Seize the Day with JOY! - Purity 1183

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 late afternoon sun blazing in the heavens that seems to be pouring its light directly into the decorative well in the side yard at my place down by the river comes to us from yours truly as I stopped to take a second to peek around the corner of my house after work yesterday to appreciate the end of the day and the place where God has brought me to live. Well, it's Friday. Let's thank God. Amen. And as the weather is forecasted to be a balmy 78 degrees in the Capital District, I am calling carpe diem for those of us that need a reminder to stop looking into the shadows of the past or who are focusing too far into the future to appreciate today. If you are into circumstantial happiness, today may be the day to take a day off because my electronic personal assistant, who will remain nameless, informs me there is a chance of showers tomorrow. October ends with Halloween on Tuesday, so if you want to go out and see some fall foliage in what is forecasted to be a good one, it's time to seize the day. Me, I work outdoors mostly, and although I don't know what troubles I will face today, I am content regardless of where the day takes me today because my Sovereign Lord has shaped the last week to accommodate my needs for periods of rest in between the various ministry, work, and education responsibilities that, that have been filling my schedule. As things begin to get a little more complicated at the time of merging changes in the Celebrate Freedom growth group and the completion of my training with Deeper Walks School of Inter— uh, School of Prayer Ministry, there really isn't a day where I shouldn't be looking ahead to make sure that I will be prepared for what's ahead of me when I get there. Uh, the Celebrate Freedom growth group reaches a milestone next week as we will be meeting for the 25th and final lesson of the Celebrate Recovery lesson material. But that doesn't mean that Celebrate Freedom the Celebrate Freedom group will close up shop. Early on in the ministry, when I considered giving the ministry a rest for a few weeks for a summer vacation, the leadership at Starpoint Church indicated that there was a great need to have a continuous recovery/discipleship growth group at the church. So when I went on my 2-week vacation, Debbie DeYoe and Scott Salvador rose to the occasion and led the group in my absence. After that, it was determined among the Celebrate Freedom leaders that with the exception of Thanksgiving week, we would host a meeting every Wednesday for the rest of 2024. And after meeting with Starpoint Church's leadership, after about starting afresh with Lesson 1 of the CR material in 2024 on January 10th, for those who are considering recovery and a new life of freedom in the new year, it was decided that we would be a continuous ministry for all of 2024. For, or at least we submitted a schedule to accomplish that if the need arises. So what do you do when you have reached your last planned lesson with a 9-week gap before you begin the material again? Well, you get creative. And luckily the Lord knows whom he's dealing with here, and, and as it turns out, uh, I just happened to compose a 7-week course of recovery-themed discipleship classes for my master's thesis in Christian counseling back in 2020. So I'm currently reviewing, updating, and editing my old lessons and modifying them for use for the Celebrate Freedom Growth Group. Um, so far I have Lesson 1 on the Kingdom of God and recovery edited and ready to go. And will try to stay ahead of the 8-ball and get all my lessons edited and ducks in a row to be prepared for the 9 weeks before we start up the Celebrate Recovery material again next year. Simultaneously, I'm past the halfway point of the 4th and final course of Deeper Walk School of Prayer Ministry training and halfway past completing the prayer ministry project that is required for graduation. I'm currently leading a brother through the Steps to Freedom in Christ in prayer ministry and and am scheduled to meet with him 2 more times before we complete our last session on November 7th. When you add the regular weekly coursework for Deeper Walk into the mix and my daily blogging, you can imagine that things are pretty busy right now. But you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm in a season where I am being equipped, experiencing new levels of freedom, serving the body of Christ, and falling more and more in love with my wife. Tammy Lynn. And even though things are busy, I have joy and peace in knowing that I am thriving in my purpose right now and have been given opportunities to learn and grow that I never would have dreamed were possible. And don't get me wrong, I am not looking so far ahead that I am forgetting to enjoy the moment. Come Fridays, I rejoice in the presence of my wife and use the weekends to rest and enjoy the peace of our countryside home. My wife has moved my workspace out of the closet and into the living room of our countryside home, and I love how it feels to not be hidden away in the back corner of the house, as I can sit, pray, study, write, or read in the living room, and my wife has open and easy access to visit me while she takes care of cooking or other household activities in the kitchen. One of our mutual love languages is physical touch, and we have both been blessed by the way this move has increased our physical availability to one another. I am more at peace at Countryside now, and whether or not that's because I have more space in the living room or it's because I'm receiving a lot more hugs, I'm not sure. But man, do I like it. So as we roll into another Friday, let's do the work that the Lord puts before us to the best of our abilities and get 'er done today if we can. But regardless of how the day goes, remember the good things in your life. Remember the good things in your life and remember the God who made them all and who has given you new life in Christ. When we take care of what we need to take care of, we can have a sense of accomplishment. But when we appreciate what we have been given freely, we can have a peace and joy that goes beyond our understanding. So keep walking and talking with God and seize the day. With joy. Today's Bible verses come to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Kruis. This morning's meditation verses come from the section on