The Bright Side – Responding to God’s Precious Promises - Purity 1179

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 double rainbow bubble that seems to have a brighter side captured within its dome comes to us from Tammy Lynn Clark, who walked out on the wet lawn of her countryside home's back— backyard barefoot to capture this magical sight Saturday afternoon after a day that was otherwise rainy and gray. Well, it's the beginning of another work week, and while the weather forecast in my neck of the woods call, uh, doesn't call for any rain, I suppose the fact that it is Monday may be reason enough to get you down. But if you are entering into the day with a lackluster attitude, I would remind you that your thoughts drive your emotions, and there are many ways you can turn that frown upside down into intentionally. One of the fruits of the Spirit is joy, and as I encourage everyone I know to put their faith in Jesus and to do what is right by following the Lord with the way you live your life, I will be the first to tell you that how you choose to live and what you choose to focus on and think about can make a big difference in your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual lives, especially on rainy days and Mondays. This morning you could face your workday with gripes or complaints about the forced labor you have to endure today, or you can give thanks to the Lord for your ability to work and the fact that you have a job that gives you, you and your family, the means to support your needs. That small shift in perspective can make a big difference. Many of us also have friendships with people who that we only know because of where we work. If we didn't work, we wouldn't know them and wouldn't be able to share our lives with them. And I know we might be happy about that prospect with some of the people we work with, but even the difficult people we endure— we encounter in the workplace can serve a purpose in our lives. They can help us to practice kindness, gentleness, compassion, and patience. Hurt people hurt people, so the prickly pear at work may have faced some serious trauma and rejection in their lives, and their surly disposition may result in them not having any meaningful relationships outside of work. Jesus told us to love our enemies, and the Lord may have placed the difficult people in our lives to give us an opportunity to grow in patience as we endure their rudeness and persecution. Or to grow in compassion as we are challenged to show them kindness and to encourage them to have a relationship with God. The Word of God encourages us to give thanks in all things and to go into the world to make disciples. When we focus on those two directives, our whole attitude can change as we not only see the bright side of our lives by focusing on the good we have received in life through the Lord, But we can be inspired by— to be— we can be inspired to be light bearers as we try to share the light of the world with those around us who are hurting, blind, and hopeless. That would describe everyone who doesn't know Jesus. So as we head into the last full week of October, let's try to think of our lives as a treat by focusing on how good God is. And the good things we know in life in general, and specifically because we have eternal life through our faith in Jesus Christ. And let's not be tricked by the world, the flesh, and the devil— by the world, the flesh, or the enemy— into believing we lack something. 2 Peter 1:3-11 tells us, by his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world's corruption caused by human desires. In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God's promises. Supplement your faith with generous, uh, with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins. So, dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen. Do these things and you will never fall away. Then God will give you a grand entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Those are Peter's words of encouragement that tell us we have been blessed by God, forgiven of our sins, have received precious promises, and can escape the corruption of this world. But we are to respond to God's precious promises by living a moral life, seeking knowledge of His ways, and showing love towards others. When we walk into that mission that Peter describes, we will be walking in the Spirit, and the result will be growth. We will mature in our faith, and we will experience the fruit of, of the Spirit in our lives. We can have joy even on rainy days or Mondays when we focus on the Lord and on being intentional about thinking about and living out the life he wants us— wants for us to live, where we are becoming more and more like the people he created us to be. So keep walking and talking with God. He has given everything you need in his precious promises. We just have to respond to them to experience them today. This morning's meditation verses come from the section on, uh, well 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, um, our resource here is 1 John 2:9-11, uh, and the word of God says, whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. Today's verses fall under the 8th point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on bitterness, resentment, and hate. Eighth point: One who hates lives in darkness. Today's verses encourage us to not be a hater. If we walk around with bitterness toward others, we are living in a dark place and not representing the light of the world. Hate blinds us to the reality of how God would see things. God commands