In this devotional monologue, M.t. Clark opens with a photo of a tree at Crater Lake, using the image as a metaphor for unseen hope and the enemy’s trap of convincing believers they have “seen it all,” which can lead to despair and suicidal thoughts. He cites recent data—nearly 50,000 suicides in the United States last year, the highest in a century—referencing a Colson Center article that links rising suicide rates to a post‑Christian culture that spreads “destructive ideas.” Clark critiques secular suicide‑prevention efforts, especially the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), arguing that while well‑intentioned, they stop short of presenting the biblical truth that only faith in Jesus Christ offers lasting life. He underscores the exclusivity of Christ’s claim in John 14:6 and John 3:14‑21, labeling any alternative religious or philosophical worldview as destructive. The sermon then moves to a counseling focus, highlighting Proverbs 12:16 (NIV) – “A fool is quick‑tempered, but a wise person stays calm when insulted” – and connects it to a broader point about love covering offenses and the need for believers to respond to insult with patience, gratitude, and forgiveness. Clark promotes several Christian discipleship resources hosted on mt4christ.org, including A.W. Pink’s work on the Holy Spirit, and offers free class materials (Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, Freedom in Christ) via email. He concludes with a heartfelt prayer asking God to reveal truth, bring salvation, and empower listeners to share the gospel, emphasizing that the truth of Christ is the antidote to despair and the path to eternal life.
Chapters
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 this cool tree on the shores of Crater Lake comes to us from Chris Oswald, who shared this scene that he captured during his recent visit to Oregon's only national park on social media back on September 10th. Crater Lake is located in southern Oregon and is the product of a destroyed volcano. Mount Mazama, and beneath its pristine stillness lies hidden depths, uh, 1,949 feet at its deepest point, making Crater Lake the deepest lake in the United States. I've never been to Oregon, but if Tammy Lynn and I ever get a mini Winnebago, uh, I would like to see Crater Lake and maybe this cool tree for myself. Well, it's Friday, and while going on some cross-country trek isn't in the plans for 2023, I appreciate it when friends share the views from their travels to inspire me to go, to boldly go, where I have never gone before. Before this week, I didn't even know Crater Lake existed. Now I can imagine going to Oregon and the Pacific Northwest and seeing it, along with some other places I spied in Oregon and in Washington on Google Maps for myself. Yeah, we can't really plan on doing things or going places unless we know about them. One of the biggest traps the enemy, um, that he likes to lay for us to keep us locked in depression or despair is to convince us that we have seen it all, or there is nothing to do, or nowhere to go. After he starts that dialogue in our minds, it isn't long before Satan will cause us to question the point of living and will suggest suicide as a final solution for our blues. The Colson Center's Breakpoint shared an article this week that highlighted the Associated Press's news that nearly 50,000 people committed suicide last year, which is an absolute record in terms of raw numbers and is the highest rate in nearly a century. I'm sharing a link, uh, to their article online today, which, um, examines the possible causes for this increase. Highlighting how our post-Christian culture encourages despair and suicide through destructive ideas. Colson's Educators is doing their part to fight the lies that would lead us into despair with a free online course, Hope Always: How to Be a Force for Life in the Culture of Suicide. And I'm sharing the link for that on the blog as well. As a former volunteer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, I know how devastating the and far-reaching the effects of suicide are to our communities. And while I applaud the AFSP's efforts at raising awareness and educating people about suicide, I thought that the organization's focus on suicide prevention alone wasn't enough and that my time was better spent encouraging people to discover the meaning and purpose to life that comes through faith in Jesus Christ. The AFSP addresses the struggles of various populations of people that are at risk for death by suicide. Like the elderly, military veterans, and the LGBTQ community. Um, but their well-intentioned efforts to encourage people to be a community that discourages suicide and stresses diversity and inclusion, uh, fails to deliver the truth about life and death that is presented in the Bible and the solution that doesn't discriminate— faith in Jesus Christ. Ironically, the AFSP actually encourages faith communities as a support to suicide prevention, but because their focus is only on people not ending their lives, they are silent when it comes to which faith community would actually lead to life everlasting. As much as diversity and inclusion is heralded as a good thing, the truth is that it muddies the waters of knowing the truth. Because by refusing to evaluate the truth claims of different religions and philosophies of life, they validate ideas and philosophies that are contradictory to one another. And as the Colson Center points out in their article, some of these diverse ideas are actually destructive. I don't know about you, but with the confusion of what is right and wrong and how our society trumpets the idea that no one can know the truth, or there is no truth, or that we can all have our own truth, It's no wonder why people are depressed and feel there is no point to living. Our society echoes Pontius Pilate's question, "What is truth?" but is too worried about offending anyone to proclaim it. But Jesus didn't have that problem. John— in John 14:6, Jesus said to him and to all of us, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Jesus told us boldly that he was the truth and the only way to God. What we believe matters, and there is only hope in Jesus. Speaking of himself, he also said in John 3:14-21, 'And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He who believes in him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God. Jesus not only claimed to be the way of salvation, he also wasn't afraid to call evil for what it was and encouraged us to be people who would come to the light and do the truth. Jesus taught repentance and salvation through faith in him as the way to eternal life. Anything that goes against this is a