bitterness, resentment, and hate. And today's verses are 1 John 4:20-21 from the English Standard Version. The word of God says— the words of G— uh, well, yeah, the word of God says, if anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has not— he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. Today's verses fall under the 12th point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on bitterness, resentment, and hate. And that 12th point is If you claim to love God but you hate your brother, you are a liar. Today's verses call us out of the hypocrisy of claiming to have a relationship with God but being in opposition with our fellow man. God created us to love, and while we are to love God with all our hearts, souls, and minds as His first commandment, Jesus also directs us to love our neighbors as ourselves. God is love. He reveals himself through Jesus Christ to tell us just how much he loves us. God, through God the Son Jesus, was willing to die for us so we can have peace and eternal life with him. He loves us individually and corporately. God loves me, he loves you, he loves everybody, and so he doesn't want any of us to hate one another. The state of this world broken by sin is not God's plan for us, but because God wants us to freely love Him, He has given us the ability to decide if we will love and follow Him or not. The evil that men do is not God's perfect will. Evil men who claim their acts of violence are done in the name of God are deceived by the ruler of this world, Satan. While God would call us to love one another, the enemy is here to kill, steal, and destroy. Well, God would sow seeds of love, the enemy sows seeds of hate. So although we stand for the truth of God's word and hate evil, we need to recognize that Jesus called us to love our enemies, not hate them. As counterintuitive as that may be, our zeal for righteousness should not surpass our capacity to pray for and love our enemies. Before coming to Christ, I was a hopeless sinner, but it only took a simple message about the love of God to tell me that even I could be accepted by Him because of His love. So, don't fall into the trap of hating others. When we do that, we show that we don't know the Lord and His will for us very well. We should instead seek to do the hard thing. And love those who don't know about God and pray for them to make his acquaintance and to experience the life-giving spirit of his love. 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 The Holy Spirit. Chapter 32, Honoring the Spirit, and today's section is called Worshiping the Spirit as a Member of the Trinity. So if you want to know how you worship the Spirit as a member of the Trinity, go to mt4christ.org and you'll be able to see what A.W. Pink has to say about that at the end of today's blog post. As always, we encourage a lifestyle of Christian discipleship where you walk and talk with God all the time. As you walk in the Spirit and try to do his will for your life, with your life. So we, uh, we encourage that. And one way we, we try to encourage that is with our discipleship teachings that we put out, um, on, on the e-web, on the web, uh, on our podcast and our YouTube channel. Uh, we put out a playlist basically of our discipleship classes for Victory Over the Darkness The Bondage Breaker and Freedom in Christ. Those are all based on the Word of God and the teachings of Dr. Neil Anderson of Freedom in Christ Ministries, and we encourage you to check them out. If you need to know who you are in Christ and need to experience your freedom, uh, you can resolve your personal and spiritual conflicts through a prayerful repentance process known as the Steps to Freedom in Christ that those courses prepare you to do. I myself went through the Steps to Freedom in Christ and discovered that a lot of the condemning self-talk, that I was no good, wasn't self-talk. If it was self-talk, it would have continued. But after Steps to Freedom in Christ, there was a great clarity, great mental clarity. Whatever afflicting demonic spirits, basically, and had been basically cut off and told to go away. You know, when we, when we repent and commit ourselves to the Lord and cancel the permissions that our sins and unforgiveness and occult involvement and generational curses allow for the enemy to come into our lives, when we cut those things off, when we cancel that permission and tell the enemy to leave, he It's got no ground to stand on, as we have the authority of Christ to claim our lives for freedom and, well, for God's purposes. So we become free from the enemy when we become slaves to Christ. We, you know, that's a bondservant, uh, it's a slave of Christ. And when we put our faith in him, that's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to love God with all our hearts souls and strength and minds and to follow him with the way we live our lives. And when we do that, you know, when you're living for the Lord and you are not living a double life of sin, there's no room for the enemy to afflict you. So, you know, can demons bother a Christian? Not once who's discipled and who's, you know, taking every thought captive. And, you know, not giving permission to the enemy to be in his life. But if you're living your way rather than God's way and are involved with worldly things and occult practices and sin, you know, that's— there's a doorway for the enemy to walk into your life and stay there. And I was such a sinful person that, you know, the enemy didn't even bother coming around until I, you know, decided to come to Jesus. When I was living in his camp, it was no, you know, he didn't have to torment me. The bad decisions I made were tormenting enough, and the pain that I had to go through, you know, from trying to satisfy the flesh. You know, I told the guys at Celebrate Freedom, the growth group, during our discussions last week or the other night that I was legion in terms of my my— the amount of sin in my life. I had drug and alcohol addiction, sexual addiction, food addiction. I like to buy things. I said I was the American dream on crack. Basically everything was circumstantial happiness and, you know, total separation from God, doing things my way. And like I said, I got mixed up in Eastern Eastern mysticism, as I abandoned the church after a personal tragedy and threw myself into Buddhism for a few years before the Lord's message of love came into my life. I always thought