Sickness, Hypocrisy, and Self Deception - Purity 1443

Welcome to the MT for Christ 247 podcast. I'm M.t. Clark, and this is today's photo. To see today's photo, go to mtforchrist.com or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter, or watch us on YouTube. Good morning. Today's photo of a church steeple pointing the way to the light of the setting sun as utility power lines make a pathway over treetops And through the sky, pole to pole, comes to us from M.t. Clark, who shared this view of upper— from Upper Columbia Street in Hudson, New York, on social media back on August 4th. Well, it's Thursday, and I share this slightly unorthodox pathway photo and a visual— as a visual encouragement to one, appreciate the beauty around you, where you are right now and as you go. Two, keep looking up for guidance to God, obviously. And three, to, to only concern yourself with getting from this point to the next point on the path of Christian discipleship, no matter how harrowing it may be. I am currently under medical treatment for— I am under medical treatment for pneumonia currently, and while I am Experiencing incremental healing and recovery, I may have finally learned the lesson to take it slow. And I've been reminded that much of our sickness comes from our secrets and the hypocrisy that comes from covering up the things we will admit to only when we are caught. When you are in timeout like I have been recently, you get a lot of time to reflect on your life, and if you're lucky, the Lord will reveal things in your our life that are quote unquote sick, uh, those unhealthy habits, coping mechanisms, or patterns of thought or behavior that aren't in line with his ways for your life and that prevent you from fully, you know, progressing into the people that God has made us to be. Unfortunately, my food addiction periodically causes me to sneak, sneak, or to steal food and hide my food thievery. As if my getting away with eating undetected somehow makes it okay. So not only would I occasionally eat foods that were unhealthy in the privacy of my place down by the river, but I would also sneakily eat foods on the sly while my wife wasn't looking at my countryside home in Easton. As my resolve to maintain healthy eating has been inconsistent over the last few months, these bad habits have developed into some hypocrisy, as I not open— as I, I not only openly advocate for being a good steward of our bodies with physical health, good physical health habits, but also stress the importance of being honest in all our dealings. Unfortunately, the world, our flesh, and the devil will lead us into temptation, cause us to sin, and then deceive us with a lie that what we just did, our wrong actions and our deceptive ways to cover up, are somehow okay and don't violate the principles that we hold so dearly. Essentially, through our hidden sins and the quote-unquote greasy grace that we use to alleviate our guilt, we become hypocritical, uh, and deceive ourselves because our actions violate what we say we believe is true. This is the fundamental challenge that we try to expose in the Freedom in Christ course and in our Christian life coaching practice. And even though I try to be fully transparent about my missteps in time— in time, uh, I have dismantled the strong— I haven't dismantled the strongholds of deception, conditioned responses, coping mechanisms, and patterns of behavior that keep me go keep going back— I keep going back to when it comes to my food addiction. Instead of repeatedly admitting that I messed up and making a change that causes these patterns to break, I have been enmeshed in making excuses and failing to break these bondages. Yesterday, my sneaking food that I did a while ago was discovered by my wife, resulting in her frustration. The food— I took food that wasn't mine and was intended for her students. So, it resulted in her frustration and my shame. While I have been— while I've been injured or on vacation or sick in August and going into September, I have also been living a lie by cheating on my food plan with reckless abandon at times. And not only have— I not only have the weight of shame on me, Uh, but I'm carrying more than a few extra pounds to give me, uh, to get rid of in the weeks, if not months ahead. And my current weakened state makes me feel worse about it. Um, so much so that the light of truth has revealed the darkness of my self-deception and that darkness, uh, um, of my hypocrisy. Yesterday I got rid of any remnants of hidden junk food at my place. Uh, there wasn't much, so I consumed it all just to make sure I got my money's worth and confirm my rock bottom status, um, from which I hope to rise into repentance that will break these patterns, uh, that I see are steeped in deceptive practices once and for all. Um, yeah, so, so I'm going to lean on my wife lean on my friends, and lean on the Lord to help me stay in the light of truth and turn from the lies and behave— and patterns of behavior that