The Glorious Pathway to a Beautiful Ending – Purity 735

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 boardwalk pathway running along the waters of the Hudson River comes to us from a friend who visited the Saugerties Lighthouse back on April 28th. Even though I can't see the lighthouse in this photo, I trust that my friend was telling their friends on social media the truth and that if we followed in their footsteps, we would find the lighthouse at the end of this path. Path, and that we would undoubtedly see it and enjoy its beauty as we walked toward it. Well, it's Thursday, and by now it shouldn't surprise any of my friends that I am sharing another photo of a pathway today, because Thursday nights have been the day on which I have taught and encouraged others to follow the path of Christian discipleship, to experience their freedom in Christ, and to overcome besetting sins and negative emotions that prevent Christians from experiencing the peace and joy that is to be expected when we walk in the Spirit. Although I first believed and made Jesus my Lord and Savior back in 2010, and I set about coming to know what his word said and what it— what being a Christian meant in earnest in the years leading up to it, I didn't really put my money where my mouth was. Uh, I didn't really repent until 2015. When Pastor Bob Costello started a Christian recovery program at my local church, and I decided to trust the Lord to free me from the bondage of addiction that I had put myself in since being a young adult. We are talking about 20 hardcore years of willful enjoyment of alcohol and drugs here, and not only did I think I was unable to stop, I frankly didn't want to stop. Although I'd been a Christian for a few years, I hadn't given up my besetting sin, even though I was sincerely trying to seek the Lord. I not only attended church twice a week, I also served in the church as an audiovisual tech. I went to Bible study once a week. I already had gotten my associate's degree in biblical studies and was working on completing my bachelor's degree in Bible college. But even though I had given myself to all these pursuits and had tried to repent of my addictions on my own with little success, in 2015 I publicly let everyone know that I was going into recovery and trusting the Lord to help me overcome the vices I thought I would never give up. Uh, the Lord is faithful, and if you humble yourself and surrender to his will for your life, he will lift you up and give you the strength to walk away from the darkness of your past. So after successfully completing the program, I began teaching on Thursday nights at the recovery ministry and eventually transitioned to teaching Christian discipleship in 2021. And tonight I will continue in my endeavors to encourage Christians to apply their faith to their lives by facilitating the Freedom in Christ discipleship course on Zoom for Freedom in Christ Ministries. I share these messages of encouragement on the blog and podcast and volunteer my time to share the message of freedom in Christ because I I have been there and done that. I have walked the path of Christian discipleship through some very dark valleys in my life's journey, and I know that faith in Jesus Christ and living according to the life principles set forth in the Word of God is the pathway that is rich in meaning and purpose, is paved with the fruit of the Spirit, and just happens to lead to everlasting life. I know that the Word of God is true. Because I have experienced the Lord's presence and guidance in my life and simply have no choice but to give Him honor and praise and encourage others to come to know the Lord and to experience their freedom in Christ for themselves. Somewhere along the path, early in my walk, I fell in love with the Barlow Girls song "Beautiful Ending." I'm sharing a link to a YouTube video of it on the blog today because My stating the lyrics probably won't do it justice, but the song says: Oh, tragedy has taken so many. Love lost 'cause they all forgot who you were. And it scares me to think that I would choose my life over you. Oh, my selfish heart divides me from you. It tears us apart. So tell me, what is our ending? Will it be beautiful? So beautiful? Oh, why do I let myself let go of hands that painted the stars and holds tears that fall? And the pride of my heart makes me forget it's not me but you who makes the heart beat. I'm lost without you and dying from me. So tell me, what is our ending? Will it be beautiful? So beautiful. Will my life find me by your side? Your love is beautiful. So beautiful. At the end of it all, I want to be in your arms. And repeat. Bridge, chorus, chorus. That song was a huge inspiration for me in those early days of my faith because it pointed to my ultimate salvation of when I would see God face to face. But it also stretched my heart to love the Lord for the gift of his forgiveness and the power he had poured into me with the Holy Spirit. It not only gave me hope for that final destination, it gave me hope for overcoming the many problems in my life by walking with him. Is that not in a song? Must have been the Holy Spirit encouraging me. And so I sang that song. I lived that song. And I saw the beautiful ending of my struggles coming— come into sight the more I followed the Lord. And even in the darkest days, it drove me to believe that I would find a beautiful ending, not only in heaven but here on Earth. And can I tell you, I found it. But guess what? This is a pathway. Our journey is not over. I keep walking and talking with God because I know that there is another beautiful ending somewhere down this road. And many more before I see the Lord face to face. So let me encourage you: God has a beautiful plan for your life. There may be great suffering in our journey, but the beauty of