The Simple Yet Glorious Way – Purity 750

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 roadside tree underneath a clear blue sky comes to us from yours truly as I captured this scene when I decided to go an extra half mile while taking my canine friend Harley out for a walk back on the afternoon of May 29th. I share today's simple photo because with it being Monday again, we are on the road again and headed into the familiar territory of another work week where we hope that we have been there and done that, that our journey this week won't take us anywhere we don't want to go. As much as we can claim to be bored by the status quo of our lives at times, When we encounter sudden changes that we didn't expect or welcome, we may find ourselves longing for just a regular week of the same old, same old. But the status quo is somewhat of an illusion, of course, because no matter how steady our pace through life can be, change is happening all around us. As hectic as our lives can be, if we look to our friends, families, and neighbors, we realize that they are on their own journeys, to their own twists and turns of the days of their lives and can make us wonder how we can endure the constant shifts of circumstances in our lives. From my vantage point, in the last few weeks I have seen friends and family experience accidents, proms, graduations, marriages, illnesses, surgeries, births, and death. So, What may be status quo for you at the moment is always in the context of sweeping changes as we move through, uh, through life. With so much going on, it is hard to keep track of it all, but amazingly, if you are going through this journey of life with the Lord, somehow you can have peace. After coming to put my faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, my relationship with God has taught me that he is always present and aware of all the things that are happening in the world, and that he is always available to us to offer his strength, guidance, and love as we walk through this world. Quite frankly, the trials and tragedies that I have walked through personally, and the ones I have seen others go through, have taught me that almost anything can happen in our lives, and that as long as we are alive, we will be subject to changes. And not all of them will be good. The trap that the enemy and the world system sets for us is to seek to find a sense of security and happiness through our own efforts. In learning to deal with the possible calamities in this world, man can fool themselves that if they do everything right or are smart, they will be able to protect themselves from anything bad happening in their lives. Truth is that being prepared, working to create safe environments, and taking steps to establish good health can protect us to some extent, and this fact drives us to try to be self-sufficient all the more. We can see what happens to others who live foolishly or who weren't smart like us, and we can vow that those things will never happen to us. But the truth is that we can't control everything. That we are only secure if we have a relationship with God that will keep us safe for eternity. Living in the lap of luxury within the safety of a bunker of our own design, with all our physical needs being met, could give us a measure of peace and security, but no matter how pampered and secure we can make ourselves in this world, there is no peace if it doesn't include peace with God. Christ, the Prince of Peace, through his death and resurrection, made a way for us to have peace with God. We simply have to put our faith in Him. It's a simple step of faith that reconciles us to the Lord and gives us eternal security, acceptance, and significance. And when you have that, you can live in peace in this constantly changing world because you know the One who controls it all and who loved you enough to show you that your efforts You didn't hold the key to your security. God did. So, as much as I hope this week is free of trouble and drama, I know that no matter what comes my way, I, with the Lord's help, will be able to handle it. There is nothing the Lord and I can't face. By keeping a constant— keeping in constant contact with the Lord through reaching out to him prayer, reading His Word, and just talking to Him, I know He is with me and will give me all I need to deal with the situations yet unknown that I will face. So saddle up, we got another work week, and some of us have some daunting things to face today and in the week ahead. But let me assure you that when you keep walking and talking with God, you can walk through whatever will come your way with peace. Our task, no matter what they may include, is a simple one: keep going forward. Keep going forward with the Lord. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verses, uh, is Psalm 73:24, and it says You guide me with your counsel, leading me to a glorious destiny. Today's Bible verse assures us that God will guide us with his counsel and will lead us into our glorious destiny. Okay, I recently heard a message that was sincere, but that may have been a little over the top depending on how you receive it and what you could accomplish because of it. The speaker was preaching on the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives and how his presence gives us power and wisdom to be more than mere men. The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives can indeed cause us to do what we would have thought of as impossible before coming to Christ, but his presence in us does not make us supermen. And while we shouldn't just expect the And while we shouldn't just expect the Holy Spirit to give us— and here we go, see, like I said, I'm not a supermass, so, uh, that— yeah, we make mistakes. Um, so we shouldn't just expect the Holy Spirit to give us divine wisdom and insights to guide us, or miraculous power to affect changes in our lives. Um, the speaker's enthusiasm that we can do all the do the same things that Jesus could do, uh, wasn't qualified. Because after all, all things are possible with God, and they are. But in order to have a balanced walk of faith that won't lead us into error, we should understand that the Lord has provided his word to guide us in wisdom, and that he can give us strength when we ask for it in prayer to do things we wouldn't normally do. I fear that sometimes the emphasis on having faith in some messages is viewed as a magical power and that if we are close to God in our relationship with him, he will give us the desire of our hearts and we will just receive divine wisdom and be able to perform miraculous things. The problem is that scripture, history, and reality doesn't really bear that out. Believe me, I have laid hands on people with great faith and prayed for healing only to see them go on to get worse and die. So trust me when I say that there are some things that Jesus could do that we may not be able to accomplish. Through my maturation as a disciple of Jesus Christ and a disciple of the Word of God, I have discovered that those who make bold claims of having, quote-unquote, little godlike abilities of creative power through their speaking the Word or by, quote-unquote, being more than human um, in some way could be said to have, have taken verses out of context or have read meaning into Bible passages rather than having accurately drawn the meaning out of Scripture. Every saint that has gone before us in church history has shown that their mere humanity, because they failed to perform miracles like Jesus did and They have died. So if God hasn't spoken to you in an audible voice or given you the power to perform the miracles that Jesus was able to do, you shouldn't necessarily