separate me from them and keep me from experiencing the freedom that I know the Lord wants me to live in. I know I have to choose it one day at a time. So today I pray. I confess my deceptive, selfish, unhealthy, and sinful ways. I am sorry for of the ways I have lied to myself and others, and how my lies and deceptive habits have caused myself and others pain. I ask you, Lord, to forgive me and to help me to stay with you in the light of the new life that you have for me. Help me to see the lies that keep me in bondage and to renounce them. Help me to choose the truth about what you say about me. And about the righteous ways of living that you encourage me to walk in. Help me to choose to be honest with others, myself, and you, um, in all my dealings. Help me to choose to do what is right today and to rest in the peace you have for me. In Jesus' name, amen. This morning's Bible verse, uh, comes to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Kruis. This morning's meditation verse comes from the section on the forgiveness of sins. Today's Bible verse is 1 John 1:9, which says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Today's verse is the first of two passages, passages of scripture that fall under the 18th point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on the forgiveness of sins. And that 18th point is, God graciously forgives when we confess our sins before him. Yeah, today's verse tells us, tells us— oh boy, yeah, well, somebody didn't update the commentary, so we're gonna have to go back and read it off my blog here. Um, let's see. Yeah, today's verse holds the key to our Christian lifestyle: confession, forgiveness, and righteousness. This is the verse that I learned shortly after becoming a Christian that gave me comfort for my failings and real hope for new life. This verse told me what to do when— when, not if, but when— I fell into sin after becoming a born-again Christian. After I sinned, I was to go to God to confess it. And this verse told me that God was not only faithful to forgive me for, for it, but that he would lead me into righteousness. God would help me to change. The key to this verse is the relationship we have with our Father. He forgives because of our faith in Jesus. Um, the harmony of our relationship with him is re-established when we confess our sins to him. The power of God can come into our lives when we confess our sins, stay in a harmonious relationship with him, and choose to follow him into the righteous life he has for us. As long as we are faithful to confess our sins, turn from them, and follow God, we can rejoice knowing that he is faithful to forgive us and lead us into righteousness. As always, uh, we encourage you to go to mtforchrist.com where we always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist us with our our walk. Um, today we continue sharing from According to Your Word: Morning and Evening Through the New Testament by Stephen F. Alford. And then Alford's devotion, he prompts us to read a chapter of scripture. Today's chapter is Titus 2, and from Titus 2 he shares a portion of verse 6 which says, exhort the young men to be sober-minded. And Stephen Alford writes, sober-minded does not mean long-faced or miserable. To be sober-minded means to be temperate or level-headed. If there is one danger in a young man's life, it is to be an extremist. This usually comes through lack of maturity and experience, and experience comes only through tribulation and patience. Thus, young men are exhorted to be sober-minded, capable of giving sound judgment and living temperately. Notice it is sober-minded. It is the mind or thoughts that eventually control one's life. If we are sober in thought, then we are sober in life. And Alfred ends in praying, despite my youth, Lord, let me be spirit-controlled and thus sober-minded. Amen. Amen. Yeah, we want to be sober-minded for sure. And, um, it definitely needs the Lord's help for that. And the way we can become Spirit-controlled and thus sober-minded is to, you know, is to control our thoughts, but, uh, to turn our thoughts to God's thoughts, but also to surrender to God. So we ask the question, have you fully surrendered to God? I'm surrendering to him once again as we enter into You know, the first week of back to school here in Upstate New York, and, you know, thoughts. And tonight's the NFL kickoff, um, every kind, all kinds of thoughts to jump back into old, old, well, our, the ways of our youth, right? You know, uh, but in tonight's, you know, celebration of football, you know, they encourage you to eat, uh, by tailgating, and they encourage you to drink with all the beer commercials, and they encourage you to gamble you know, by putting some action on the game. And, and so, you know, those things are not exactly Christian. Gluttony, drunkenness, and gambling is, is not the way we should go. And this youthful, you know, as we turn to autumn, you know, and back to school, we might think of the youthful