our path begins with the reception of the gift of our forgiveness and a new and eternal life. If we forsake the gift, if we accept Jesus and then go about— go back to the normalcy of our dark pre-Christ existence, If we fail to answer his call on our life, we will lose sight of the beautiful thing that he has done for us, and we will not walk into the beautiful things that he wants us to see before we see him face to face, before we are in his arms. So turn from the world and start, or keep on, walking and talking with God. Surrender to his will and guidance. He has beautiful things for you to see, so start walking in his direction. Because even though I know you cannot see it yet, I swear that your beautiful endings are down this pathway, and I promise that you will eventually see them in the distance, reach them, and then move on to the next beautiful ending that the Lord has for you before you get to that ultimate beautiful ending, which is really just another beginning, as we will live, rule, and reign with God forever and ever. Amen. Today's Bible verse, uh, comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verse is Proverbs 2:5, and it says, then you will understand what it means to fear the Lord, and you will gain knowledge of God. Today's Bible verse reminds us that when we understand what it means to fear the Lord, we will gain knowledge of him. Pretty simple, huh? The word means what it says. Uh-oh, are we supposed to fear the Lord? Uh, hey, let's keep it real. Uh, life and death are scary matters, and the word of God is filled with the Lord's warnings to be right with him or to be subject to his wrath. Yeah, hell isn't Satan's kingdom, it's his prison, and God is the one who sends him and everyone else who rejects Jesus as Lord and Savior there. So yes, having a healthy fear of the all-powerful and holy God of all creation is wisdom. However, because God graciously offers us forgiveness and adoption into his kingdom through faith in his Son, Jesus Christ, we don't have to be afraid of God. God loves us and wants us to come to him. His warnings of his judgment and wrath are done out of love, He wants us to know the consequences of rebellion and denying Him. In the world, they have Scared Straight programs where troubled youth are brought into prisons to see the harsh reality of where their criminal behaviors will ultimately lead them. The intention isn't just to terrify the children with the possibilities of confinement, violence, and degradation that are part of life in prison. The intention is to cause them to see the error of their ways. And to avoid the consequences. The fear of the Lord is supposed to draw us to surrender to him and to follow his wisdom and ways. So the fear of the wrath of God is one aspect of gaining knowledge of God, but another aspect of this fear of the Lord should include the simple but awesome fact that God is Creator. Think of it, as big as this universe is, as old as it is, God was before it all. He imagined and created it all. I sometimes get tripped up just thinking about the vast multitudes of people on this earth and consider the fact that God knows every one of them and the intentions of their hearts. The, the fear in this sense is respect. How great and mighty is he? So we are to have a healthy fear of God. His ways are higher than our ways, but he calls us to be with him and to know him, and it is an offer we should accept. 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's sections include headings that say Inspiring Sacrifice for Lesser Causes, uh, oh Lord, don't let me waste my life, when the trifling fog clears, and well, that was the last one, and when the trifling fog clears. So if you want to see what John Piper has to say about those things, um, go to mtforchrist.org and you'll see that, uh, excerpt, um, at the bottom of today's blog post. Basically, there was also links at the end of every blog post for our podcast and for our YouTube channel and my wife's Facebook page as well as her podcast. Not sure when we'll hear from her again, but I love to hear her voice speaking about the truth of God. And she's— I know she's listening to this message, so I encourage her to Create another one, create another podcast, another episode. I want to hear the truth of our faith spoken by my beloved's voice. I hear it quite often, but something about it on the podcast, really great. Anyway, and that's it, you know, um, when we, when we know the truth of God, you know, the, the truth of, of who God is and the offer of how, how we can be part of his kingdom through faith in Christ. Uh, we love to hear the good news. We love to hear it and be reminded of who we are, to encourage us in our walk. And, uh, that's why we're here, uh, on the podcast and the blog, uh, to encourage people to get on the path of Christian discipleship. And that's just really following the word of God, following the Lord's will for your life. And, uh, guess what? It's an awesome, an awesome journey to behold. It leads to beautiful endings. And really, the You know, every day, um, you know, we have the peace of the Lord, um, and the joy of the Lord, um, because those are, are fundamental fruits of the Spirit. And we're walking in the Spirit, we can, uh, we can, we can enjoy, um, the fruit of the Spirit. Of course, that's an intent, you know, a fruit that's born of the intention to follow and to, you know, shift our minds and our, our wills and our emotions to to see the beauty before us, to know who we are, and to act on our faith by applying it, you know, mentally and applying it to our behaviors as the whole thing comes together. You know, it's not just us believing things, it's also us doing things and, you know, feeling things. It's mind, will, and emotions all turned to God and his truth and his life for us. And, you