me a just cause for deviating from what I know is the right path. Accomplishing my health goal of leaving the obesity zone on the Body Mass Index forever. Those reasons will also not free me from the consequences of my decisions either, and I will have to be diligent in my efforts to stop falling and to pick myself up and start walking in the right direction again. I'm not sure what these rationalize— what these rationalizations have cost me thus far because I have avoided the scale, But my back is hurting a little this morning, and that is never a good sign. I've learned that my back tries to inform me when I've been too lazy or I'm carrying too much weight, and so I know it's time to repent. Even though I have a tendency to allow myself some liberty on Saturdays and have considered them to be, quote unquote, cheat days in the past, I am progressively learning that only the only one I am cheating is myself. So I'll stop with the rationalizations and try to right the ship again by doing, doing something. I won't eat foods outside my meal plan, and I may even pick up the pace with my canine pal Harley and make our morning walk a jog because my back has reminded me that whatever excuses I make doesn't make doing wrong right. So let's keep walking and talking with God because the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth. And stop us from making excuses and living a lie. 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 Affliction, Discipline, Chastisement, and Trials. And today's verses are Romans 5:3-4 from the Revised Standard Version. The word of God says, more than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Today's verses fall under the 16th point of the coun— of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on Affliction, Discipline, Chastisement, and Trials, which is number 16: We can rejoice in our sufferings, which produces perseverance. Full disclosure, point 16 of our reference guide also references James 1:2-4 4 for this point, but that passage of Scripture where we can count it all joy when we fall into various trials was highlighted in the fourth point, which was God at times sends trials to develop patience in us, of our resource a few weeks back, and it was highlighted in Purity 1105, and I put the link on the blog if you wanted to see what James 1:1-4 had to say about that. And, uh, but today's verses, uh, Romans 5:3-4 encourages us also to rejoice in our sufferings because we know it produces endurance, which in turn produces character, which in turn can produce hope. And thus we can have— we can hope, we can rejoice. Again, we will point out that no, we don't rejoice because we are suffering. Oh goody, I'm suffering again. That's good. No, suffering is not good. It's painful, and in no way should we fall into the trap of thinking we need to suffer for the Lord as a means to an end to produce endurance, character, or hope to attain some level of sainthood. Although I have to admit that suffering does seem to be a natural consequence deciding to faithfully follow the Lord, to openly proclaiming the gospel, and in practicing some of the traditional spiritual disciplines like fasting. We shouldn't seek suffering to build up our faith like some game. That's dangerous ground, and honestly, it can be a call from the enemy to stoke up your self-righteousness as much as it could be a heartfelt desire to answer the Lord's call to repentance. There's a fine line between earnestly and perhaps ascetically seeking and following the Lord and having a performance-based mentality fueled by pride and spiritual materialism. So try to be humble and sure of your motivations and discern whether or not what you are doing that causes suffering is being done for the right reasons. Don't get me wrong here, crucifying the flesh and repentance may very well lead you to put your body and will in subjection, causing suffering, like when my— like when I decided to go into recovery and had my— had My decision to go into recovery had me suffer and literally reduced me to tearfully crying out to the Lord on my hands and knees on the basement— on my basement floor in prayer to take my addictions away. Well, things like that and extremes like literally whipping your flesh with self-flagellations are different. One is the consequence of repentance and the other is some misguided attempt to punish our wicked bodies. Um, although Jesus suggests cutting off limbs and gouging out eyes to keep us from sinning if necessary, um, because there are no scenes in the gospel accounts of the apostles helping sinners to remove body parts, we have to believe that Jesus was speaking metaphorically, although some individuals took his words literally. Um, we don't need to cut off body parts to stop sinning. We need to renew our minds, uh, and with the God with the word of God and allow the Lord to change our hearts to have victory over sins. So we don't need to inflict suffering in our bodies intentionally to reap endurance, character, and hope. Uh, no, we can rejoice in our sufferings not because we are producing them to make us holy, but because we know that it produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope. And if we break down that progression, we can see that we don't have to seek to suffering. The trials we face, the pain we feel, or the persecution that comes from simply repenting and obeying the Lord will test us to give up our faith and to go back to the ways of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Just like the enemy tested Jesus in the wilderness, those three forces— the world system, our flesh, and the literal, very real forces of darkness— tempt us to stop following the Lord and use their ways to stop or alleviate suffering. But when we resist them and persist in continuing to go forward, to keep going on, or