Taking a Joy Field Trip, Now - 28 Day Joy Challenge – Day 26– Purity 1082

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 waters of Lake Ontario crashing over the shoreline rocks at sunset comes to us from Celestial Blue Photography as Rocco Seja captured this magic moment back on June 13th. In Oswego, New York. Well, it's Friday, thank God, and after another week, uh, filled with work, ministry, and taking care of business, I for one am looking forward, uh, to crashing— looking to crash on into the weekend and a new month as we say goodbye to June come midnight. Last weekend, Arthur Sincotti presented us with the topic of time passages for our Bible study discussion. You can check it out on YouTube to see what had to say about that. But now that I think about my birthday month, really, uh, coming to an end, I realized that June of 2023 had some real kairos, or significant, opportune, or timely transitions, as some major life events and changes have come to pass in the lives of my friends, of many of my friends and family. Just like the official shift from spring to summer, many of the lives of my friends and family have begun a new season as things that were steady and unchanging coming into June are now a thing of the past. Children graduating into adulthood, relationships torn asunder, changes in employment, medical issues, and loss of loved ones into eternity. Have all transpired in the lives of family and friends, and I realize that the beginning of July will mark the transition into a new normal, as the way things were are no more. This is the way it always is, of course. Life goes on, and the idea that nothing changes, everything stays the same, is nothing more than an illusion or a denial of reality. So thus, it is important to practice appreciation now, to be thankful for what we have now, and to enjoy the moments of our lives as they happen. Instead of pining away for the glory days of the past or looking ahead to some hoped-for future state of bliss, we owe it to ourselves to appreciate today. And to mark the time we have right now as good, in spite of the shock and turmoil of the negative circumstances that, uh, that going through life might bring at times. If we are alive and know Christ as our, as our Lord and Savior, we have two things to be thankful for. And if we realize just how special those two facts are, we should be able to expand our view to see the vast number of blessings that surround us all the time. When we take time to stop and appreciate the good around us, we experience joy right now. And that brings us to our current series where we are walking through the 28-Day Joy Challenge because we are encouraging ourselves and others— you— to find peace in our lives by increasing our capacity for joy and by building our emotional resilience through simple practices of quieting, and appreciation. The 28-Day Joy Challenge is based on Dr. Marcus Warner and Chris Kersey's latest book, The Four Habits of Joy-Filled People, and you can sign up to take it for free and purchase a variety of books from Warner and Kersey on the topic of joy by going to fourhabits.org. So let's jump into Day 26, which will direct us to plan Joy Field Trip. And the 28-Day Challenge says, Day 26, Joy Field Trip. Welcome to Day 26 of the 28 Days to Joy Challenge. Today's encouragement, today's activity involves planning to get out and connect with someone you enjoy. If you can't meet with someone in person, consider a phone call or a video chat. If you have scheduling conflicts, a backup plan would be to send a meaningful text. Get creative and make the exercise work for you. Today's practice: Exercise 26. This exercise is about noticing what activities and interactions are joy-filled and life-giving for us. How this exercise will benefit you: Connecting with friends is a great way to build joy. When we anticipate a joyful connection, we benefit from the hopeful moment. Exercise steps: Plan a special visit with a friend where you connect over coffee or tea, take a walk, visit, and interact in a simple but meaningful way. Once you have a plan in place, it's time to anticipate being with your friend. What do you look forward to when you think about the upcoming visit? During your visit, share what you enjoy about this person. After the visit, notice what is meaningful for the anticipation— from the anticipation— and compare it with what was satisfying from your visit. Have fun with this exercise. We pick up tomorrow with more joy practice. And that's from our friends at 4habits.org. Because it is Friday and I'll be going up to my countryside home in Easton, New York to be with my wife, Tammy Lynn, The special visit I'm planning is to be with her. So when I go up to see her this evening, I'm going to suggest we take a field trip, uh, to be true to today's challenge. It has been a while since we have been to Hudson Crossing Park in Schuylerville. I may suggest going there for a walk after dinner so we can spend some quality time being together and appreciating each other's company. So I anticipate being with her, walking through the park, seeing the river, possibly seeing a good sunset, and taking, uh, and talking with her about the week we have had and the plans we will make for tomorrow. I love Tammy Lynn because of her faith, her beauty, her humor, and her spirit, and that is why I have her as my wife, and I plan on spending the rest of my life making special visits and taking field trips with her. So what about you? Do you have a special friend or loved one that, that you can make a plan to visit today or soon? Part of appreciating the good in life is being intentional to enjoy your life with the people that you love. So step out and be bold and let your friend or loved one know that you appreciate them and that you want to spend some time together. If the plan comes together, you can anticipate the joy before you experience it and enjoy it together when it happens. And then afterwards, your experience will become a memory that can give you joy too. So start living in joy today by making a plan to experience joy and by living in the moment of actually doing it and appreciating the fact that we did that after it is done. Today's Bible verse comes to us— verses come to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Cruis. This morning's meditation verses come from the section on adultery, and the word— today's verses we're covering are Proverbs 4:13-18. And the word of God says, keep hold of instruction, do not let go. Guard her, for she is your life. Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of the evil. Avoid it, do not go on it, turn away from it, and pass on. For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong; they are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. But the path of righteous— of the righteous It is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. Today's verses are used by our resource to point out that adultery can be avoided. In fact, our resource gives us more than today's offering towards that end, and we will share all of the Bible verses they list on this point in the days ahead. But for today, I chose to share this passage from verse, from verse 13 to 18 because it seemed to adequately be a complete train of thought. When we share the word or study the word, we have to be careful to not just cherry-pick the verses we like without considering their context. A single verse or two may be able to convey God's wisdom, but if we should— but we should be sure of the— we should be sure of what the entire passage of Scripture says before assuming we are being true to the overall meaning of that section of Scripture. In this passage, we're told to hold on to instruction, biblical wisdom, and to avoid the path of the wicked, with the warning that the way of evil corrupts your soul, causing one to be restless, hungry and thirsty to do wrong. But the path of the righteous is brightness and life. So we should choose to do what is right according to God's word and shun the temptations to do evil. Adultery and all sin can be avoided when we know who we are in Christ and are diligent in obeying the teachings of the Word of God. Christ has set us free, but we still must choose to go on the path of righteousness and reject, and reject the way of evil. As always, I invite all to go to mtforchrist.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 continue sharing from chapter 11, The Spirit Quickening. And today's sections is first the work of the Spirit, then the word. And so if you want to see how quickening, uh, works and what A.W. Pink has to say about that, go to m.tforchrist.org and you'll find that resource at the end of today's blog post. As always, we encourage everyone to keep on walking and talking with God on the path of Christian discipleship, to actually do this thing called Christian— Christianity in our lives as a spiritual practice every day, because we've discovered that it leads to the growth of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. When we walk in the Spirit, we experience the fruit of the Spirit, and we will not, you know, perform the sins of the flesh, basically. When we're living in the Spirit, we can say no to sin, we can, and thus not suffer the consequences of it mentally or physically. So we encourage a life of Christian discipleship. We do that with our blog and our podcast daily to encourage encourage people to follow the Lord, and we provide discipleship classes, uh, on our YouTube channel and our podcast for Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ, which are all based on the word of God and the work of Dr. Neil Anderson. Because we, we share those teachings because it teaches about who you are in Christ, the reality of the spiritual forces of darkness, and how to get past your personal and spiritual conflicts through a process of repentance and prayer called the Steps to Freedom in Christ. I found the steps to be transformative in my life, and thus I became trained in them through Freedom in Christ Ministries. And I offer the teaching to help people because it's valuable information that many people— that many may not find. Treat our relationship with God as a religion or a tradition or something we do once a week and don't pursue God's wisdom and power that comes through living by faith and the power of the Holy Spirit, we really miss something. And the world seems bigger than everything and we feel small. But when we know who we are in Christ, we know that We've been truly blessed because the Lord has chosen us to live with him forever, and, um, he wants us— and since we're going to live with God forever, we should probably, uh, understand how we should live. And thus we encourage Bible study. Thus we have the weekly Bible study with Arthur and Susanna Sincotti, and we invite you to check out those, those studies we've done in the past. Well, it is Friday and I'm actually ahead of schedule. I don't know what happened. Maybe it was just a short message. Um, but we're getting things together, ready to roll. And, uh, I'm, I'm very content to be living in the now, um, of a Friday, which is we're looking forward to the end of the workday and, and a joyous reunion with my wife. So, uh, I pray that everyone listening, uh, is blessed. I, uh, so let's pray. Uh, Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. We, we thank you so much for all that you've done in our lives, and that when we, we realize who we are in Christ, and that you've saved us and forgave us and, and give us eternal life that we can enjoy in the kingdom of God right now. Um, we're extremely blessed by it. And so we, we pray for anyone who's listening today that you come alongside them in their prayer request and their walk of faith to make them realize how truly blessed they are right now, um, regardless of whatever they may be facing, that they're still good because God is good and you're with us all the time. So Lord, we, we pray for you to go before us today, open our eyes to the things you want us to see, the beauty, the pragmatic things that we should see to help us. And, uh, we just pray for you to guide us in the way we should go, because, Lord, all we want to do is represent you in your kingdom, and we need a lot of help with that. So give us your wisdom, your strength, and your guidance today as we go about the earth. And, uh, Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.