The Joy of Rejuvenation - 28 Day Joy Challenge – Day 23 – Purity 1079

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 heavenly sunrise scene over Queechy Lake in Canaan, New York comes to us from Lori Weaver, who shared this photo of serenity from her kayak on Sunday, June 24th— or Saturday, June 24th. Uh, well, it's Tuesday, and even though it's only the second day of the work week, I am feeling the serenity that comes from realizing that I'm not sick anymore, as my sore throat seems to be a thing of the past. Thank you, Lord, for the healing. Thank you all for your prayers. And I am already looking forward to the day trip that my wife Tammy Lynn has planned for us this coming weekend. Ever since our honeymoon, Tammy Lynn and I discovered that we both share a love of nature, travel, and adventure to some extent. And while we can be completely content just being together, we both enjoy going out in the world from time to time to do something or to see something. June is over come Saturday, and while I don't know where we will be going for our day trip, I have indicated my desire for the opportunity to swim to be included in our plans. One of the best ways I know of to be rejuvenated is with the rest and relaxation of a beach day or a swimming excursion. As much as it may sound like Tammy Lynn and I like to scamper about, we also know the benefits of going somewhere to do nothing, as some of our adventures involve traveling to a new destination where we can enjoy new sights from which to rest from. Whether it's most of the day or just a few hours, I love to be able to take in a water scene, relax, and take a dip every once in a while to beat the heat. Relaxing and going swimming has been giving me joy since my childhood, and I look forward to doing that at various locations this summer. And that brings us to our current series, uh, where I am walking through the 28 days, uh, 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 Corsi'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 Cursey on the topic of joy by going to 4habits.org. So let's jump into Day 23, which will direct us to reflect on times, uh, where we felt rejuvenated or recharged that gave us joy. And the 28-Day Joy Challenge says, Day 23: Rest and Rejuvenation. Welcome to Day 23 of the 28 Days to Joy Challenge. Today's encouragement: After yesterday's high-energy exercise of joy memories, we are taking a day to stop and rest. As you continue to practice the art of slowing down, you will probably find these quieting moments to be some of your favorite times of the day. Enjoy! Today's practice: Exercise 23. Today we are practicing quieting and noticing its effect on our bodies. How this exercise will benefit you: Researchers say that our ability to downregulate and quiet ourselves is the top predictor for long-term mental health. Resting takes time and practice to feel restored. The more you practice, the better it feels. And the greater the effect on your health. Exercise steps. For this exercise, find a comfortable spot and rest for 5 minutes while you focus on favorite memories around times you felt rejuvenated and recharged. Notice how you— Sorry, I'm not sure about that. Yeah, apparently Alexa's not sure about that. I'm not sure why she's speaking up. Anyway, for this exercise, find a comfortable spot and rest for 5 minutes while you focus on favorite memories around times you felt rejuvenated and recharged. Notice how you feel after this exercise. Have fun with this exercise. We pick up tomorrow with more joy practice. That all comes from our friends from the 4habits.org website. Um, as I sat down this morning and read the instruction to focus on a favorite memory around times I felt rejuvenated and recharged, I laughed and thought that those memories were few and far between. I had been under the weather for almost a week and have just felt wiped out physically, uh, lately. And because of my unorthodox schedule, I continually find that I need to play catch-up on rest and relaxation. But as I thought about the things that made me feel rejuvenated and recharged, I realized that I am a man who knows his limitations. And plan for regular periods of rest and activities that rejuvenate my soul. Recharging your batteries is one thing, rejuvenating your soul is another, so for today's practice, I thought about each. When it comes to rest or recharging my batteries, nothing quite compares to time alone in my room. If I feel— if I really want to rest, that usually means lying down. Resting and sleeping, quite frankly. Every Sunday, even though it's the weekend and some people plan activities or events that go well into the evening, I don't. I know myself, and I know I need the afternoon and evening hours to rest. It may be a waste of my time off, I suppose, but after a long week of work and a weekend traveling to my countryside home in Easton, I know that I need to get back to River House in Stuyvesant to unwind before doing it all over again. I don't focus on work or ministry or anything, or really anything, and just lie down and/or kick back and relax. On occasion, my shifted work tour will cause me to work a Saturday and keep me at River House on an odd day, and I'll