Right to Remain Silent and Pray - Purity 1149

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 the silhouettes of trees in the foreground of a blazing multicolored sunset sky comes to us from yours truly, as I captured this scene on the drive back to River House from Chatham last evening. Well, it's Saturday, and although I am celebrating my freedom from my regular weekday work schedule today. Last night I went to Columbia County Pathways to Recovery's Let's Walk for One More Chance Memorial Recovery Walk to celebrate my 8 years of freedom from drugs and alcohol and to remember those who have, who have died because of overdose. The dead were remembered with signs bearing their names, photos and ages at the time of their deaths. Speeches were made to encourage support of recovery efforts in Columbia County, and the evening ended with a candlelight vigil memorial walk as the people gathered paraded the memorial signs down and around Main Street. I wore my old custom Celebrate Freedom hat from my days of leading the recovery ministry at Rock Solid Church and had the intention of promoting Pastor Bob Costello's renewal of Celebrate Freedom at Rock Solid Church. Uh, the meetings are on Thursdays at 6:30 PM in the church basement in Hudson. But my ideas of marketing Christian recovery or making an evangelistic outreach were silenced in light of the solemn occasion and secular humanist atmosphere. I was saddened by the loss of life and grieving friends and family. And obvious lack of community smørk. It was a small event, but I was also reminded of the spiritual— spiritually deadness of secular recovery efforts that unwittingly give ground to the spiritual forces of darkness and promote destructive ideas. I intended to hand out some pamphlets promoting the Christian Celebrate Freedom recovery meeting at Rock Solid Church, or offering the God of Hope with some tracts from Derek Prince Ministries. But when I realized that this group was comprised of people who believed in general spirituality, themselves, questionable recovery methods, pagan practices, and/or, I kid you not, the universe, I decided to leave my pamphlets and tracts in my pockets and to just silently pray for the lost. Both living and dead. You have to know the room sometimes, and as it was, I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb as I was one of the few people there not wearing purple or who did not belong to the organization that hosted this event. I decided not to rain on their parade. Uh, the Holy Spirit didn't move me to speak, so I remained silent, did my best to support the group's efforts to promote recovery in the, in the Columbia County community. Regardless of their secular, humanist, general, or pagan spirituality, they were encouraging recovery and the stopping of deaths to substance use disorder, and that was a good thing. So just like when Jesus didn't tell his disciples to stop those who were casting out demons but who didn't follow him from doing so, I figured that I should respectfully support a recovery community organization because of the good they do, even though they don't necessarily follow Jesus. Recovery efforts generally point to a higher power and have been used by God to bring people to saving faith in Christ. Recovering— recovery efforts also promote sobriety and the continuation of life that could be used by the Lord to bring people into his kingdom. So as much as I would seriously, uh, I would, I would advise some serious correction, uh, to what these people are preaching. I decided to trust the Lord to do his will through that, through and to this group and the people gathered, uh, if it is in his plans. Back in the day, I went to Columbia County Pathways to Recovery community meetings, to every one of them, um, to promote Christian recovery. And I can tell you that my efforts to promote Jesus in Christian Recovery had no visible fruit whatsoever, except for what it did to confirm and solidify my faith. As far as I can recall, not one person ever came to our Celebrate Freedom Recovery meetings due to my efforts to promote our ministry at those meetings. So it taught me about the anti-Christian spiritual atmosphere out there, and it taught me to be humble. And so I had a refresher course for those lessons last night. As disturbing as it can be to see how spiritually cold, dead, uh, dark and dead it is in the secular world, and how sad and devastating the state of our culture is in terms of record numbers of suicide and drug overdose deaths that plague us, it made me thankful for my life-saving, soul-preserving faith in Jesus Christ. You see, I don't, I don't just celebrate my recovery. I celebrate my freedom from sin and death and the Holy Spirit's seal on my life that confirms that I have a place in God's kingdom no matter what subtle or not so subtle hostility or rejection I might face on earth. I have been given hope. I have been given a hope in a future. I haven't recovered. I I have been cured. I have a hope and a future because I've been— I have been given a new life in Christ. So grieve with those who are grieving, support those who do good works no matter who they follow, and whether the Spirit directs you to speak or remain silent, be sure to stand for the life-giving, soul-saving truth of Jesus Christ. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Cruis. This morning's meditation verse comes from the section on anger, and today's verse is Proverbs 17:9 from the New Living Translation. Now the Word of God says, love prospers when a fault is forgiven, but dwelling on it separates close friends. Today's verse falls under the third point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on anger, and that third point is: Love covers a multitude of sins and overlooks many offenses. Today's verse is the third of five passages of scripture that our reference— our resource provides to demonstrate love's power over anger. And rather than presenting them all at once, we are doing them one at a time, one day at a time. This verse highlights the love that is able to prosper when we forgive one another from the heart and warns of how dwelling on other people's faults could break the closest of relationships. As Christians, we are to love our enemies and our neighbors as ourselves, and the only way to do that requires being well-versed in the practice of forgiveness. If we can forgive from the heart, By not holding people's past offenses to us against them, we can reconcile relationships and live at peace. Of course, we must be wise and discerning in who we reconcile with. Some people are not trustworthy and should be given limited access to our lives, but we can forgive them. Forgiveness sets us free from bitterness and gives us freedom from pain in the future. And when others appreciate the forgiveness we give and repent of their harmful ways, real friendships can result. So forgive faults and don't dwell on them. Our forgiveness could save relationships, but dwelling on the sins of others in the past will only cause continued pain, bitterness, and possibly end our relationships. As always, I invite all to go to M.t. Clark.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 as we begin chapter 25, The Spirit Assisting. And today's topic is the role of suffering. So if you want to know what the role of suffering is in the Christian walk, uh, go to, uh, m.t. for christ.org and, uh, A.W. Pink will His resource will tell you all about it, and you'll find that at the end of today's blog post. As always, we encourage a lifestyle of Christian discipleship where we try to keep the peace, and even when we run into things that are, you know, opposed to the Christian message that believes in self rather than God, or, you know, or promotes things like yoga or, you know, Christian— Eastern mysticism. As long as they're promoting good things, we can come alongside them. It's difficult, but if they're doing good, let them do good. However, the great harm that lies is if people believe in what they say. It pained my heart greatly as one of the people there last night talked about his lost son and how they took pride in the fact that their son held nothing sacred and seemed like a, you know, to hear the testimony of this man, it sounded like somewhat of a prideful jerk.