there was no way I could be a Christian because I wasn't good enough. I was a bad person. I did bad things and I didn't want to do what God's Word said. And there was no way I was going to be able to do it. So I might as well live it up and, you know, hope that there was no hell, or hope that God would be merciful and acknowledge my baptism as a baby, um, to save me. Because I wasn't walking with the Lord or trying to follow him at all. I was just hoping to maybe go to heaven, or, you know, hope for that not to be a thing, and, you know, to be fully enlightened someday, and, uh, you know, or have a good rebirth or whatever. I believe so many lies. It was an funny. But the simple message of God's love came into my life through a David Jeremiah radio message about dropping his daughter off at college, about how he loved his daughter and how that love was similar to the Lord's love for us. And that, you know, through Christ, if we put our faith in him, we'd be forgiven of all the sins we ever, ever did and ever will do. That we would be immediately accepted into God's kingdom. It was like, that was a good offer. So I took him up on it and, uh, gave my heart to Jesus that day, uh, in March 2010. And, um, things haven't been the same since. Um, the Lord set me free, and that's why I do the blog and the podcast, to, to tell people you can You know, not only can you be set free, but this is the best life that you could possibly live, a life that's in harmony with the Lord, where you don't have to make up— you don't have to seize the day every day. You can just live in the peace of the Lord. You don't have to, you know, get, you know, pursue happiness. You'll have joy every day just knowing that you're connected to the one who made all things. And there's no reason to fear death and really no reason to fear man. So when you got that in your pocket, you know, you're blessed and you can walk through things like, you know, a divorce. You can walk through things like having to work two jobs and to struggle to get money to find a home for you and your children in the midst of COVID-19. You can do that, and you can, you can go, you know, you can go in the midst of the pandemic when people really don't know what's happening yet and confidently say, I'm working towards something, and if the Lord wants to kill me, he can kill me, and he will kill me. But I trusted that, you know, whether I died or not, I would have, I would have been doing the Lord's will for my life in terms of doing what I needed to do to build a new life that would be based on— and this is important, you know— would be based on following Him. You know, it wasn't just, I want my own place and I want to, you know, do what I need to do for me and mine. This was, you know, my life falling apart was all, you know, a part of following the Lord. Some things, you know, when you follow the Lord, some things are gonna give way. And, you know, the people who love you will be with you, but the people who love themselves, they probably won't. The people who don't love the Lord, they will be, you know, they'll be rejecting you. So, and that's what happened. I chose to follow Jesus, and slowly but surely things You know, the people that weren't following Jesus in my life fell away, and I had to pick up the pieces of a broken life to, uh, to find how I was going to live the rest of my life. Um, and because of the brokenness and everything, I decided that the only way I wanted to go was to follow the Lord. And I've been following him ever since, the best I can, uh, revelation by revelation, from faith to faith, from glory to glory, as he reveals himself and his will for me, as I grow in the capacity to accept his call, uh, in freedom in various ways. Um, you know, Lord is merciful and he doesn't make us do it all at once necessarily, but when we follow him, you know, we grow and we take on new challenges and he blesses us. Along the way. So, so get on that path of Christian discipleship for your life and stop believing the lies that some things are just impossible. You know, if other people have freedom in the area that you don't have freedom, many of which may not even believe in the Lord, that their— your struggle is— they don't have your struggle and they don't even have the Lord, that means it's certainly possible for you to have it through the Lord. We're talking about physical, physical fitness. We're talking about freedom from addiction, freedom from emotional pain. All of it is available through Jesus. Follow him, do what's right, and watch your life change and be transformed from the inside out as the Lord changes your heart when you surrender to him. So we call for your surrender today. But don't follow me, follow Jesus. Anyway, if you follow me, you'll be going to work with me today, so let's not do that. We'll just sort of, you know, huddle up, pray, and go our separate ways. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, thank you so much for the joy you set before us, and you know, the fact we get to look back and watch how you put this all together, that you— how you've shaped us and made us into the person that you created us to be more and more, and we know there's more in store as we continue to follow you. Lord, we pray for anyone who's listening or reading today's message. We pray for you to come alongside them and their prayer requests and their life of faith. Lord, they need your help. They need you to show them the truth. Lord, touch their hearts to make them read your word and get those revelations that you have waiting for them to discover. Lord, move them in the way they should go. Convict their hearts of their sin. And, uh, you know, make— have them choose you over the rest of the world. Um, yeah, that'll help. So Lord, we just pray for you to go before us today. We don't know what the day holds in terms of troubles that we'll see, but we know that you'll be with us always. And so we can have peace in that. No matter what comes, we can have peace knowing that you are in control, you're in charge, and you love us. And you're guiding us every day. So Lord, please open our eyes to the things you want us to see, lead our steps into the things we should do, as we need your help. And all we want to do is represent you on the earth and show other people the love that you've shown us, uh, Lord. So we praise you, we thank you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.