just spend the day relaxing in my room, occasionally just occasionally doing a mini retreat where I rest, pray, reflect, and study some Christian resource. Not too long ago, I took one of these end days. I don't know if it's N as in Nancy days or what it's supposed to mean, other than I work Saturday and some— and get some odd weekday off instead. And well, anyway, and so one of those end days, or end days, I listened to John Eldredge's Resilient, and it was a great way to recharge and be rejuvenated. However, not all of my rest and rejuvenation is found in solitary pursuits. As I stated above, my travels, adventures, and times with Tammy Lynn also restores my soul. There is no place like home, and even though I can get hours of sleep at River House by myself, the sense of peace and rest that I get when I am reunited with, with my wife cannot compare. No rest session at River House solo compares with just embracing my wife for recharging and rejuvenating my soul. Just being with Tammy Lynn gives me unparalleled amounts of peace. All is well when I am with her, and we both long for the day when we— that when we will be living under one roof. But since summer— but since it is summer, I have to admit that as I also long for a beach day, which could even be just an hour long on occasion. It's not necessarily quantity of time as it is quality that matters. I just need to be able to sit, see the water, rest, go in the water, and repeat a couple of times to get all I need. The freedom of movement in water is liberating. And I love how swimming rejuvenates and paradoxically tires me out like no other activity. So, I look forward to finding that experience soon. Anyway, what about you? What rejuvenates you? What recharges your batteries? What memories do you have that highlight the joy of rejuvenation? Well, I hope you find some joy in recalling whatever it is, but I— I hope it also reminds you to make a plan to experience something like that again soon. There may be a lot of, a lot to do in our lives, but those things can wear you down. And so we must be wise and make being rejuvenated and experiencing joy a regular habit. Today's Bible verse comes to us from another gift from my wife, Tammy Lynn, The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Cruis. Um, and while Bible verses on various topics of counseling can be found with a quick Google search, we encourage you to purchase this resource. And I'm including a link for it on the blog, which I'll keep there every day but not actually state, you know, basically on the podcast going forward. This morning's meditation, because it is a counseling guide, comes from the section on adultery. So today's meditation verse is Matthew 15:19. In the best of my knowledge, it looks like it's from the English Standard Version, the ESV. And the word of God says, for out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander. Today's verse is used to support the premise that adultery is out of the heart. Along with these other expressions of sin, showing us that out of our hearts, our selfish desires, or want, we can be driven to do all kinds of evil. So as disciples of Jesus Christ, we seek to examine the desires of our hearts, seek to align them with what God's word says about righteous living, and renounce selfish or sinful desires that would cause us to covet in sin. As new creations in Christ, we have been given a new life, but we must renew our minds with the Word of God, take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, uh, and thus change the desires of our hearts from what was selfish, fleshly, or evil to what is pure, good, and holy. As Christians, our hearts are not desperately wicked anymore. Or at least they shouldn't be. But we need to repent of our old ways and be trained to overcome the old desires that captivated our hearts in the past, to see our new hearts of flesh come to life. 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, and we, you know, finish up chapter 10 today, which is on the Holy Spirit regenerating. And A.W. Pink offers a summary of his thoughts in a couple of paragraphs. So if you'd like to see the summary of what he had to say about the Holy Spirit regenerating us, uh, go to, uh, go to mtforchrist.org and you'll see that resource at the end of today's blog post. As always, we encourage you to live by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit on the path of Christian discipleship. Um, that just basically means that you, you believe that the Bible— what the Bible says is true, and that you live according to its truth, to live according to the teachings of Jesus Christ, um, who tells us that we're new creations and tells us to be thankful and to do good works. So we've discovered when— and that can sound rather simple or complicated depending on your perspective— but I've discovered that it's the pathway to peace. As the— when we decide to walk in the Spirit, we experience the fruit of the Spirit growing in our lives. It's the hard— you know, it involves repentance because This world trains us to look out for ourselves and to get what you want to get and take what you want and to do whatever you want regardless of whether or not it's what God