Why Does It Do That? - The Science of Walking in the Spirit – Purity 747

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 tree in the middle of the pathway on the Redwood Skywalk, it comes to us from a friend who visited the Sequoia Park Zoo in Eureka, California back on April 15th as part of a a full day that included hiking along the California coastline at Patrick's Point that is accessible at Sue Meg State Park. My friend's original post showed several scenes from the, from the, the last full day of their family vacation, and I love their adventurous spirit that sought to see as much as they could see with the time they had. Well, it's Thursday again, and after taking a week off, I'm happy to report that I will once again be facilitating the Freedom for— the Freedom in Christ course, uh, in Christ— the Freedom in Christ discipleship course, uh, men's group on Zoom tonight, where the participants have made the decisions to see all they could see with the time they have by seeking to grow in their relationship with God by experiencing or maintaining their freedom in Christ. Full disclosure and a humble confession: although I facilitate this online course and have experienced my freedom in Christ, I am not a perfect person. Just yesterday I made the mistake of sharing the same section of text from John Piper's "Don't Waste Your Life" that I'm sharing a bit by bit on the blog that I shared the previous day. Whoops! Instead of rewriting history and editing yesterday's post, I'm going to let it be. Perhaps there was something in that particular excerpt that needed to be shared two days in a row, or perhaps my faux pas— and yes, my spell check saved me from another mistake on the use of that phrase— was intended to be a remind— another reminder of, of, on my, in fact, on my fallibility, obviously. Um, no, I am not perfect, and the reminders to that fact come very regularly. Like in this podcast. My mistakes help me to learn as I go and also serve to remind me that it is in Christ alone that I trust, uh, I trust to save me, because, uh, there is simply no way that I or anyone else could earn their salvation. Our sinful condition is something we can't pay back and leads us to seek a savior in Jesus. But Christ doesn't call us to pick up— but Christ does call us to pick up our cross and to follow him. By the way, picking up our cross doesn't— does not mean bearing burdens like, oh my blank, that's my cross to bear. No, no, uh, Christ didn't walk around with his cross complaining about its weight. Nor does he have to bear it as he walks through eternity. No, Christ died on his cross. So when he is directing us to pick up our cross and follow him, he is in effect telling us to die. When we put our faith in Christ, scripture tells us that we are crucified, die, and are raised to life with him. So when Christ tells us to pick up our cross and follow him, He is telling us to die to our old life and to live our new life by following his example. Because in reality, we are new creations. We are given a new and eternal life when we make Jesus our Lord and Savior. The process of turning from our old worldly ways and deciding to live according to God's wisdom and ways, uh, that are revealed to us in the Bible is the process of repentance and sanctification. That is described as walking in the Spirit. I refer to making the decision and living, uh, and living according to biblical principles as walking on the path of Christian discipleship because we are disciples, students of Jesus, and we are seeking, seeking to not only know what Christ taught, but, uh, we are practicing our faith by trying to apply the word of God's wisdom to all the areas of our life. Or at least to the as many areas as we are made aware of. I subtitled today's encouragement, The Science of Walking in the Spirit, to encourage people to get on the path of Christian discipleship, to become the subject in your personal experiment of faith. Oh, by the way, this is, this is a case study, not just a trial run, although there will be trials when we honestly, sincerely place our faith in Christ, we are in this thing for life, as in forever, because in Christ our lives extend beyond this mortal coil into eternity. So we might as well see what this new life in Christ is all about and to see if it is true, uh, that if we walk in the Spirit, we can experience, uh, the growth of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. The question, why does it do that? Is one I employ or wonder about in all my— in all the problem-solving areas of my life. As a field technician and as a troubleshooter of life in general, I have learned the perplexing anomaly that although we can discover solutions by isolating variables and by testing what remains to develop processes that work to fix stuff, sometimes we can discover situations where we fail or succeed and are left positively confused over why something something works or why it doesn't work. The practice of medicine is considered a field of science, but the truth that no one really advertises is that the practice of medicine is based on making hypotheses and by isolating variables and testing solutions. Sounds pretty good, huh? What's wrong with that? Well, as scientific as it sounds, the truth of Ignorance and mystery lies in the first link of the chain of the scientific method: the hypothesis. A hypothesis is basically an educated guess. That's why they are tested. Researchers predict, or guess, that certain outcomes will happen when variables are