to just endure what we are going through, it toughens us up. Our threshold for pain could grow in capacity. Our mental resolve and discipline could increase, and our prayerful dependence on the Lord's strength can grow. These things demonstrate we are enduring. When we examine our— how our endurance has changed the way we act we realize that we have become more patient and that our very character has become more mature. When we see that we don't react the way we used to and have matured in the way we respond to suffering and trials, we see what the Lord has done in our lives, that we really are becoming more like Jesus. And the realization of that victory and how it indicates that the Lord is with us and is and is helping us gives us tremendous hope. God is with us and is helping us. He loves us. Even in the darkest valley, He has not left us or forsaken us, and He is changing us as we carry on. That is why we can rejoice in our sufferings, because as we endure, we realize the Lord's love for us, presence with us, and strength in us that is changing our character. And giving us the hope that one day, uh, that the one who is changing us will remain with us, strengthen us to endure, and possibly deliver us from the things we suffer. So if you are suffering, press into your faith and reliance upon God and rejoice in the hope he gives you. 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 we continue in chapter 19 on the Spirit teaching. And today the topic is The Spirit Applies Knowledge to the Heart. And so if you want to know what that's like, go to mt4christ.org and you'll see that resource at the end of today's blog post. As I said, the Spirit, you know, we renew our minds and God changes our hearts. Today's topic just happens to be from A.W. Pink, just happens to be "The Spirit Applies Knowledge to the Heart." You know, to have a heart experiential knowledge of these— of the truths of God's Word is a lot different from knowing the facts and figures of Scripture. It becomes a personal knowledge that empowers your walk of faith and will cause you to repent. And even though you may have rationalized taking a break from the things you know you should do, The Lord will bring you back and convince you to, to, to stop walking away from him and to, uh, to return to his path and, uh, the things he would have you do. God doesn't want your body to suffer. He doesn't want your will to suffer. He doesn't want your mind to suffer. But the pathway to peace may, may, may take some suffering. And when you make the decision to stop living according to the world's ways or our flesh's ways or the devil's ways, there's going to be some resistance from ourselves and from all those other forces. But when we persist and endure, we understand that, you know, they don't call it a breakthrough because you, you just ease into it, okay? Um, you know, a breakthrough happens sometimes when, when when a mental or spiritual paradigm is shifted, or, um, and we see the light, you know, we— when we emerge from the darkness to find our freedom. And what a joy, um, it is when you do that. So we can, you know, we can condemn ourselves, but we were never called to. The Lord is with us, and he'll help us if we keep following him. And, uh, he'll help us even through our trials and sufferings, um, to lead us and to give us peace even in the midst of them. So that's why we do our blog and podcast, is to encourage people to live out their faith every day. Thus the M.t. for Christ 247 podcast name. Um, we blog 6 days a week as a spiritual discipline for ourselves and to encourage whoever might hear these messages. Languages, allow the Lord to use them to, uh, to help you. Um, and just so you know that, you know, you're on the right path, the Lord is, uh, working in your life, you know. So, well, it's Saturday, uh, I don't have any plans. Um, yesterday we didn't have any plans and we spent the day relaxing, um, which was a good thing. But, uh, I sort of compromised the last couple of— well, in the last week really, uh, with some of my food choices and the fact I haven't been exercising. So, um, as much as I hate to see my vacation end, part of me is like, oh, thank goodness, um, we can get back to our regular routine. And, you know, not for nothing, like I said, uh, the vacation dreamland is sort of a lie. I can't retire. I need to work to support myself, and that happens again on Monday. But until then, we can enjoy the break that we've gotten from our work and rejoice in all that God has given us. So that's my prayer for everyone today, is to have a great day and to enjoy this weekend. Tomorrow, that's Sunday, so I encourage you to find a church if you don't have one. And to really plug into it, because that's where you can really grow in terms of your service and, uh, edification. Anyway, let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. We thank you for all that you do for us, all you've shown us, and the fact that you lead us out of the darkness when we go there again. And the best thing, Lord, is so, um, you put on our hearts so we don't dive into the darkness that we used to be in. And that our deviations are smaller and smaller and certainly not as extreme as they used to be. And we know that You have done that, and we can just agree with what You have done to enjoy it. Lord, we pray for anyone who is listening today, that You would bless them and come alongside them in their prayer request and their walk of faith. Lord, because we all need Your help, and so we ask You, Lord, to go before us today, open our eyes to the things You want us to see, and move our steps into the things you would have us do. Because all we want to do is represent you and your kingdom on this earth, Lord. Um, so we thank you, we praise you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.