The Way to Spiritual Growth – Drastic Obedience - Purity 1520

Welcome to the MT4Christ 24/7 podcast. I'm M.t. Clark, and this is today's photo. To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.com or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter, um, or watch us on YouTube. Good morning. Today's photo of Cascade Sunset, the Dark Hills, 2001 comes to us from yours truly as I captured Paul Matthews' work of art while visiting visiting the Adirondack Museum back on August 9th, 2023. Well, it's— well, it's Wednesday, and I'm sharing this photo of Matthew's painting of Cascade Mountain to visually represent our arrival at another midweek summit. So happy hump day, and to encourage us all to boldly take on those challenging mountains in our lives. One of the mountains I had to overcome in life was my addiction to drugs and alcohol. And even though I came to the realization that I should stop drinking a long time ago, it wasn't until I came to faith in Jesus Christ and a Christian recovery ministry began at my local church in 2015 that I finally made the decision to go into recovery and to be drastically obedient to the Lord's call on my life to leave drunkenness behind forever. If sus— If substance abuse is a cross you are bearing, let me encourage you that a new life of sobriety, peace, and joy is possible when you make the decision to follow the Lord into the life he has for you. God will help you, and you can overcome when you come out of the darkness and lean on him to find your way into the light. God helps us to throw those mountains into the sea. But it requires you to be drastically obedient to his way of life. Speaking of being drastically obedient, uh, the, the— for that phrase is highlighted in today's Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah devotional, and I'm sharing it on the blog today because I believe that is a key to a transformed life in Christ. David Jeremiah writes, steps of drastic obedience. The, uh, and he shares a port— he shares Matthew 1:24, which says, then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took to him his wife. And David Jeremiah writes, Joni Eareckson Tada, the well-known Christian encourager and quadriplegic, recently described the progress of her Christian life in a long series of as a long series of taking small steps of drastic obedience. That's how she has managed half a century in a wheelchair. Those small moments of drastic obedience end up building a lifetime of integrity, she said. And, and, and Jeremiah continues, right? We all progress spiritually by taking small steps of drastic obedience. Consider Joseph. After his dreams were shattered by Mary's pregnancy, an angel appeared to him in a dream telling him to take Mary as his wife. He was bewildered, but he took the necessary steps of drastic obedience. How about you? Is there a small step of drastic obedience you should take to further your spiritual growth? What is it? God calls us to respond in obedience whether we understand why or why not. Ask God to help you be open to his instruction and willing to be obedient in every situation. And Jeremiah also shares a quote from Jenny, uh, Joni Erickson Tada, which says, I think I got here from taking small steps of drastic obedience. Tiny little steps forward and a few back, yes, but always forward, always moving forward. Always pushing through the pain. Wow, that is awesome. You know, this message hits to the core of what is required for spiritual maturity, growth, and a deep, challenging, yet joyful experiential relationship with God. The other night, at the small group I lead online, I added a little more to our normal check-in. I normally ask the guys for a progress report by asking how they have been since the last meeting, and I ask them to look ahead. By asking them what they're looking forward to. But Monday, with Advent upon us, I dared to ask the men, what are you doing to get closer to God? I didn't mean to catch them off guard, but the whole point of our small group is to lean, to learn about and experience God's grace in our everyday lives. And so I had to ask, what are you doing to get closer to God? Presuming they would be doing more than going to my small group. Um, you see, God is ever-present and we are not. And if we're not experiencing God's grace in our life, it's, it's not God who has wandered off, it's us. God calls us to follow him with the way, a way to live our lives, uh, the way we live our lives, and to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And one of the ways we do that is through drastic obedience. It's not really that drastic, but living by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit is so uncommon it may seem drastic. Living by faith is really just doing the next right thing and doing so according to the word of God. That includes knowing God's word, drawing into God's presence in a conversational relationship with him, and doing, uh, doing, doing things and doing what is right by applying God's wisdom. The drastic things we may be called to do include repenting of our sins, going into recovery, forgiving those