brought together, but they don't know if they will, will happen like they think they will, but they keep plugging along until they discover what works. At least for the most part, because they have not discovered medicinal laws yet. Some treatments work for many people, but they don't work for all people all the time. Thus the practice of medicine. So what about our faith walk? What about the science of walking in the Spirit? Well, God invites you to put his word to the test. Christ invites you to die to the old ways of doing things and to follow him. The variables of Bible study, prayer, and other principles drawn from the Word of God are available to us to apply to our lives and to test. Developing a walk of faith that leads to the manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives will come from our testing and practicing our faith. Whoever says that Christianity is boring has never attempted to apply the wisdom of God's Word to their life. In our walk, we can discover the benefits of Christian spiritual practices to our experience, but we can only do that by actually practicing them. So keep walking and talking with God. Put on your lab coat and put God's Word and your faith to the test by knowing what it says and by doing it. By agreeing with God's wisdom and by eliminating the worldly variable— variables in our lives that don't line up with it. If you do this, you may experience trial and error as you try to figure out why it does that, but if you persevere in your experiment of Christian living, one day you will scream "Eureka!" and probably "Hallelujah!" when you discover that God's word is completely true and trustworthy because you will see the positive results of peace, Love, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, patience, self-control, and joy grow out of your decision to test and practice what the Bible has contained all along. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verse is Matthew 5:6, and it says, God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice. For they will be satisfied. Tonight— today's Bible verse assures us that if we hunger and thirst for justice, we will be satisfied. I love the NLT, but its translation of Matthew 5:6 makes me think of various action movies where the hero protagonist goes on a mission to seek justice, usually by taking it in their own hands in the form of revenge. But that is not what the Bible would direct us to to do. Uh, when we consider that it is a Bible verse we are reading, we have to remember that the concepts are in relation to God. So when today's verse tells us that God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, we have to consider what justice would mean to God. We understand that God is just and will pour out his wrath on those who sin, so justice for the sinner would be hell. I am not sure if I would be in a hurry to rush after that justice. To hunger and thirst for that justice doesn't sound like it would bless us. So what is the justice of God that would bless us? Luckily, God is not only just but is also merciful and loving. God knew that sinful man was incapable of being holy on his own. So, as John 3:16 tells us, because of his love for us, God sent Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for our sins so we can be saved and not perish. Jesus's death on the cross satisfies justice. He pays for our sins. Justice is done. So those who hunger and thirst for this justice are the ones who would be blessed. Those who hunger and seek for the justice that Jesus provides are blessed with eternal life, and that more than satisfies. So Matthew 5:6 is Christ's promise to man that if they seek God's redemptive plan of justice by seeking Christ, they will be satisfied. Instead of picturing someone who is out for justice like Steven Seagal, we should envision someone seeking to be right with God, pursuing God's justice, pursuing God's righteousness, which just so happens to be the one who is speaking this verse. Jesus Christ. In a way, this verse is parallel to Jeremiah 29:13, which says, "And you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart." Christ is standing there telling the people and us that they will be blessed and satisfied if they seek him. So hunger and thirst for justice, or righteousness as most other Bible translations as he's put it, through Jesus Christ, and be assured that you will be satisfied. As always, I invite all to go to mtforchrist.org where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors, sometimes the same thing two days in a row. Um, but today we continue sharing from John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life, and today we actually did move on in chapter 9. To the new sections, one of which is entitled The Inadequacy of the Batboy's Perspective, Don't Take Offense, Join the Joyful Partnership, and Mercy at Home Makes Missions Credible, and Warfield's Devastating Comparison. So if you want to see what all those sections contain, go to M.t. Clark.org and you'll find that section of of Piper's book at the end of today's blog post. Yeah, and so that's that. Like I said, my mistake was basically I try to prepare things a day in advance and set things up for the next day, and the previous day I ran into an issue with formatting where I was doing that preparation, and I I failed to remember that I didn't update that resource yesterday when I shared it. So a simple mistake, you know, and that was sort of the emphasis behind today's message. You know, I can copy and paste on my laptop at home and it comes out one way. I get the same resource through a website and I copy and paste and all the formatting totally changed.