We Don’t Stop – Loving the Lord with All Our Heart - Purity 1771

Welcome to the MT for Christ 24/7 podcast. I am M.t. Clark, and this is today's photo. Good morning. Today's photo of the sun rising on the horizon over a mist-shrouded country road comes to us from yours truly as I captured this simple scene of beauty on the edge of the forest just before the cornfield on Waite Road back on September 23rd, 2023. Well, it's Thursday, and I share today's, uh, well, today's photo, um, this view of a simple country road as a visual reminder to get on or to stay on the path of Christian discipleship, where our attempts to walk in the Spirit may not always be perfect, but they are always a step in the right direction when we are following our hearts set on Christ. You know, following the Lord is sort of like my making a conscious decision to change my eating habits and to pursue the goal of obtaining my ideal weight. Even though I have struggled mightily with my weight over the years and fall into temptation to— into the temptation to overeat regularly, albeit not as much as I used to, I am still pursuing my goal, and I'm actively seeking to renew my mind to change the way I think about food and trying to align— come into alignment with healthy habits that will give me success, ways that other people, some not even Christians, follow that lead to good physical health. I'm not trying to obtain the impossible dream. Other people live there, and I'm just— and I trust that if I just continue to learn and to do the things that promote my optimal health, I can eventually accomplish my goals. But I will never accomplish them if I believe the lie that I just can't do it. The choice— the choices we make shape our lives. If I set my priorities properly and actually love good health more than instant gratification, I will make choices that lead to good health. But if I doubt my abilities to do the right things to achieve good health and secretly love the things that sabotage my health goals, I will continue to make poor choices and never get to where I want to be. The process of achieving my health goal is faith-based. I have to believe success is possible, and I have to live by faith by doing the things that I know are conducive to my success. But I also have to have my heart in this. I have to love good health and the things that will give me good health, and frankly, I have to hate the things that stop me from experiencing the thing I would love to experience. In order to change, you have to love the thing you're pursuing with all your heart, soul, and mind. And when you do that, regardless of setbacks, you never give up. We don't stop. You never stop dreaming the dream and putting forth your effort to achieve it because it's a love quest and you believe that someday you and your love we'll be together. Anyway, speaking of love, I was inspired by an entry from The Chosen 40 Days with Jesus Book 2 devotional, and I'm sharing, uh, that entry, or part of the entry, on the blog today to encourage us to never stop following the Lord and to continue in our efforts to love God with all our hearts, souls, and minds. The authors of The Chosen devotional write all your heart. When the Pharisees asked Jesus which commandment was the greatest in the law, Jesus replied, love your Lord with your— love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus's answer encompassed every law. In other words, if you do these two things, the rest should take care of itself. That shut the Pharisees up because there was nothing left to debate, but it also leveled the playing field. Suddenly the average villager lost his advantage over the lunatics because the opposite of loving Jesus isn't hating Jesus as the lunatics did. The opposite of loving Jesus is loving yourself more. This is where we need a heart check. Of course, there will always be people who ardently oppose— who are ardently opposed to Christ, but there are far more average villagers, quote unquote, in the world who are indifferent to what he has to say. And neither works. Loving the Lord our God with all our hearts actually means that our response to him must be extreme. It means we must be relentless in our pursuit and obsessed with lifting him up. If we're not captivated by how we benefit from Jesus's death, we will never allow him to govern over our every move. We'll stay lustful in our appetites and continually feed on the things of this world. To truly love him means that being an average villager is no longer an option. Instead, we must love ourselves less and hate our sin more, as in hate it so much we want it dead. We must die to ourselves so that we can love him more fully, so that we can love him with all our hearts. That was from the authors of The Chosen, probably Amanda Jenkins, but it's from Hendricks and Jenkins, and it's in bookstores near you. Anyway, and I say amen. You know, last night I had a discussion with a brother in Christ who admitted that he still struggles with feelings of low self-esteem and condemnation. Although he has done a lot of work through counseling, he still has a double-minded existence where he has great confidence in his abilities sometimes, but at other times is afflicted with a persistent negative view of himself. Although I believe that he would benefit greatly from a Freedom appointment, I also think that this man may have a somewhat lukewarm relationship with the Lord. Because he said that he can't walk in the Spirit all the time. While I, while I will never claim to be able to walk in the Spirit perfectly, I had to come against his assertion that for him walking in the Spirit continually is impossible. We are commanded by Jesus to