who have harmed us, publicly declaring our faith, sharing God's good news, becoming sexually pure, stopping bad habits, being a good steward to our possessions, and treating our bodies as God's temple through diet, rest, and exercise. God calls us to follow with our very lives, and, and you can see that there are many ways to worship God in spirit and in truth. But the question is, will you obey? Will you risk your reputation to follow a different way of life by living as a Christian? Will you come and see the life the Lord has for you by being drastically obedient? I hope the answer is yes. I have said yes and discovered the meaning of life and now continually seek to be obedient to answer God's calls on me to give Him all of what I have to give and to experience the peace and joy that He has for me. Choose God's way. It's the best way, and it leads to joy and fullness of life. Today's Bible verses come to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Crews. This morning's meditation verses come from the section on homosexuality, and today's verses are Genesis 19:24-25 from the English Standard Version. The word of God says, then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and he overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the and what grew on the ground. Today's verses are the second of two passages of scripture that fall under the third point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on homosexuality. Now, third point is Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed on account of their unrepentant homosexuality. Today's Bible verses, uh, show us the extent of God's wrath, uh, that, that God's wrath will go, uh, to, and warns us to repent of our sins lest we be destroyed. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah also teaches us quite clearly that the sin of homosexuality is especially despised by God. While we can suppose that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah sinned in many other ways, the sin that is highlighted in the text of the story is homosexuality. However, we can also suppose that not only homosexuals were killed in the destruction of those cities. The anti-gay and the gay-affirming heterosexuals were also consumed in the fire and brimstone that was poured out on those twin sin cities. Because they were friends of sinners and sinners themselves. All men sin and fall short of the glory of God, and all men are called to repent of their sins and to put their faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and to be saved. So whatever your sin is, repent, surrender to Jesus as Lord and Savior, and live free of your former ways of darkness. As always, we encourage everyone to go to mtforchrist.com, where we always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist our brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. Um, today we continue sharing from Day by Day Along the Way by J.E. Adams. It's a 365-day devotional, and we're on day 19, and where, uh, Adams shares a portion of Proverbs 10:9, which says, the one who walks in integrity walks securely. And J.E. Adams writes, the truth of the pudding is in the eating. Integrity produces security. In a life beset with sin, few things are secure, but the believer who walks in integrity such as we have described finds security in God. The rest of the proverb warns, but one who takes a crooked path will be found out. The crooked path is often taken precisely to avoid detection. Yet it is such deviation from God's norm that causes him to be noticed or bound out. He may think that by leaving the straight and narrow path, he will get to his destination in a better, easier, or more reliable way. He hopes to find security in men and things, but in the long run they will let him down, and his deviousness is discovered for what it is. So he does not have to trust failing men and things, but instead follow God's path and find true security in him. Many today are insecure. There is no need to search far and wide for security when God has shown how it may be yours. How about your life? And how about your life? You know, you gotta agree with, uh, uh, J.E. Adams, um, the deceased Christian counselor, um, when he, when he tells us this, you know, if we're— if we have insecurity, it's because you're not following God. If you have, you know, if you have depression, you know, we— there, there are ways to treat it, okay? We renew our mind and we focus on the good. Cognitive therapy and faith, you know. So we all struggle with, with various things. The extent we struggle with various things is the amount you know, is determined by the amount we think on and follow, um, the word of God. Um, you know, generally we're depressed for a reason. We're not living as we should. Um, you know, we may have suffered loss, but that again, we might— we, we're looking at our losses from an earthly perspective or a selfish perspective, and we're not trusting the Lord to do what's right with the things that are lost. So we— this is why we ask the question every day: have you fully surrendered to God? Because there's truth in God's