destructive idea. The idea that we could believe in another religion or philosophy is destructive. The idea that we could live contrary to the moral principles of God's word is destructive. We are to turn from the darkness to these ideas and trust— and from these ideas and trust in the Light of the World, Jesus Christ, and follow him to discover the meaning and purpose that life— of life that will cause us to choose life and to live to love and serve our fellow man by sharing this life-giving truth. So speak the truth in love and encourage people to live today, tomorrow, and forever by following Jesus. This morning's Bible verse, or 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, comma, hot temper. And today's verse is Proverbs 12, uh, verse 16. And from the New Living Translation, the word of God says, a fool is quick-tempered, but a wise person stays calm when insulted. Today's verse falls under the second point of our— well, is it the third? Yeah, it's the third. The third point of our Counseling Reference Guide's section on anger, and that point is number 3: Love covers a multitude of sins and overlooks many offenses. Today's verse is the second of 5 passages of Scripture that our reference— our resource provides to to demonstrate love's power over anger. And rather than presenting them all at once, we're doing them one at, one at a time, one day at a time. Okay, this verse emphasized the wisdom dynamic regarding anger. Fools are quick-tempered, whereas wise people stay calm when insulted. Now I have to admit that love is not necessarily seen in the text, but it does demonstrate the second aspect of this third point. It clearly demonstrates that Love, you know, it overlooks many offenses by suggesting that the wise stay calm when they are insulted. Hey, if we're going to share the truth, we should be ready to be insulted and temper our responses by forgiving those who offend us because they know not what they do, just like Jesus. Well, Jesus knew what he did, you know what I'm saying. Anyway, Jesus didn't defend himself and he didn't fight back. Even when he displayed anger, it resulted in righteousness and healing. Unfortunately, we are less skilled in expressing our anger, and so we need to practice patience, gratitude, and forgiveness to slow down our quick tempers and stay calm when insulted. 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: as we, um, continue— well, and conclude chapter 24 on the Spirit sealing. And so if you want to see how A.W. Pink wraps up his chapter on the Spirit sealing, go to mt4christ.org and you'll see that resource at the end of today's blog post. As always, we encourage a life of Christian discipleship because it is the way to life, everlasting faith in Jesus Christ, and it's a way to peace on earth and goodwill to our fellow man, as we are taught how to, you know, to turn from our sin, to turn from our evil ways, and to love one another. And it, it's not loving to affirm destructive ideas. It's only loving to share the truth that will give life. And so we need to be— we need to be prepared to stay calm when insulted and and to still offer the truth as boldly as we can and lovingly as we can. It's difficult to share the truth in love, but the Lord, the Lord didn't have a problem with it, and that's what we should do. We should follow Christ's example and tell, to tell people about what Jesus said about the truth of life and death and eternal torment in hell, where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. These are big issues. But when we have destructive ideas that go against that cosmology of the afterlife, for instance, like reincarnation or just the fact that we— if you have an atheistic view that you just stop existing, these are destructive ideas and they don't fill you with hope and joy. They fill you with despair. And pride. And so we encourage that people know the truth by reading the Bible themselves. Don't take my word for it. The Bible's there for anyone to examine. And if you come at it with an open mind and open heart, the Holy Spirit just might show you the truth of, uh, of, of Jesus Christ and lead you to repentance and faith in him. That's our hope, and that's our prayer. Because the Lord was gracious enough to show it to us. And we're gonna, we're gonna share that truth, just like our friend shared a picture of a cool tree. Hey, look at that! We're gonna show you, hey, look at Jesus. He died for us, and you can live forever through him. So we encourage that because of the hope it provides for all of life. Never cause you to despair when we hold on to the truth of what Jesus did for us and the fact that he, he prepares a place for us in his kingdom forever. So we encourage that. And if you need to know, uh, you know, some truth, um, we, we try to share it through our discipleship classes on the podcast. Um, those classes are Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ. They teach all about who you are in Christ and the spiritual forces of darkness and how to be set free through the steps to freedom in Christ. So we encourage people to check those out. If you ever want to get the materials for those classes, you can email me at mtforchrist247@gmail.com and tell me to send you the, the materials for the class in question, and I'll email you the Word documents that I created to, uh, for handouts in the, uh, in those classes when I taught them back in 2021. Well, it is Friday, and I thank God for my salvation, and I thank God for my job, but that means I have to wrap it up and get ready to work. So, um, let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you so much for all you've done. We thank you for the gift of our salvation and our, our the blessing of Jesus on this world. And Lord, we just pray for anyone who's listening or reading this today, that they would know the truth and that they would follow your truth and follow— make Jesus their Lord and Savior and follow him every day, and to, to be moved by the Holy Spirit to share this truth with others. Um, Lord, we pray for their personal walk. We pray for you to come alongside them in their prayer request, and we pray for you to bless them. And Lord, while you're at it, we pray for ourselves today as, as we go into the working world. Lord, we just pray for you to go before us, open our eyes to the things you want us to see, and move us into the things we should do, Lord, because all we want to do is represent you on the earth and, you know, and live according to your will and your ways and to share the truth where we can. So help us, Lord. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, and we love you. And we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.
