Wandering into Darkness and Going Mindless - Purity 1238

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 people gathered around a series of brightly illuminated strange stickwork structures in a forest at night comes to us from yours truly as I captured this weird scene during my visit to the Wild Center in Tupper Lake, New York Saturday evening. The structure, called Hopscotch, is the work of artist Patrick Dougherty, and it is an impressive testament of what man can do with what God provides him with. But frankly, coming upon this scene in the middle of the night reminded me of childhood tales involving forests, children, witchcraft, and the dangers of venturing into isolated and dark places. It was nice, but a little creepy, and people being almost hypnotically drawn to it did nothing to put me at ease. Uh, well, it's Wednesday, and I thought I would use these brightly illuminated three humps in the woods at night to visually remind all of us that it's not Tuesday, it's hump day, Wednesday. And even though many of us had Monday off from work because of New Year's Day, it doesn't change the fact that we are at the normal midpoint of the work week, and we shouldn't be deceived. My focus is on deception today because, just like someone drawn to this brightly illuminated beguiling sight in the forest, I recently chose to enter into the darkness of temptation and used the bright lights of the holiday season to utterly lose my senses and go to places I would rather leave behind. I'm talking about food addiction, of course. Uh, the good news is that my going back to my other addictions— to drugs, alcohol, and sex— sexual immorality. As they have been, as they have been conquered, they've been left in the dust of the past, and I honestly no longer hear their siren calls anymore. Not that I'm listening for that. Even after we are free, it may be best to not dwell on how free we are, as our joy at overcoming can sometimes cause the enemy to assault us with thoughts and temptations of the good old days. That can lead us astray. So I don't think about drinking or getting high or giving in to sexual pleasures that are outside of God's sexual ethics. I know that there is no good in any of these fleshly pursuits and am convicted by my past negative experiences and the truth of God's Word that tell us that these things are sin. I'm convicted enough, um, where these activities have become logical impossibilities in my heart and my renewed mind. But food addiction, on the other hand, is something I have struggled with all my life and only have real victory over in the past year. Food addiction is systemic, uh, it go— going back to the things learned from earliest childhood and something that is culturally reinforced constantly, especially during the holiday season. The bait of Satan is the lie that quote unquote, "The holidays are a time of feasting." And unfortunately, I took it hook, line, and sinker. And not only did I fall down in it, but I also stayed lost in the woods of it and rolled around in it since December 23rd. My wife and her children celebrate Christmas early on the 23rd and 24th instead of standing outside of their sugar feast. I decided to test my fortitude by stepping into it with them. My parents and I celebrate Christmas Eve together with a feast too, so I figured it would be— it would take 2 days. I would take 2 days to celebrate with unmonitored eating and would go back to normal on Christmas Day. And I did. I swear I did. I think I was good Christmas Day and Boxing Day, the 26th, but then I got a case of the sniffles on the 28th, and my strategy to combat colds is to infuse my body with vitamin C by drinking gallons of orange juice. So my food plan was shot. So I also decided to really shoot it by feeding a cold with any and everything I could get my hands on. After that, I may have had one day of food plan success, maybe, but then I went away for the weekend and gave in to the celebratory spirit of indulgence for New Year's and my second anniversary. So there goes the weekend. And Monday, I decided to have one last day of food indulgence to celebrate the first of the year by getting fast food from McDonald's and candy and ice cream from Walmart. I repented yesterday morning and was on track to turn things around, but then I returned home for— from a long day at work to discover my daughter Haley had given me a Christmas present. A gift card, and 3 little bags of candy. But that was actually after I decided to quote-unquote "clean house" of the last of the eggnog and Rice Krispie treats that I had bought for my kids for the holidays that they didn't eat. So last night, all the candy, all the treats, and all the nog was consumed to prayerfully end my holiday feasting binge. So this morning, I I'm repenting again, and to get me back on track, I've decided to bravely see the damage done by stepping on the scale. Just before Christmas, I heard on the radio that the average person gains 10 pounds during the holiday season, and I've always tried to be above average, but really didn't want to be, uh, in this area. But I did it! According to my Moody scale down by the river, which fluctuates wildly, granted, I gained almost 15 pounds. 