Sanctification – God’s Grand Plan & Work Purity 1640

Welcome to the MT for Christ 24/7 podcast. I am M.t. Clark, and this is today's photo. Uh, good morning. Today's photo of a beautiful mountain lake scene comes to us from an unknown Facebook friend who shared this memory on social media during August of 2023. If this photo was yours, let us know and we will photo credit you on the blog after the fact. Well, it's Wednesday, and as we make the upward ascent, uh, to the midweek summit, I am so glad that the Lord has recently reminded me that it is by our faith and by his grace that we are healed and made new. As someone who seeks to do the Lord's will for his life, and as someone who wants to grow spiritually, accomplish specific goals, and to do good works for God's kingdom, I sometimes get overwhelmed when my progress plateaus or when I start to lose ground that I've already won. I have certain hopes and specific health goals that I want to accomplish, and when I start to slip away from them being realized, I tend to beat myself up and to seek to whip myself into shape by creating rules to live by or um, yeah, to create rules to live by, or by doubling down on my efforts. But lately the Lord has revealed to me that the changes that will last in my life will have to come through him in his grace. That if I want— that if I don't make a change in the way I think about life and myself at a root level, I will stay stuck in this cycle of trying harder and failing. The message I shared yesterday taught, taught us about how Jesus came not to be served but to serve, and that if we want to change, we will have to ask the Lord to help us. God's plan for our life is our sanctification, and as much as we can try to be holy as he is holy, he needs to work in us in order for us to grow. This topic is addressed in Charles Stanley's In Touch devotion for today, so I'm sharing it on the blog., to teach or remind us of two important things about sanctification that we may not have known or may have forgot. Charles Stanley writes, God's Grand Plan. When we accept the gift of salvation, God begins the process of healing all that is broken within us. 1 Peter 1:16 says, you shall be holy, for I am holy. What an overwhelming command, but that is exactly what the Lord has committed to do in our life—make us holy. His grand plan can be summed up in one word: sanctification. This is the three-stage process by which he sets us apart for his purposes. Stage 1 occurs at salvation. When we—when God declares us righteous, we are positionally holy. The second stage is a progression of growth as we become more and more holy in practice. This process will continue as long as we are alive on this earth. Desiring that we be conformed to the image of his Son, the Father is continually working to shape our character, conduct, and conversation. The third stage of sanctification is our ultimate perfection when we will possess absolute holiness. Upon our physical death, we are freed from sin, and in the resurrection, our bodies will be made perfect. We will stand faultless and spotless before Christ. If we could just get a glimpse of what the third stage will be like, we would never moan and groan about the difficult sanctification process we endure now. Our eyes would be fixed on the goal, and our greatest motivation would be to glorify God by submitting to his transformation. Amen. You know, there are two things, if not many more, that we can draw from Stanley's message. The first is that God's grand plan is not necessarily for our personal happiness. Often the gospel can easily be distorted into God's wonderful plan for your life, where you are promised health, wealth, and happiness, a life free of problems. However, the history of the church shows us that some of the most notable followers of Jesus suffered greatly for their faith. God's plan isn't to make us happy; it's to make us holy, to transform our character to be more like Jesus. The peace and joy of the Lord comes from righteous living, free from guilt and shame, and from appreciating what the Lord has blessed us with. With this plan, we can be filled with purpose to grow in holiness and can rejoice where we are, where we are because of our appreciation for what the Lord has done when what he provides and what he will do, and we can look forward to where the Lord is leading us. Which brings us to the second thing. If you go back and read Stanley's message, you can see something you might have easily missed. This sanctification process is God's work in us. Read it again. Uh, Stanley wrote, God begins the process, and he wrote, that is what the Lord is committed to do in your life. And God declares us righteous. The Father is continually working to shape our character, conduct, and conversation. I point this out because Christians can see sanctification as something they have to accomplish on their own. We wrongly think that we must work harder or try hard, work hard or try hard to be the people God made us to be. While we do have to be actively engaged in our walk of faith and be intentional about seeking the Lord's will for our lives, The work of sanctification and maturation