know, it's an all-encompassing path, but it's a good path, and it leads to a really good path that, like I said in the post, it's not just a beautiful ending, it's the beginning, which is really awesome to consider. So you know, keep walking and talking with God because this path is supposed to, uh, you know, being a Christian is supposed to be a good thing. It's supposed to be not just a drudgery, it's supposed to be a joyful experience. So, you know, Christians that are, you know, legalistic or not showing the joy of their faith, um, encourage them. Um, encourage them not to just to do disciplines, not just to follow rules, not just to do what is right, but to, to enjoy the fact that they, they're— they've been shown this truth, that they know this love, and that they, they can experience it regardless of the circumstances of our life. Even the hardest days, we, we are in contact with the Lord. We can enjoy his peace and his joy as we go from moment to moment, knowing that he's with us. So we encourage that. And tonight we'll be teaching— well, we'll be facilitating the information from Lesson 6 in the Freedom in Christ course, which is handling our emotions. Now you're like, hey, maybe that's not— that's not fair, I'm not part of that Zoom group. Well, the good news is that all the teachings that for the Freedom in Christ course and the other courses I've done are available to you for for your listening pleasure on the podcast. And if you want to watch it through a TV or YouTube, you can do that too. It's only an audio recording, but the classes for Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ are all available on the podcast and the YouTube channel. And like I said, if you wanted to, you know, jump in somewhere along, you know, later in the course, you could you could look up, uh, um, the Freedom in Christ course, lesson 7, I believe it is, uh, for handling your emotions well. So, um, you can jump in and see it, or you can start from scratch in the beginning. It's your journey, it's your path. Um, you know, walk into it whatever way the Lord calls you to. There's great freedom to walk this out. Um, of course, all of these teachings are based on the word of God. And the work of Neil Anderson, Dr. Neil Anderson, who's, you know, went to the scriptures and found the principles that can help people experience their freedom. So we give credit to where credit is due, but it's all a dissemination of the wisdom of the word of God. So we obviously have great respect for the word of God. We read it daily and we study it once a week. With our good friends Arthur and Susanna Sincotti. So we share a Bible study, um, on, on the podcast and the YouTube channel, uh, for— it's called Bible Study with the Sincottis. It's a topical study where we get together and, uh, Arthur, uh, creates an outline and, and a topic, and we discuss it and, uh, let the Lord, uh, direct our path as we, as we talk about the things, uh, that Arthur brings to our attention, and, uh, we, we remember what the word has taught us and the Lord has taught us in our walk as we discuss each topic each week. So if you don't have a Bible study at your local church or you don't go to church, you can join our Bible study by just tuning in either to the podcast messages or to, to YouTube. And on YouTube, since the beginning of the year, we actually started recording the, the Bible study on Zoom So we're uploading the videos one by one. We started— I uploaded the first one on Resurrection Sunday, and since then I'm taking all the ones from the past and rolling them out one at a time on Wednesdays. And yesterday we released, I believe it's the Issue of Authority Bible study that we did back in January. It's now on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. To see what we look like, uh, if that's something you're interested in. But we encourage you to check it out because— not because of our faces, but because it's based on the word of God, and it's meant by us to encourage you to think about your life of faith and to pursue it. So we do that. Well, it's, it's Thursday night. Review the information for tonight's course and And, uh, I'm looking forward to, to, uh, to doing that tonight. And, um, I have to work, so let's wrap it up. Lord God, by praying. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you, uh, for another day in your kingdom. We thank you for all that you've done for us. We thank you for showing us who you are and showing us who Jesus is and how we could come be a part of your kingdom, be a part of your family. And receive the Holy Spirit when we put our faith in Christ. And that transformation is, is happening as you change us from faith to faith, from glory to glory, as we follow you, Lord. So we thank you for that love you showed us and the knowledge you've given us. And, um, Lord, we just pray, um, for you to be with us today as we walk, um, in the Spirit, as we try to to your will on the earth. Lord, we pray for the people listening today. We pray for them to be blessed with healing, financial blessings, or, or insights, uh, that you want to give them. Lord, anything you have for them, we ask for you to come alongside them and encourage them in their path. And Lord, we pray for you to go before all of us today as we seek to do your will on the earth, to know and to know you more. Open our eyes to see the beauty that's out there Open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world and lead us into the good things you want us to do. Um, uh, Lord, we're, we're just trying to follow, and so— but sometimes we need, need some real signs and wonders to guide us along the path. So we'll take all the help we can get. Lord, we thank you, we love you, and we praise your holy name. And all these things we pray in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.