abide in him. If we couldn't do it, he wouldn't tell us to. Likewise, he tells us to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and mind. So we can do that too. We can't believe the lie that we can't walk in the Spirit all the time. We not only have to believe it's possible, we have to choose to do it. Faith is a choice. If we believe, we still need to choose to follow the Lord, and we still need to love the Lord. It's commandment number one. So if we are having trouble with our self-worth, we need to go to the Lord and receive our worth from him. We have to agree with what the word of God says about us, like really believe it, and start abandoning our old life for the new life we have in Christ. We have to forsake our old ways and thought patterns and choose to live as the new creation that we already are in Christ. We have to get extreme in our love for the Lord and let his love change the way we do life. When negative thoughts about ourselves come up, We have to renounce them as the lies that they are and declare by faith what God says is true about us. When we fully surrender to living by faith, we discover that we can walk in the Spirit continually because we are continually choosing to follow the Lord. And when we start living according to God's truth, we experience his goodness and watch our lives be transformed. It's not a whip yourself into shape choice. It's a love choice. It's This is a "I really appreciate your love for me, God" choice. So fire up the joy of your salvation and love the Lord with all your heart, and let his love shape the way you think about yourself and the way you walk through this life. Today's Bible verses come to— well, verse comes to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling, uh, guide by John G. Crews. And this morning's meditation verse comes from the section on peacemakers, and today's verse is 1 Peter 4:8, which says, most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. Today's verse is the second of two passages of scripture that fall under the 11th point of our Counseling Reference Guide resource section on peacemakers. That 11th point is to promote peace, harmony, and unity. Love one another from the heart. Overlook many offenses or sins. What do I write? I write, well, I write, today's Bible verse encourages us to love one another in the body of Christ and to let that love change the way we relate to one another with the fruit of peace that comes from forgiveness. The only way love is going to cover a multitude of sins is if that love guides us into actions based on God's truth. Love doesn't turn a blind eye to sin. Love doesn't allow us to persist in sin, and love doesn't allow us to hold on to bitterness towards those who sin against us. If the love of the Lord is our driving focus in life, we will turn from our sins to live a godly life, and we will forgive those who sin against us and encourage them, sometimes with accountability or tough love, to turn from their sins too. When we love one another deeply, we will forgive one another, and we will change the way we live so we don't sin against one another. 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. And 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 270, where Adams shares a portion of Acts 2:22, which says, a man from God accredited to you by miracles and wonders and signs. And J.E. Adams writes, the wonders that Jesus performed, Peter said, accredited him as the one he claimed to be. A man from God. The word miracle in the original is powers. That is to say, he performed works more powerful than natural ones. Wonders speaks of the effect that these mighty works had upon those who observed them. Signs indicates the purpose of Jesus's miracles, like signposts that pointed to who Jesus was and established his claims. Signs is the word that John exclusively used for miracles. He stressed the sign value of his miracles because his book is replete with testimony to Jesus's deity. His use is technical, bearing a legal sense. In 2 Corinthians 12:12, the same signs are said to attest to the apostles' authority. You trust in a fully authenticated Savior and in the word of authentically attested apostles. Amen. And that, you know, whether or not you're able to perform signs or wonders The wonder should be your changed life, the fact that, wow, you know, I really trust what he says because look how, you know, his faith in Jesus has changed him. And that is why we always ask the question, have you fully surrendered to God? As I said, my friend, you know, I take a lot of things for granted, and I think the fact that I've been following the Lord and I've had some unbelievable, you know, manifestations of God in my life, the Holy Spirit in my life, that, you know, I don't get it when people don't fully understand, you know, aren't on board with the fully surrender your life to Jesus thing. But I used to live there, but I don't live there anymore, so I don't remember what it's like. And so I sort of take the ongoing relationship I have with the Lord for granted, and I just sort of assume, you know, that certainly, surely, you know, these other Christians have you know, pursued the word of the Lord like I have, tried to get equipped and, you know, and to come into God's presence and pray and seek the Lord like I did. But unfortunately, I don't think that's the case. I know that's not the case. And, you know, I get the idea that you can't walk in the Spirit all the time. It's like, well, it's a relationship with the Lord. And yeah, it's like your relationship with your wife. You might not be in her presence all the time, but you're still married to her. And, you know, You might