213.8 pounds, making my joy of being under 200 pounds seem like a distant memory. I'm not panicked because I know that a matter of a week with Keto, most of that can disappear. But it does remind me that we really can't go mindless and just decide to not pay attention to what we are doing when it comes to the things that keep us in bondage. Addictions need to be ceased, not managed. And although the food thing is a different beast and harder to defeat, we really can't give in to it for more than a day or two without seeing a dramatic yo-yo devastating shift towards failure. The worst thing, um, is that these little food relapses have compounding results. The flesh grabs onto that sugar and those carbs and packs on the pounds, and it grabs a hold of your mind and your will to cause you to claim your quote-unquote right to do wrong. One relapse leads to another, and the hardening of the heart and mind towards good health, uh, in the name of pleasure. And once you start falling down, it's harder and harder to stand again. You know the truth of what you've done, but deny it and try to run from it. I almost didn't get on the scale today because I knew it was going to be bad and I didn't want to look at it. But I did because I hope it will cause me to be honest with myself so I can stop lying, you know, and running into the darkness that I had escaped from like an Old Testament leper. I am declaring myself to be unclean, unclean, in hopes that I can find healing and be restored to sanity again. I know what works and what I need to do, but as our Bonhoeffer devotional shared a couple of days ago, lasting change will have to come to us from the Lord. He grants repentance, not us. So I pray for the Lord to help me to face what I have done and to turn from it and to start today on the path of progress towards victory and freedom that I have been living in. I know there is no condemnation for those in Christ and that we are "only human" and will make mistakes, but the Word calls us to be more like Jesus and to live in the power of the Holy Spirit. So I ask for God's forgiveness and will not condemn myself But I also ask for the Holy Spirit's filling to give me strength and zeal to overcome, and the fruit of self-control that only He can bring. So it's the time of New Year's resolutions, and I am praying to receive a new beginning to continue in the victory that I knew, and to increase my freedom to be more like Jesus with food addiction, spending, and cleaning up my language. The fleshly indulgence has made my exclamations fleshlier too. In the days, weeks, and months ahead, I hope and pray that the Lord will help me with those things, and I'll be, you know, as honest as I can be in reporting my progress. So let's pick ourselves up and lean on the Lord to guide us and strengthen us in His ways. From this day forward. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Cruis. This morning's meditation verse comes from the section on Comfort, and today's verse is John 10:11, which says, or Jesus says, I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Today's verse is the first of 3 passages of scripture that fall under the 10th point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on Comfort. And that 10th point is: Jesus, the Good Shepherd, died for his sheep. He knows, leads, and protects each one. He gives us eternal security. Today's verse reminds us that Jesus is the Good Shepherd, that he gave his life for us. Our salvation and freedom come at a great cost, and we should never lose sight of that. Jesus died for us, so let's live for him. This may be a short commentary, but there is more to come on this in the next 2 days. So for today We should just know that Jesus is good, as in only God is good. He is the shepherd. He guides us in the way we should go, and he laid down his life for us. He lived a righteous life and died to save us. That's enough to inspire us, and we should remember that and, and follow him with the way we live. 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 God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And today's message for January 3rd is entitled Unnecessary Daily Exercise. And Bonhoeffer writes, why is it that my thoughts wander so quickly from God's Word, that my hour of need The needed word is often not there. Do I forget to eat and drink and sleep? Then why do I forget God's word? Because I still can't say what the psalmist says in Psalm 119:16: "I will delight in your statutes." I don't forget the things in which I take delight. Forgetting or not forgetting is a matter not of the mind but of the whole person, of the heart. I never forget what body and soul depend upon. The more I begin to love the commandments of God in creation and word, the more present they will be for me in every hour. Only love protects against forgetting. Because God's word is spoken to us in history and thus in the past, the remembrance and repetition of what we have learned is a necessary daily Exercise. Every day we must turn again to God's acts of salvation so that we can again move forward. Faith and obedience live on remembrance and repetition. Remembrance becomes the power of the present because of the living God who once acted for me and who reminds me of that today. And then our resource shares from Bonhoeffer's Life Together, this passage which says, in our meditation, we ponder the chosen text on the strength of the promise that it has something utterly personal to say to us for this day and for our Christian life, that it is not only God's word for the church but also God's word for us individually. We expose