The Compass to Guide You on the Path of Christian Discipleship – The Holy Spirit and our Conscience

To see today's photo, go to MT4Price or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Good morning. Today's photo of the waters of the Colorado River under a cloudless blue sky come— under a cloudless blue sky near Boulder City, Nevada, comes to us from a friend who recently took an epic epic trip throughout the Southwest, which included a kayak tour of the Colorado that took him all the way to Emerald Cove. Well, it's Thursday again, and I share this photo of a river pathway not to encourage you to take the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, but to encourage you to take the path less traveled by making the daily decision to walk in the Spirit on the path of Christian discipleship. What's that mean? Uh, that means I encourage you to do the Lord's will for your life that is described in his word, the Holy Bible, which begins with making Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior and continues with the renewing of your mind with the truth of God's word and by applying its wisdom to your life, not just on Sunday, but every day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Because the value of our faith, of our relationship with God, is only truly redeemed when we choose to live it out continuously. People on the outside of this Christian life often question why anyone would want to be a Christian. Uh, they see Christianity as a set of rules and restrictions and to be a religion of repression. They are spiritually blind to the truth of God's word that would show them that God's commandments are put in place to protect us. From the things that would harm us or that are wrong. Um, I was reading Jay Adams' Competent to Counsel yesterday, and although it was written over 50 years ago, our society still hasn't learned anything in terms of how we can have good mental health, how we can have peace. Taking on Freud's view that man's problems are caused by too strict a conscience— Freud's superego— and and, uh, that we need, uh, to reject our conscience's guilt just and to do and, and to just do what we want to be fulfilled. Adams wrote, if Freud's view were correct, namely that trouble arises whenever the id has been repressed by an overstric conscience or superego, then really our day ought to be a day of widespread mental health rather than a day of unparalleled numbers of personal problems. For ours is not a day of repression, but of permissiveness. If there was ever a time in which the lid was off, in which there was wide-open rebellion against authority and responsibilities, ours is the day, is that day. And yet unprecedented numbers are in trouble. If Freudianism is true, the most immoral people, or at best the most amoral people, should be the healthiest. Whereas in fact the opposite is true. People in mental health institutions and people who come to counseling invariably are people with great moral difficulties. Moral difficulties does not always mean sexual violations. That is only one aspect of it. Immorality of every sort, irresponsibility toward God and man, the breaking of God's commandments, is found most prominently among people with personal problems. End quote. That, uh, this was 50 years ago. Do you think we have left the lid off anymore since then? We are a more permissive, quote-unquote, tolerant society than we have ever been, and yet mental health problems have only gotten worse. New research from Boston University School of Public Health reveals that the elevated, that the elevated rate of depression has persisted into 2021. And even worsened, climbing to 32.8% and affecting 1 in every 3 American adults. On— and another quote says, on average, adjusted for age, the annual U.S. suicide rate increased 30% between 20— uh, between the year 2000 and 2020, from 10.4 to 13.5 suicides per 100,000 people. In 2018, 14.2 people per 100,000 died by suicide, the highest rate recorded in more than 30 years. Hey guys, as our society has become more permissive morally and less real, quote-unquote, religious, depression and suicide rates have increased. Let our freak— letting our freak flag fly has not liberated us to the point where there is an increase in happiness and peace. But the subsequent moral no-man's land of anything goes has caused confusion, depression, and disillusionment because people are discovering that satisfying our selfish and fleshly desires doesn't bring satisfaction or peace. If we have, if we have exercised, quote unquote, our freedom to what— to do whatever we want, why isn't society overflowing with happiness? Well, unfortunately, people are living out the consequences of their sins. Not only does the pleasure dissipate and negative consequence accompany the choice to sin, our consciences, our hearts, suffer because it knows, even if we deny it to everyone including ourselves, um, the way we, you know, we— the way we are living isn't right. Uh, we can lie to ourselves and reject the opinions of others, but our hearts were made with God's law written on them. Our consciences are God-given, and it should cause us to turn from the things that are— that, that we all knew— wow— we once knew were wrong. We all knew they were wrong. As children— as a child, I could see that getting drunk wasn't right. It made people act strange. But through the influence of society and my own rebellion, I decided to ignore my conscience and changed my mind. And suddenly what was bad was good. But as much as I indulged, and as much as I loved my addiction to alcohol and other things, even in the midst of them I knew these things were wrong. My experience taught me that, but I knew my heart— knew— I knew in my heart the way I lived was wrong. I was living in total freedom, so where was the peace? Well, I've learned that there is no peace without God, and when we think and behave in ways that are contrary to his truth, we suffer. And if we are never reconciled with God through faith in Jesus Christ, our suffering never ends. But we know the truth: there is a God. He has revealed us— he has revealed to us in our hearts and in his word what is right and wrong. While we can deny him and his tenets for morality, just like gravity, we are still subject to his moral laws which affect our minds, bodies, and emotions. When we separate ourselves from the one who gave us life and violate his commandment commandments, we suffer. But there is great news. There is hope. Christ paid the cost on the cross so we could be forgiven of the violations we have made. And when we put our faith in him, we receive a new life that gives us the power to listen to our consciences and give us the— gives us the power to overcome the sins that so easily beset us. When we come to faith in Christ, our hearts, our consciences, are strengthened by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit and we receive the power to obey the Lord and walk away from the darkness of this world. So share the good news and keep walking and talking with God. When we are in this thing called Christianity, we have the power of God in us to choose what is right and holy and turn from the things that tempt us and lead to destruction. Instead of being hopeless in a cycle of condemnation by sinning and confessing, we can follow the compass of our Holy Spirit empowered conscience to walk out of depression, out of sin, and into the life of light of a new, of the new abundant life that God always wanted us to experience. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verse is Psalm 25:9, and it says He leads the humble in doing right, teaching them his way. Today's Bible verse speaks of how the Lord will lead the humble into doing what is right and how he will teach them his way. To believe in God and the gospel of Jesus Christ, we must be humble. To believe, we have to admit that there is a higher power than us who has a holy standard for living. That we have violated and that we are powerless to make things right with Him through our own efforts. We have to be humble to ask for forgiveness. We have to be humble to make Christ our Lord and Savior. But when we humble ourselves before God by admitting our sins and by asking for forgiveness and by making Christ our Lord, God will lift us up. Our humble decision, uh, for Christ gives us eternal life. But it also gives us the opportunity to live a righteous life by receiving the power to learn God's ways and apply them to our lives. When we humble ourselves, God will lead us to do what is right. When we humble ourselves, he teaches us his way. So if things have gone astray, or if you are feeling you have lost your way, humble yourself by calling on the Lord. And ask— and by asking for his help to show you how you can do what is right. If we are humble, he will lead us and he will teach us his way. 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 John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life, and today the The first topic is Christ Exalting Paradoxes of Life. And so if you want to examine that and some other sections from Piper's book, go to mtforchrist.org to check out that resource on the bottom of today's blog post. And you can see the previous entries on the previous blog post, obviously. Yeah, living a Christian life is defined by following God, not just believing. It's— we can believe, but if we don't follow him, does it really show we believe? And more importantly, you know, how are we living and what are we experiencing? When we believe in the Lord and follow his ways, the fruit of the Spirit grow, and that that includes love, joy, and peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, you know, and self-control. Um, it's sort of a, you know, a self-fulfilling process. When we start to follow, we receive from the Lord all these things that make us, make us want to, want to follow him more. When we're living in peace, we don't want that to stop. And that's what I've discovered, is that the true value of our relationship with the Lord is in staying in it and standing on who we are in Christ, and by reaching out to him in prayer and in our minds and our actions to demonstrate that we are his and we will obey. And the great thing about that is we benefit greatly from our obedience. So, um, That's why we push the Pathway to Christian Discipleship. Tonight we'll be teaching a men's group the Freedom in Christ course on Zoom, and, you know, these men have come to, come to learn how to be free and to grow in their faith, and they're taking a step of faith by showing up to the meetings, and they're, they're coming back, so they must be getting something out of it. They're learning and they're growing, and as they walk in the Spirit, they receive the fruit of the Spirit. And this pathway is available to everybody. And if you don't know how to do it, we, we here at the podcast offer our previous discipleship classes so you can hear what we have to say about that. So if you want to check them out, they're on the podcast and our YouTube channel for Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ. They're all based on the word of God and the work of Dr. Neil Anderson, a Christian counselor who's, who set people free. Of course, he didn't set them free, but the Holy Spirit did. Um, but he's learned a process to help Christians, uh, in, in their repentance and, and in standing in their, their identity of Christ. Um, that is transformative, and so we share it. Um, we also revere the word of God, and we We show that real people can read the Word of God and talk about it by sharing our Bible study each week. We do a Bible study with Arthur and Susanna Sincotti, and we have that available on the podcast and the YouTube channel, available for your listening pleasure. So we encourage you in your faith and ask you to let not only that your conscience be your guide, but to let the Holy Spirit guide you. And empower your conscience so you can live a life that's more abundant through Christ and Christ alone. It's Thursday. We got to teach tonight, so we're gonna pray right now and get on with our day. We got to work and go out there and get her done. So let's, let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Thank you for the opportunity to speak speak about, you know, freedom in Christ, um, this morning and tonight and every day, uh, as, uh, I've learned that you love us and you care for us and that you empower us to walk out, out of the darkness and into the light of your abundant, abundant life that you have for us. And, um, Lord, we thank you for that. We thank you for the people listening today, that they'd be encouraged in their faith to keep walking and talking with God and trusting and praying to you. Lord, we pray for the people who need healing. We have had a few friends who had surgeries and other issues in their health. Lord, we pray for you to come alongside them and help them through this time by giving their bodies healing and their— and peace in their minds. Lord, we pray for We pray for you to go before us today, Lord, because we need you every day. We need you to go before us and open our eyes to see the things we need to see and to do the things we need to do to represent you here on the earth. Lord, we thank you and we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.