This is US! Purity 891

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.org or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Good morning. Today's photo— let's see— today's photo of the pathway to the marker at the end of the Iron Duck White Bay outlet pier under blue and cirrus cloud-filled skies comes to us from yours truly, as I captured this scene during my recent road trip to Buffalo. I'm including a selfie of myself on the blog to prove to myself and to anyone else who would doubt it that I was there. Well, it's Thursday again, and as I share today's photo of a pathway to that red and white marker as my subtle encouragement to anyone who should— anyone who should see or hear this message to stay on or to get on the path of Christian discipleship. That's my encouragement. Whoever thinks that our Christian faith, our life in Christ, is boring undoubtedly has bought into the lies or the limited view that God is contained in the pages of Scripture or within the four walls of the church building, or even worse, that he doesn't intervene in the lives of men. And has not decided to, and has not decided to seek the Lord and his will for our lives. Our faith is a living relationship with the, the God of all creation who graciously gave us a heads up and revealed the truth of his plan of redemption to put our faith in Jesus Christ alone, and who invites us to follow him to discover our purpose in his kingdom. Ours is a personal God And before you start thinking that your purpose in Christ is to do a whole lot of good works for his glory, make sure you understand that our relationship with God is like any other relationship and that the main point of it is to spend time with one another, to spend quality time with God. While I am a big proponent of developing a daily spiritual practice of prayer and Bible study, I also want to echo the sentiments of Dallas Willard from his book Divine Conspiracy, where he said that our relationship to our Heavenly Father, Jesus, Jesus and the Holy Spirit with God benefits from quality time where we seek to know him, know the Lord, and be in his presence with great intensity, where we spend extended periods of time in silence and solitude and in the disciplines of prayer, Bible study, service, or worship. My trip to Buffalo was a mini mission trip with a set destination and purpose But during the trip, I followed the Lord's call of where to pull over and spend some time with him. I left the road periodically to take walks, see the sights, and appreciate what I was experiencing, and thank God for bringing me, bringing me where I was. And I thanked him for being with me. I gloried over the magnificence of his creation and reflected on all the people, places, and things that we have encountered since we got together. The change in my life has been so significant since that day I said yes to Jesus that sometimes I'm simply overwhelmed and have to remind myself, "Yup, that happened. I was there and you were with me. We did that. This is me. This is us." And I am not ashamed to say it, I absolutely love what God has done in my— done with my life. Although I am sure that I may be considered strange by some, I don't care. Uh, the story God has written in my life since the day my idea to mock a Christian message got turned on its head and resulted in my tearful proclamation of Jesus as my Lord and Savior is simply amazing. And perhaps the most surprising thing about it is that the, the tale of my new life in Christ simply does not end. It's one thing to another to another when you are walking in the Spirit. And while every day may be— may not be filled with traveling adventures to distant lands, because I'm seeking to know him and his presence in prayer and Bible study, or in just meditating, thinking about him, there are always moments where I have joy or peace because I literally keep walking and talking with God throughout my day. Before Christ, I used to talk to myself, sometimes out loud, and would just think about what I wanted to do or what the grand exalted "I" thought about life. My internal dialogue and external musings were always focused on the small world of Meville. What do I want? What did they do to me? How dare they get in my way? Or "Why don't they leave me alone?" or "I hate them!" Like I used to say in recovery ministry, before Christ we are all opera singers. Me, me, me, me, me! Passionate, self-obsessed, overly dramatic opera singers. Okay, I'm sure there are some of you out there who are thinking this doesn't apply to you. You were thinking that you don't think too highly of yourselves and that you aren't so So vain is that. But the bad news is that pride is a stick with two ends. If we don't think highly of ourselves, we are holding the opposite end of the pride stick. Nobody loves me. I'm no good. Nobody helps me. So for you, although your voice may be low, you are also singing me, me, me, maybe just in lowercase letters in a whispering tone. But when you put your faith in Christ, if you know who you are in Christ and realize that the Holy Spirit dwells in you, you are no longer an "I" or a "me," capital or lowercase letters. In Christ, we become "us." It's no longer "me against the world," Tupac. When you make peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ, the Lord is with you. He will never leave you or forsake you, and because He is omnipresent, He is with you and available to you no matter where you go. Christianity is the story of us, you and God, and all the rest of our brothers and sisters in Christ. While we might not always seem to be in this together on the human realm with, with the church or all and all of its expressions, if we are indeed in Christ, we are in this all together, but the most important aspect of our new life in Christ is our direct and personal relationship with God. A lot of people point to the unity of the body of believers to be the most important thing, or, or that loving others is the end-all of what we are to do as Christians. And in many ways it is, but how do you get there? Christ directs us to love God first and then love our neighbors as ourselves. So we have to first develop our love for God, otherwise our love for our neighbors will just be some act, some duty to perform that we would rather not do. But when we love the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, when we love God, he gives us his eyes and his heart. We can be kind, forgiving, compassionate, and loving to others because we have received God's abundant love. And when we know it, that— know it, that love can pour out onto others. So get intense about your relationship with the Lord. Spend some quality time with him. Press into your spiritual practices to know the Lord more and to give him the opportunity to change your heart and mind. Keep walking and talking with God, and one day You'll be utterly amazed at where you have gone together and what you have experienced together. One day you will see the changes he has done in you, and you will be