ourselves to the specific word until it addresses us personally. And when we do this, we are doing no more than the simplest untutored— more than the simplest untutored Christian does every day. We read God's word as God's word for us. That was from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. And finally, our resource shares Psalm 119:11-18, and the word of God says: I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes. With my lips I declare all the ordinance of your mouth. I delight in the way of your decrees as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes, I will not forget your word. Deal bountifully with your servant so that I may live and observe your word. Open my eyes so that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. And that concludes our sharing from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas. Um, so in today's, you know, word in that devotional that our daily exercise of reading the Word really is important. You know, we don't— as Bonhoeffer points out— we don't forget to eat or sleep or drink, but we forget to partake of God's Word. And, you know, that second portion from Life Together tells us that, you know, we're to read God's Word as the Word for us. And you know, now that I think about it, during my Christmas vacation I was at my countryside home, which is a different setup from what I have down here at the river, um, and my routine's different. And during that week off for Christmas week, mind you, um, I forgot, you know, I forgot to read the Bible. Like, time just sort of gets away from me. There, and although I, you know, blogged every day and podcasted every day, I didn't read— I didn't read the Bible in the morning like I normally do, and I was living in temptation. Is that, you know, I think there's a correlation there. You know, if I'm reading his word, maybe I'm not giving in to temptation. Maybe I'd be empowered to, you know, maintain my self-control. Instead of giving into the flesh, you know. So let that be a lesson to you, to study your Word every day. That's what Christians do, you know. The, you know, as Bonhoeffer says, the untutored Christian, the simplest untutored Christian does every day. We read God's Word as God's Word for us. You know, that's wisdom. That's what we're supposed to do. First things I learned as a Christian was, you You know, what do we do as a Christian? Well, we pray and we read the Bible every day. And so that's, you know, we emphasize a spiritual daily practice of prayer and Bible study every day as a foundation, and the practice of gratitude every day to start your day, to put you on the right path. And, you know, I didn't really do those things during my vacation. Because time gets away from me and it's different and I was distracted, I was on vacation and maybe I had sugar coursing through my veins. But now, you know, we're back to sanity. And, you know, the first lessons that you— we teach in the recovery program that we do is on denial, and that'll be next week for anyone who wants to join us at Starpoint Church. For the Celebrate Freedom Growth Group. We start up the recovery curriculum again on Wednesday of next week to inspire people to, you know, give up the things that, you know, keep them in bondage. So if you want to join us and you're in the Capitol District, you're invited to come. And, you know, recovery's got to be a lifestyle. Christianity is going to be a lifestyle, and when you walk with the Lord, that's— they're both possible. Repentance is your lifestyle, that you're constantly becoming more and more like Christ because you're renewing your mind and changing things. Like I said, I had victory over those more illicit sins and been freed from them for years, and I ain't going back, and I'm not going back on this food addiction thing, and I shouldn't have you know, really given in as much as I did to, you know, feasting over the holiday season. Because now it's, you know, like I said, it's compounding problems. But we look forward in faith and lean on the Lord, and we're praying for repentance. So we're going to keep walking and talking with God and hope he brings it, because we know he's good and he wants us to walk in that way. So let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you. Uh, we ask for your forgiveness and your help, um, this morning, Lord, to, uh, to right the ship and how we live and, uh, to focus not on the flesh but on the Spirit. As we want to walk in the Spirit, we want your Holy Spirit to infill us with your power and strength and wisdom to overcome. Uh, once again, uh, Lord, we also pray for our friends that are out there who may be struggling Um, we, I, you know, in some extent we're all struggling, but, uh, Lord, with you we, we can overcome the struggle. And so we pray for them in their prayer requests and their walk of faith that you'd come alongside them and bless them. And Lord, as we go forth today with another day of unpredictable things at work and life in general, uh, we just pray for you to be with us. We pray for you to go before us today, open our eyes to the things you want us to see to and lead us in the way we should go. Because, Lord, we, we all need your help, and we, and we all want to represent you, uh, in your kingdom here on the earth. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, and we love you. And we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.