is received by faith and by God's grace. When we believe we are new creations, we start to see how God is working in our lives to make that a reality. The key to our relationship with God is God. He is the one who can help us, so we have to ask for his help. He is the one who determines our days on earth, so we have to follow his lead and rejoice when he leads us into good things and into the righteous person. He made us to be. This, uh, today's Bible verse comes to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Cruis. This morning's meditation verses come from the section on marriage or husband-wife relationships. And today's long section of scripture is Genesis 2:18-25, where the word of God says, then the Lord God said, it is not 'Not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.' Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to, to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept it took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, 'This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.' Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, And they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Today's verses fall under the first point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on marriage or husband and wife relationships. And that first point is marriage was instituted and designed by God. Today's Bible verses tell the story of the first man and woman and how God ordained the covenant of marriage that sets the standard for human relationships and flourishing. God gave Adam a helper in Eve and gives us the example to follow with our lives. Adam and Eve were given to each other in marriage and could be naked and unashamed before the Lord. God ordains marriage, and with his command to be fruitful and multiply, the marriage covenant keeps sexual relations between a man and a woman holy and pure. Marriage is God's plan for our lives when it comes to the opposite sex. We are to remain celibate in our singleness and reserve the gift of sex for the confines of a God-ordained covenant marriage. With God's plan, we can enjoy all the pleasures of sex, companionship, and start a family. God's plan for human relationships is good, and any counterfeit or compromise of his original plan is a perversion of what is good, holy, and true, and leads to all kinds of sin and suffering. So if you are single and feel alone, get yourself a husband or wife, which was God's plan for Adam, and it's a plan that can work for you too. If you are married, thank God and show him your appreciation by loving your spouse like Jesus loved the church. As always, we encourage everyone to go to mtv— mtforchrist.com, not MTV, mtforchrist.com. Where we always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist our brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. And today we continue sharing from Day by Day Along the Way by J.E. Adams. It's a 365-day devotional. We're on day 139, where Adams shares a portion of Luke 5:34, which says, you can't make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them. And J.E. Adams writes, Jesus was with his disciples. They had good times with him, times when they could do nothing but rejoice and thank God for all that they were experiencing and learning. Of that there could be no doubt. Jesus brings joy like the joy at the wedding of one of, of one's best friends. So why would they fast? So why would they fast? Then Jesus made it clear that there is a difference between what John and his disciples did and what he his were doing. A change of order was occurring in which the old era would be replaced by the new, and those things that were true of the old would not or could not be true any longer. The new, the new would burst the old if poured into it. It would tear apart the old cloth if it were applied to it. You no longer live in the Old Testament era. The types and shadows have passed. The reality has come. You are one of Jesus's disciples, not John's. So never forget that. Amen. You know, we're in the New Covenant, and you know, while we are, you know, called to fast and pray at certain times and seasons, and that's a spiritual discipline that we have, in the times of Jesus, they didn't fast because they were rejoicing that the Lord had come and Jesus was with them. And but after that, You know, there's, there's definitely references in scriptures when the disciples fasted. You know, they fasted and prayed at various times to get the Lord's direction. And so it's a discipline we can still use, you know, to get direction for our lives. And considering my health, health goals going up and down, my weight going up and down, I might consider fasting myself. But again, you know, I could try harder, but I think I have to do some work or allow the Lord to do some work in how I see myself and how I see life and how I see food. You know, if that food's an idol, it has to go. And I think it is. So we're gonna try to lean in with our faith to ask the Lord to change our hearts and minds and to receive the healing that he's given us and to have it manifest in our lives. And That's what we try to do, and that's why we always ask the