But somehow, in his estimation, he would be welcomed by the universe into eternity. And it was just painful to hear, not only, you know, of his loss, but also the spiritually dead atmosphere in which this man and his son lived. Where it was a total rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we don't acknowledge God or Jesus Christ, we're in dark, dark territory. And I can't change anything there.

The Lord, the Lord gives his truth through the gospel of Jesus Christ, and not everyone will see it.

The Lord chooses who will see the truth and be saved, and we have to trust that, uh, you know, there's that dual responsibility.

Um, God doesn't consign anyone to hell.

Um, everyone freely chooses.

It's, it's, it's, it's one of the biggest, uh, debatable points of our, our faith is that, uh, does God save or does man save? Well I would say God ultimately is the one who saves, but nobody is held innocent. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God, and we're all deserving of hell.

But it's by his great grace that some of us see the truth and choose to live by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit.

It's a very valuable thing. You know, I've been in environments where it's been spiritually dark in my efforts to promote the Christian faith. You know, I go to these secular events and, you know, that promotes suicide prevention or recovery or, you know, I went to a Woman's March to only discover it was actually a You know, you think it would be something positive. It was about abortion rights, and I was like, oh, I have to leave this. As, um, you know, they're promoting death. Um, you know, it's a dark, dark world.

Up is down, and, you know, black is white, and everything's, you know, when it's—

when things are based on self-interest, it's, it's just immediately dark. When you choose your will over God's will and go against what his word says, you're on the outside.

And, you know, even though some of these organizations are doing good work, it's, you know, when they're not pointing to God and Jesus Christ, it's how good, how much good can you actually do? You could lead somebody to sobriety, but If you're going to lead them to hell, that's not really good work.

So it's difficult, but the Holy Spirit basically told me to remain silent last night, and so I did.

But I'm reflecting on it here today for the few who listen, but I appreciate it.

And well, today is Saturday. We have a Celebrate Freedom bowling activity today, so that'll be fun. Where we celebrate our freedom in a bowling alley where usually lots of beers are drank.

But in our case, we won't be drinking the beer. We'll just enjoy each other's fellowship and the game of bowling.

Um, and that's the freedom we have.

We can go into places where, you know, we could easily fall into sin, but we're gonna just enjoy ourselves and our company.

Anyway, um, I think I'll pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom.

Lord, we thank you for the freedom you've given us and the truth you've given us, because one without the other— you really can't have one without the other. We're so glad you gave us both. You gave us the freedom from our sin and freedom from death and life everlasting because of our faith in Jesus.

And we'll always stand for that truth, even if we're called by you to remain silent.

And pray. So we, we pray today, Lord, that you'd go before us, open our eyes to the things you want us to see, and lead us in the things you would have us do. We also pray for anyone listening today, that they'd be encouraged in their faith, uh, and that you'd come alongside them in their prayer request, and, uh, that you'd help them too.

Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you. We pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus.

Amen.