thrilled to say, 'This really is me. This is what God has done in my life. This is us.' As always— well, no, not, not yet. Uh, today's Bible verse comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verse is John 3:16, and it says, for God so loved— well, God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Yeah, I'm familiar with the other, uh, verse. This is the NLT, so it's a little different, but it's all there. God so loved the world— loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Today's verse is one of, if not the most popular verses in scripture, because it speaks the truth of who Jesus is and what happens when we believe in him. Jesus is the Son of God, his one and only son, and he came to earth to teach about God's kingdom and to command us to repent and to put our faith in him. And as today's verse tells us, when we put our faith in Jesus, uh, Christ, we will not perish but will have eternal life. In this one verse, Jesus confirms himself as God, and he confirms the spiritual destiny for all mankind. If we believe in him, we have eternal life. If we don't, we perish in places he described as dark and painful. So let this good news be something to give you assurance if you have faith in Christ that you will live with him forever. And also let it encourage you to share the good— this good news and bad news toward those that don't know Jesus so they can be saved and not perish. As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I, uh, 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 Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Discipleship, also known as The Cost of Discipleship. And today we continue with his exposition of Matthew 7, where the, the section The Disciples and the Unbelievers continues. So if you want to read a couple paragraphs from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's teaching on Matthew's— parts of Matthew 7, go to m.tforchrist.org and you'll see it at the end of today's blog post. Also, at the end of today's blog post, we share links to our audio podcast, and we share an encouragement to join our Victory Over the Darkness: The Bondage Breaker, Freedom in Christ series of discipleship classes via the M.t. for Christ 247 podcast. So, um, we encourage this life of discipleship, but the thing we need to know— we need to know who God is, we need to know who we are. You know, this relationship between us has to be filled with and based on truth. You know, the truth of who God really is. Is God a mean judge? That's a distorted view of our Heavenly Father. Are we just sinners saved by grace? That's a distorted view of who we are as children of God. I invite people to check out the Who I Am in Christ list to get an idea of who you are in Christ. There's labels for that on our blog, so you should click on "Who I Am in Christ." It'll take you to a blog post that most likely has it, among other things. Plus you can, you can Google it and there's PDFs of it out there, and there's books done by Dr. Neil Anderson that, you know, basically spell it out for you. You need to know who you are in Christ. You need to know who God the Father is, and you need— and, and it would benefit you greatly if you you lived that out in the real world. No matter what anyone would think of you, you'll find the peace that goes beyond all understanding when you start walking in the Spirit, when you start surrendering your citizenship to Meville and start living as a citizen to the Kingdom of God. Ask me how I know. Yeah, the things of this world, you know, slowly become less important. When we understand who we are in Christ, that we really don't have anything to fear anymore. We've conquered sin, death, and the grave. And, um, you know, when we start turning from our sin and start turning to the life God has for us, you know, the fruit of the Spirit grow in our lives. And that's our encouragement here at mteforchrist.org and the M.T. for Christ 24/7 podcast and YouTube channel. That this life of abundant living in Christ is possible. It is an option, but you have to believe it. You have to have faith in it, and you have to apply that, the wisdom of God's Word, to your life for real. So we encourage you to do that. And you know, you know, don't think of it, our journey, as a journey of perfection or even to perfection, but Think of it as a relationship with, with someone who loves you dearly and wants the best for you and has good things for you to experience if you would only follow his call. So we encourage you to follow that call. I followed the call and continue to follow it, and you know, my life is full of great things, you know, really. And most importantly, the abiding sense of peace and joy that I have in my life every day. When I connect with my Heavenly Father and talk to people like you about him. So that's what we have on the thing today. We did prepare— we were able to prepare our PowerPoint presentation for the next Bonhoeffer teaching. I think we're on teaching 11, 11 of a series of I don't know how many, um, but, uh, they'll continue until we finish with Bonhoeffer's book. So keep, you know, if you want to check that out, all the teachings are on YouTube and the audio podcast for that matter. So there would be 10 that we've done so far. We're literally walking through Bonhoeffer's book on discipleship, also known as The Cost of Discipleship. So if you want to check that out, that'll be on. As always, we revere the Word of God and we encourage encourage people to study the Bible, and we offer our Bible study, Bible Study with the Sincaidis, also on our podcast, to encourage your Christian faith and life of discipleship. So we, uh, we're not just in ministry, we have a real job. Well, not that, you know, working for the kingdom isn't a real job. It's just I have a job that pays the bills, so we should prepare to get ready for that. And, uh, so let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in Kingdom. Thank you for all that you've done with us through this life, me and my brothers and sisters, and me and you, Lord. We're in this together. And, uh, Lord, we thank you so much for what you've done. Lord, we pray for the people listening today, that you come alongside them and their prayer requests. We pray for you to be with them and guide them into the things they need to do. And as always, Lord, we pray for you to go before us today and to set things up for your glory, and, uh, we'll, we'll do our best to walk into them. So we're asking for you to show us the things you need us to see, um, or you want us to see, and, um, we're asking you to guide us into the things we should do to best represent you in this, in our kingdom. Lord, help us to be the people you created us to be. Help us to do the best job we can today at work, or as our roles in our relationships relationships with family and friends or whatever. We just want to represent you, uh, in your kingdom wherever we go. Well, we thank you, we praise you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.