question, have you fully surrendered to God? Oh, yesterday I was talking to someone who's struggling with his faith, or one point of his faith, where he feels he, you know, failed to do something right. And, you know, if he doesn't correct it, he'll never be, you know, he'll never be happy. And unfortunately, it's a double bind. If he does what he's thinking of doing, it'll cause misery in his life, but he feels that the situation he's in is is not right. But, uh, as we discussed it, it turned out, you know, it looks like he's not accepting the Lord's forgiveness, and he's beating himself up for a past sin that he's taking with him all the way, you know, years later. Um, so we surrender to the Lord for, you know, for correction, but we also surrender to him for mercy and, um, you know, healing and, you know, instruction. So the Lord can guide us in the newness of the life that we have, you know, with with this walk, it seems like it's forward-facing. You know, we keep moving forward towards what the Lord has for us, and we leave the sins of the past at the cross with Jesus. So just a little commentary there. When you can move past your past and, you know, with freedom and confidence, you can move into the purpose that the Lord has for your life. Part of the purpose for my life is leading the Celebrate Freedom support group at Starpoint Church. It's a small ministry, but it's a good ministry. It's Christian Recovery and Discipleship, and we invite anybody in Upstate New York who can get to Clifton Park tonight to come on down and join us at 6:30 at the K-3rd grade classroom. You're invited. You can say M.t. told me to come, and I did. However, if you can't make it, you know, or there's no way you can make it, there's good news. I'm trying to share the encouragements we give out on Wednesday nights through a through a podcast, through a series on YouTube. So if you'd like to check out the things we talk about at Celebrate Freedom, you can check out our playlist Christian Recovery Celebrate Freedom with M.t. Clark to get encouraged in your walk of faith. Beyond that, we offer other forms of encouragement through our other series that we do on our podcast, or we've done in our podcast previously. We've done a study on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship. Um, we've created a discipleship course that fills in the gaps of the things that, uh, we don't present at Celebrate Freedom. Uh, it's called Celebrate Freedom Discipleship. And we do a weekly Bible study discussion with, um, Arthur and Susanna Sincotti, where we talk about, uh, faith and we talk about life, and we try to encourage people, um, to seek the Lord and find his will for their life. So, um, we encourage you to check those other series out. You can find them on YouTube under our playlist, or you can go to mtforchrist.com. And we believe that they can encourage you and possibly increase your freedom in Christ. So we hope you appreciate those, and if you do, we'd love to hear about it. You can send us an email at mtforchrist247@gmail.com to let us know. And if you really appreciate it, we'd love a donation to our ministry. The M.t. for Christ Community Freedom Ministry is all about Christian encouragement, recovery, and discipleship. And if you'd like to donate, you can go to emptyforchrist.com to our donations page to give today. We'd appreciate it. Thanks. Anyway, we always end each message by asking the question, are you empty for Christ too? You know, I want to be empty for Christ in order to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And if you're doing that, we say great. It's a life of constant adventure walking with the Lord and growth and goodness. And, um, you know, we highly recommend it. However, if you're not, we get it. You know, we weren't always a Christian, and, um, we didn't always walk by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit. It took a lot of, you know, figuring out, um, to get to where we are. And we just encourage you to pray, uh, to make Jesus your Lord and Savior, and pray for the Lord to show you the way. And, uh, works for me, and we believe it'll work for you. We know prayer works, and that's why we pray every day, like right now. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you for your grace, your, your mercy, Lord, and your forgiveness, and the power you give us to, you know, change our lives, to, to rejoice, um, when we start to walk by faith. And the power of your Holy Spirit. And Lord, so we thank you. We also ask you for help because we're not— we're not where we think we should be, and we want to keep moving further into the person you want us to be. So we're asking for help today. Go before us, lead us in the way we should go, open our eyes to the things you want us to see, and help us. And while you're at it, Lord, we also ask that you help anyone reading, listening, or watching today's message and come alongside them and their prayer requests, their walk of faith. They need your help too, Lord, and we're asking on their behalf. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, and we love you. And we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.