word, um, there's love in God's word. And, um, it's not just his word, it's his spirit, and it's a living spirit that can— that comes in to dwell inside of you when you follow Jesus. And when you're drastically obedient to follow the word of the Lord, the Holy Spirit comes in to reveal you more truth. And to guide you in your way. And so we encourage people to surrender to the Lord for the will of their lives and to follow him, to repent of the sins that, you know, separate you from God, to, uh, you know, live according to his wisdom. Um, we did that and continue to do that, trust me. Um, and it's led me into many good things, including the Celebrate Freedom support group at Starpoint Church, where I I encourage people to walk in the Spirit and to follow the Lord for the way they want all their lives, to repent of those sins and to, you know, enter into recovery and a new life. Um, and that's what this group's for, uh, to help you give up those hurts, habits, and hangups and start living by faith. You know, quite frankly, it's a walking in the Spirit group more than a recovery group. Um, we're all there for various struggles, um, And the Lord can help us in every single one of them. And I've seen great freedom brought at Celebrate Freedom. And we invite anyone in Upstate New York to come out to our meeting tonight at the Starpoint Church. We'll be in the K through 3rd grade classroom, and we'll be happy to see you when you get there. So we encourage you to come. However, if you're not in Upstate New York and that's just impossible for the men out there, we do offer a support group right now that's leading us right up to the holidays, and it's called Grace for the Holidays, where I'm going over the Freedom in Christ course, Grace course, um, and we're 3 weeks in, but there's still 3 weeks to go. And if you're— if you want to jump into our group, you're welcome to. Uh, just go to mtforchrist.com and register today, and we can see you next Monday at 6:30 online. Um, as for that, and guys, if you can't make the holiday thing, we got something happening in the new year. Uh, Freedom in Christ, uh, we're reading Freedom in Christ Ministry is giving the opportunity to lead a Freedom in Christ course once again online Tuesday night, 6:30 PM Eastern time. So it's open to anybody in the entire nation or world as long as you can be available at that time in your time zone. Uh, at 6:30 PM Eastern January 7th, we are hyping this because our class is filling up. We had 7 participants yesterday. I haven't checked it this morning. Um, it's only going to— it's going to be capped at 12 if we get there. So we're encouraging you to sign up now because not only capacity an issue, but also registration closes in like 6 days. That's all you got left. So we encourage people to check it out. We'll throw a blast out on social media about this before the end, but after that they close the door. So try to get there and we'll see you in the new year. Beyond that, whether you make registration or miss registration or, you know, whatever, we, we encourage you to find or increase your freedom in Christ by joining one of our podcast classes on YouTube. We have various classes out there for Got Bondage Breaker, Victory Over the Darkness, Freedom in Christ, and our very own Celebrate Freedom discipleship course, among many other resources available on our playlist page. So check that out on YouTube or go to M.t. Clark.com to find our YouTube playlist list of all our series that we've done so far. Beyond that, well, we always, we always ask the question, are you empty for Christ too? And that's just a clever way to say, are you, have you fully surrendered to God? Have you emptied yourself to be made available for the Holy Spirit's infilling? If so, great, keep on walking into talking with God. If not, we encourage you to, you know, seek the Lord and find him, uh, through prayer, because we know that when you pray, things happen. We might not get everything we ask for when we pray, but when it happens, man, it's awesome. And so, um, we pray every day, and, um, we're going to pray again right now. Uh, Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you for what you've done for our lives, um, and continue to do in our lives to guide us in the way we should go. And so we're asking for your guidance today. We're asking you to go before us, um, set things up, uh, for us, Lord, as only you can, and open our eyes to the things you want us to see today and lead us in the way we should go. Because all we want to do is represent you in your kingdom and, uh, definitely need help with that. Lord, we ask you to also help anyone who's reading or listening today's message, that you come alongside them in their prayer requests and their walk of faith and help them too. And Lord, a special request: my wife has suffered an injury, and we're praying for healing from the pain and the limitations on her body because of this injury. We just pray for you to help Tammy Lynn. Uh, today. Um, and, uh, Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you. We pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.