would have you do. The ends justify the means in this world, but that's not the way the Word of God works. You know, there are some things that you should not do no matter what the reasons are, and And so we retrain our minds and the way we think and the desires of our heart to align with what God tells us is right. And we've discovered when we do that, we find peace and abundance. So we encourage that. But you know what? Living this Christian life isn't easy. Sometimes we need good teaching to tell us these things, to tell us who we are in Christ and how to experience our freedom. And that's why we share our teachings that we, we did in the past for Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ that are all on our podcast and our YouTube channel. They are based on the Word of God and the work of Dr. Neil Anderson, and they were transformative in my life. And that's why I got trained by Freedom in Christ Ministries to be Community Freedom Ministry associate so I could be well equipped to, uh, to help people, um, and to, uh, to tell them about who they are in Christ and to lead them through the Steps to Freedom in Christ to resolve personal and spiritual conflicts. So we recommend those teachings. We also recommend you actually read the Bible for yourself. Recently my wife and I— oh well, my wife received a bunch of Christian books, quote-unquote Christian books, boxes and boxes of them. We were delighted to open them up and and see what we had. What we discovered though is that wherever these came from, they were sort of into the prosperity, you know, TBN preachers. And so there were lots of books on healing and books on, you know, getting money. And, you know, basically it was a lot of Word of Faith stuff. Rather disappointing. But, you know, it just sort of pointed out to me that, you know, our relationship with the Lord should not necessarily be through one person's preaching, um, that we need to examine the word of God for ourselves. And, you know, consider, uh, good, good teachers and preachers, um, but, but not to just say, I believe what he says. No, you believe what the Word of God says, not Pastor Whoever. I'm not going to name any names. But yeah, and I think that's a matter of maturity. I think we have to start out, you know, learning from good teachers and then eventually develop our own, you know, orthodox opinion, meaning traditional or, you know, based, you know, based on truth. Views of what the Word of God says. You know, what does it tell you and what does it mean? And is it, you know, a plain, good interpretation? You know, to consider it, because you're going to have to live this life, and it's best to know the truth for yourself and not necessarily listen to, well, what does Pastor Blank say? Uh, well, what does the Word of God say? And does it match up with what Pastor Blank says? Because he might be, you know, pushing the scriptures in a certain way to, you know, tell people what they want to hear. So you got to be careful out there. The Word of God itself will not lead you astray, but it can be, you know, even the devil can use the Word of God to try to lead you astray. So infallible men are no better off. So, so be careful. Um, but read the word and, and try to do what it says. Um, and know who you're— you know, know who God is, know who you are, and act accordingly. Anyway, I guess my voice is feeling better because I'm just rambling on. Um, I still have to work. Um, so let's, let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you again for the healing that you brought to us today. Lord, we just pray for it to continue, and we believe we received your messages about resting and maybe staying true to our health goals and some other things that basically have come up over the last few days. And I believe I've heard your voice, and I believe that we're going to follow you in spirit and truth. And just to be thankful for everything you give us every day and not take anything for granted, and to find those periods of rest and relaxation and rejuvenation, um, in your presence as well as out in the world or in some bedroom somewhere. Um, it's, it's you who gives us the only peace that we can really have, and we thank you, Lord. We also thank you for the, uh, for the great men and women whoever might be listening or reading this message. I've gotten quite a bit of support over the last few days, and, you know, very humbled and thankful for prayers or, you know, well wishes and birthday greetings and all that. So I thank them, I thank those people, and I pray for, pray for you to come alongside them, Lord, and to to bless them and to, and to come alongside their prayer request and their walk of faith, Lord, to help them. Because we all need your help. And as we go into the world today, we just pray for you to open our eyes to what you want us to see and move our steps into what you want us to do. Because all we want to do is represent you and your kingdom on the earth, Lord. We don't want to go astray. We don't want to have our selfish desires lead us into sin. Um, so we just pray for you to change our hearts and change our minds to, to be obedient to you. 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.