escapades of our past where, you know, we involved ourselves in sexual sin. You know, we remember our old, old romances from our school days and think about our sexual liberty that, you know, which was actual sexual bondage, uh, that we had in our past, and may, you know, seek to reacquaint ourselves with those feelings by, you know, committing sexual sin. So got to be real careful. And, um, I'm, I'm being taken back to school by the Holy Spirit through this last month of, you know, you know, I started a prayer challenge I never finished, um, because I went on vacation and I didn't fully repent. I started to repent, was there, but I took my vacation as a time to take a break. And, and while I was, you know, down injured before that, you know, I was cheating on my food plan. I cheated on my food plan on vacation with Gusto. And since being sick with this cold and being down with this pneumonia, um, you know, I bought a bunch of comfort, comfort food and was, you know, you know, just really comforting my flesh. So I was surrendered to the flesh. I was not surrendered to God. And I think this timeout was basically to show me the errors in my ways and the hypocrisy that I was living in. And so I repent and, uh, you know, surrender, um, and I'll be leaning on the practices of what I've learned, um, to overcome, um, practices that I learned and teach at Celebrate Freedom, the, uh, Celebrate Freedom support group that meets on Wednesday evenings. Last night, I'm happy to have to hear that there was, uh, you know good showing at our, uh, at our recovery ministry as our, our team stepped in, our, uh, stepped in to lead and, uh, new people showed up. Um, so I was very happy about that. So anybody in the Capitol District who would like to join me in recovery, I'll be at, um, uh, prayerfully my health is fully restored, I'll be back to, um, celebrate, uh, Freedom on Wednesday, next Wednesday at 6:30 at Starpoint Church. So, um, you can join me there. Um, anyone who's not, uh, local, um, and would like to find or increase your freedom in Christ, uh, join one of the podcast classes that you can find on YouTube, uh, on our YouTube channel. Um, we've done studies for Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, Freedom in Christ, and the Celebrate Freedom discipleship group. They're packed with, um, you know, Bible, um, with Christian teachings and and, uh, Bible knowledge to apply to your life and to, you know, to, to expose the lies of self-deception and to help you change the way you think about yourself and the way you live your life. So we encourage you to check those out because we, uh, we need help. And Dr. Neil Anderson and people at Freedom in Christ Ministries have really, uh, put— there was some good material to help us, you know, get free, to experience the freedom we're supposed to know in Christ, the freedom I've known and, you know, unfortunately walked away from a little bit. Um, so we're, we're gonna— we encourage you to check those out. And so we ask the question, are you empty for Christ too? Well, I am emptying myself today and repenting, um, for the things I've done. And today will be a good day because I know the Lord will be faithful. To forgive me my sins and to lead me in all righteousness. And so if you need to empty yourself too, I would just say a prayer of confession, ask for forgiveness, and ask God to help you to be led in all righteousness. And then you and me, we can keep on walking and talking with God until we see the freedom and the victory manifest in our lives, because God is faithful and he will He will forgive us and lead us into righteousness. We just got to keep on walking and talking with him. So we begin again, and, uh, can't wait for it because I love, I love being free. And I don't like, uh, I don't like, you know, my, my food addiction to come in, come in between me and God or between me and my wife. And, uh, and most importantly, really, to betray myself, um, from a from good health. And, uh, I don't know if the food had anything to do with the disease I'm suffering from, but we're going to make sure it's not a— not an issue by, uh, eating healthy and moving forward in health. Um, so let's pray for that. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. We thank you so much for your forgiveness and your leading us into righteousness. Lord, we pray for anyone who's listening who needs help. And, uh, we all do. So we pray for those who are listening or reading today's message that you come alongside them on their walk of faith. We're, uh, we're weak, but you're strong, and we need your help. So we're praying for you to go before us today, open our eyes to the things you want us to see, and lead us in the way we should go, um, because we just want to be the people you created us to be and experience the freedom and victory and peace they have for us. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, and we love you. And we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.