not do everything right in that relationship, but you're joined together. And how can I not live with my wife? I'm married to her even though I'm not currently in the same building with her. I'm married with Tammy Lynn in a deep way. And that's the marriage we're supposed to have with the Lord, that no matter where we go, there we are married to God. And when you get hitched to the Lord, put your faith in Jesus, it'll change your life, or at least it should. And so if you're not able to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind, you have to examine your heart and say, what's wrong with me? Well, I would guess that you're still in the— you got one foot in the world, one foot in heaven, and you want to put both feet in God's kingdom, you know. Um, that's, that's what we do here, and we encourage that, because when you do, it changes the way you think about yourself and think about life and how you do life. Um, and you understand and you see God's power His signs and His wonders are in your life continually. And so that's why we encourage people to get on the path of Christian discipleship, because it changes everything. It gives you peace and a purpose. And part of my purpose is to encourage other people who don't know about how good God is. And one of the places I do that is at the Celebrate Freedom support group at Starpoint Church. You know, I'm not just some mystic running around. You have to be connected to a local church. And I serve local church by leading the Celebrate Freedom support group. It's a Christian recovery and discipleship group. We meet on Wednesday nights, and we invite you to come out next Wednesday. Our meetings are at 6:30 PM, and currently we're in the K-3 classroom, and we invite you to come out and to start walking in the Spirit all the time. Anyway, if you can't make the local meeting and you wanted to hang out to discuss the things of God, well, one way you can do that is through the Renovare Book Club. And so if you join the book club, there's online discussion groups where you can actually get together with other believers and talk about what you're reading. And one of those online discussion groups is going to be hosted by me. It's going to be on the third Monday of each month at 6:30 PM Eastern time. And if you're a member of the Renovare Book Club, you can email me and tell me you want to join the group, and we can, you know, discuss our reading each month. It'd be fun. Anyway, beyond that, if you wanted to do more than just read a few books, there is a discipleship course available. It's called The Grace Course by Steve Gloss and Freedom in Christ Ministries that I'll be hosting from November 4th to December 23rd. So just before Thanksgiving and just before Christmas, you can experience God's grace in your life through The Grace Course. And we encourage you to sign up today. You can register at mt4christ.com at our group coaching events page. We're definitely doing this because I already got one guy who's definitely in and, and I would imagine there'll be more, um, that come along as we get closer and closer to that date. So this event is definitely happening, happening, and we, uh, and we got, we got room for you. Um, beyond that, uh, let's see what else we got. Well, we got all those free resources. We've been doing the podcast for a long time, so we put, uh, our teaching, some of our teachings in playlists. And so if you want to be encouraged, you can check those out. We've done teachings on Christian recovery, discipleship,, and we even have a weekly Bible, Bible study that we do. So we encourage you to check those out because we believe that'll help you to increase your freedom in Christ. And if it does and you appreciate it, we certainly appreciate your help. We do accept donations to cover our ministry costs. You can go to mtforchrist.com. Our donations page is there for you to, to give to our, our efforts, and we greatly appreciate it. Um, beyond that, we end every episode of the Purity Podcast our daily encouragement with the question, are you empty for Christ too? And that's just an invitation to jump into a life in the Spirit, and it means you're trying to empty yourself of the things of this world and be filled with the things of God, the Holy Spirit to guide you. We hope the answer to that question is yes, and if it is, we say awesome, keep on walking and talking with God. If not, we encourage you to pray and seek the Lord. Lord. And, uh, because if we know, if you seek him continually, progressively, you'll find him more and more, and you'll see your life change. And a lot of that will have to do with prayer. And we know that prayer works, and that's why we pray every day, like right now. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. We thank you so much for all that you do for us, Lord. We thank you so that you've shown us this way of life, that we can actually live by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit. And although we might not do it perfectly Um, we, we do it continuously because you're with us. And Lord, we just pray for you to go before us today, lead us in the way we should go, um, show us the things you want us to see and do. And Lord, we pray for healing because our body is sore as we recover from our injury and try to get in working shape, uh, Lord. So we definitely would appreciate your healing and supernatural strength to come into us. Um, beyond that, we pray to help anyone who's reading, listening, or watching today's message, Lord. We pray for you to come alongside them, their prayer requests, and their walk of faith, because they need your help too. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.