us to forgive and to love our enemies. So, If all we can see is someone's sin or faults and are consumed with hate for them, we are in the dark. The light of the world would reveal that even our worst enemy has the opportunity to be forgiven, saved, and transformed through faith in Jesus Christ. If we hate others, we won't give them the opportunity to live because our bitterness will prevent us from sharing the message of God's love. So check yourself before you wreck yourself. If you hate someone, think about why, and think about how the Lord would encourage you to forgive them and love them. Think about how they could change if they knew Jesus, and think about how your relationship could change if you were the one who looked past the darkness of hate to offer them the light of the world, the that can save and change their lives. 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 are sharing from chapter 31, The Spirit Endowing, and A.W. Pink's take is the non— on today's topic is non-continuation of extraordinary extraordinary gifts. Oh, um, so, so you may or may, may or may not agree with his, his, uh, his stance on extraordinary gifts, but if you want to hear them out, you can read that section on our last, um, well, basically at the end of today's blog post. Some people believe in the, the continuation of the gifts of the Spirit. Some people think they've ceased in some way. And, um, I can see both sides of that argument, as God's still working in the world, but things might not be— might not be the way that they were with the, uh, the apostles in the early church. There's some miraculous things happening back then, and whether or not, you know, we've been blessed like the apostles of old is a matter of debate. But I don't think we, you know, I shudder to call myself an apostle. I won't be one of the people who do that. I try to be humble. And believe me, I've tried to prophesy, and luckily I'm not under the Old Testament law because my, my predictions or whatever didn't come to pass, so I would have been considered a false prophet and stoned. So I don't believe you can, you know, prophesying in terms of speaking encouragement, speaking the word of God, yeah, we can do that for sure. Where you start making predictions and they don't come true, I don't think that's a safe game to play, but that's just my take on it. Or I don't have that gift. Maybe you do, and maybe you predict things 100% of the time, but I wasn't the guy who could do that. So I'm not going to call myself a prophet or an apostle, although I will try to encourage, encourage people to follow the Lord like I was one, because I believe, and I've been changed, and I've received, you know, many gifts, um, from walking with the Lord. And the fruit of the Spirit is, uh, it's pretty good. We'll take that. We'll take the freedom that we have in Christ. We'll take the joy of living according to his word, and we'll share that continuously, as our mission is on M.t. for Christ 24/7 podcast. The whole idea is that we can live our faith every day that we shouldn't really take a break from faith. We should take a break from the world, and thus we can escape its corruptions when we change our desires to follow the Lord's desires for our lives rather than what our— the flesh, the world, and the devil say we should have. That's the big transformation shift. Start seeing things the way God sees them and try to obey him and serve him. And live according to His will. When we do that, we discover those fruit of the Spirit growing in our lives. We discover the presence of God in our life, and amazing things happen. So, but we're still human and make mistakes, so we have to be careful and lean on Him, His wisdom and guidance and strength for our lives. And that's what we're going to do today as we go into the workforce. Uh, we don't know what troubles we're going to run into at work, what challenges we might have to face. But we can have confidence that we'll do our best, we'll do our best job we can, and we'll lean on the Lord to strengthen us and to guide us and to remind us that our value as people is determined by what God says, not by what our jobs say or even our friends and family say. Our value is determined determined by the Lord. So let's walk in it and let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you so much for Monday morning and the fact that I have a job to go to today. We thank you for the house you've given us. We thank you for the car that's going to drive us to work, prayerfully. And, uh, we thank you for the people we'll encounter, uh, throughout our day. We just pray that you can help us to encourage other people to we value in whatever ways we can say or do, through our examples or our words or whatever. Um, Lord, while we're at it, we'll pray for our friends who are listening or reading today's message. We pray for you to come alongside them and their faith walk and to bless their prayer requests. And, um, Lord, to show them the way they should go. While we're at it, we just pray for you to go before us, Lord. Open our eyes to the things you want us to see today and move us in the ways that you would have us do things today. Because Lord, all we want to do is represent you and follow your will for the— will on earth and to represent your kingdom, to show other people that you're real and that you're really worth following. And we just pray for you to go before us today in those regards. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you. And we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.