lose faith. Uh, uh, these over-the-top messages, uh, that sort of indicate you should, I believe, are well-intentioned but could be a little reckless and could do more harm than good if an immature believer should lose faith when they when they don't claim what they name. Today's verse, for instance, could be misused to indicate that the Lord will guide you through life like the disembodied voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi: "Run, Luke, run!" On the way to a life filled with abundance and prosperity. But although the Holy Spirit may guide us with intuitions to act on faith at different times in our faith walk, the Word of God is the primary source that you want to consult for his counsel. The Word is filled with advice on godly living that we should apply to our lives. His Word will guide us, so read it, know it, and apply it to your life situations. As for the glorious destiny, eternity spent in the Lord's presence will be pretty glorious. Given the fact that Christ— that Christ— let's see— that given the fact that Christ said that we could be— that we could be— given the fact that Christ said that we could expect to be persecuted for our faith, we shouldn't necessarily expect a suffering-free existence here on earth. Wow. So seek the Lord's counsel in his word and through prayer, and rejoice that your destiny is in— is guaranteed to be glorious when you go to be with God, or when Christ returns to rule on the— rule and reign on the earth. We can do a lot of what Christ did while he was on the earth, like live a holy life, love those who hate us, and serve others. As for miracles, we can ask, but that the Lord's will will be done on earth, and we are called to follow Christ regardless of whether we can call on signs and wonders to happen in our midst. The sign and wonder that will amaze everyone is our faithfulness. So go out there and amaze the masses by faithfully living as a disciple of Jesus Christ with a life that will demonstrate that the fruit of the Spirit are growing in your 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, uh, we continue sharing from John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life on the chapter that is basically on missions. And, uh, today Piper asked the question, what is our situation in the world today? And God issues a call to this generation to listen, and the day of missions is not over. And there's some statistics there that are pretty alarming in terms of where different areas of the world where, you know, the word of God is not preached, the Christian message isn't known. And so it just— his work today sort of indicates that there's work to be done in sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in the world. So let's do that. And who knows, maybe God will use you and miracles will happen to you in the mission field. Like I said, everything's possible with God. And so, but we can run into a real problem with our faith if we, if we expect things, expect God to give us everything we, we want. So I always, I always I always try to temper my messages with a little bit of reality. Why? Because I ran into the error myself. Like I said, I've prayed for people and expected things to happen and they didn't happen. I, at one point in my walk, thought that I was receiving, you know, because I was, you know, walking in the Spirit, being led in the Spirit, I believe that, you you know, I could see around corners prophetically and know what was going to happen next. Well, guess what? I couldn't. Um, you know, now, you know, proponents of the charismatic movement would say, well, we see in part and we prophesy in part. Yeah, but we could also guess correctly. Um, so, you know, like I said, I, I, I encourage a balanced walk, um, because I've been a little unbalanced in mine. So, but I'm not unbalanced in my commitment to following Christ. And I think we— that's the one thing that we should be extreme about is following the Lord with, you know, all the different ways we live our lives. But, you know, to be careful because we can easily, you know, step into extremism. That's the way the enemy— the enemy likes to push us to extremes. So let's stay in the middle of the road, following Christ, doing what we can, taking care of what's before us, loving those and serving those around us. And I think we'll be okay. I know we'll be okay, because when we're walking and talking with God, we do have that glorious destiny that is guaranteed. And we shouldn't be too, you drawn too far astray by the things that happen in our lives, as long as we have, you know, have a connection with the Lord through our faith in Christ. So that's what we try to encourage, is a simple life of discipleship, expecting wonderful things to happen and accepting whatever happens, because God's will will be done, and we will follow him regardless of what we receive. So that's what we encourage. We encourage that through a life of discipleship, and we share our teachings that sort of show us who we are in Christ, um, in a balanced view that's based on the word of God and the work of Dr. Neil Anderson and our teachings on Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ, all available on the podcast and our YouTube channel, M.t. Clark Christ 24/7. And we also revere the Word of God. Like I said, we want to know it, we want to live by it, and so we share our weekly topical Bible study discussion that we do with Arthur and Suzanne Sincotti each week. And yesterday we did a message on who is, who's an evangelist, and I won't give it away, but it might include more people than you think. So if you want to see what we talked about yesterday with the topic of evangelism, um, go to mtforchrist.org to see the outline, and the outline contains a link to the audio podcast and the video, uh, podcast basically that's on YouTube. So if you want to check that out, you can. Um, and, uh, I just pray, uh, for us. Uh, let's pray for us to get through Monday. And, um, I have, um, my prayers, you know, first and foremost, my prayers are for Susanna Sincotti, who has surgery today. Um, let me pray for Susanna to be strong and to trust in the Lord. We pray for Susanna's surgeon to, um, to, to be guided by the Lord and, uh, and to, uh, provide the best possible care to, to her today. We pray for Arthur to be strong in his faith as he, as he supports his wife as she goes into surgery. And we'll see what happens in the, uh, the days ahead. Um, but we know whatever happens, that the Lord is with, with us and and that he always gets it right. So we'll trust in him for healing for our good friend Susanna Sincotti. We also pray for everyone listening. Like I said, we, you know, we could have a status quo week, but it's never status quo. Everything's— something's changing somewhere. And so I don't know what's changing in the lives of the people who listen to this message, but we are praying for you. We pray for the Lord to be with you, and we pray for him to bless you with healing and insights or strength, whatever you need to, uh, to, to make it through today and the days ahead. Um, been there in some circumstances, and we've done that in some circumstances, but your circumstances are unique to you, and we pray for the Lord to be with you. Lord, we pray for you to be with all of us as we go through today., as we go to this first day of the work week, whether we're working or not. Oh, we just pray for you to go before us, to open our eyes to things you want us to know and see, uh, in this world as we go about our day. And we just pray for you to prepare things for us to, to walk into, to best represent you, uh, here on the earth. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.