— and that causes me to ask the question, "Why does it do that?" You know, copy and paste from one place to another, you know, the text looks the same in one place as it does the next, but you copy and paste in one format and copy and paste from another format and they come out completely different. It's a mystery. I'm sure there's some technocrat, you know, guy who could probably explain that to me, but does it change anything? No, it just frustrates you, but you know, it doesn't work this way. It works this way, but it doesn't work that way. And so much in life, you know, leads us to this questioning of why. And generally, we come to the conclusion of, you know, the question why will just confuse us and frustrate us probably to, you know, to the day we die in many areas of life. But, you know, we shouldn't question why. We should accept the results and move along. Otherwise, we won't move along and we'll just sit there questioning why the rest of our lives. Find a solution that works, and if you can understand why and repeat it, you know, scientifically, get the same results, that's great. But even, you know, I've discovered, and scientists all around the world have discovered that even in some instances, by following everything exactly the same, at least in our estimation, comes out with different results. Because the world's broken by sin. What? You know, that's not a scientific explanation. But, you know, for real, why does things inexplicable happen? You know, well, there's a spiritual realm out there that has something to say about things, and there's dark spiritual form, uh, spirits of darkness, and there's God's will to contend with. And, uh, you know, there's the changes in the atmosphere, you know, maybe there's something we can't observe, right, um, that's impacting our results, most likely, right? Yeah. And the spirit realm happens to be one of those things we can't observe. So, you know, this is the, this is the practice of our faith, is to follow, test, and keep going. And to change what we can change, accept what we can't, and keep following where God would lead us. You know, this— and now, does that sound like sitting in a pew at church and just doing the same thing over and over again every week, once a week for an hour? You know, if that's your practice of Christianity Are we really surprised that there hasn't been an outflow of peace, love, and joy in your life? That if that is the practice you're doing and it's not leading to results, I think we need to change the practice. Maybe add a spiritual practice to your life every day. Maybe contemplate and pray and seek God's presence continually instead of just, you know, for an hour a week. You know, this is, you know, the unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates said. But the Lord asks us to follow him, and he doesn't put any restrictions on that. You know, follow me once a day for an hour in a building with other people and don't really engage in it, just go through the motions and leave. It doesn't say that. Says, "Follow me," and the implications are wide, uh, and what that could mean. Um, the Bible is a big book and there's a lot, a lot to it. That's why we do what we do here, is to try to share the things that we've learned, uh, to— that were helpful, um, and that's why we share, you know, the, the stuff that other people have learned, um, you know, basically in those resources. So, um, You know, put on the old lab coat and let's go to work, because the results are the fruit of the Spirit. The results are your freedom in Christ. The results are joy, love, and peace. So let's go after those results every day by getting on that path of Christian discipleship. We keep walking, we keep talking with God, and we enjoy the journey, and we enjoy the progress that we make. We accept even the confounding times when we don't, you know, we keep walking and talking with God. So that's what we do here, and we encourage people to check out our teachings that we have on the podcast and our YouTube channel for Freedom in Christ, for The Bondage Breaker, for Victory Over the Darkness. Those teachings basically contained a lot of the things that it took years for me to discover ever. And then I found the books later and said, oh wow, this guy had it all along. But you know what, sometimes we have to learn by experience, and reading something in a book isn't as compelling as us walking through an experience. So maybe that's what God wanted me to do. But I offer my teachings to you and invite you to, you know, listen to them and apply them to your life. They're based on the word of God and the work of Dr. Neil Anderson, who who discovered them before me. So check it out. We also invite you to discover the mystery and the wonder and the wisdom that is in the word of God, and that's why we, uh, we share a Bible study once a week, um, so you can hear us and Arthur and Susanna, uh, Sincadi discuss different topics from the Bible. So if you want to check those out, Bible study with the Sincadis on the podcast and our YouTube channel. Um, that's about it for today. Today is Thursday, so I look forward to meeting with the participants of my men's group, um, just, you know, to talk about our journeys of faith and to encourage them. And, and the tough topic of forgiving from the heart tonight, so we might have something to say about that tomorrow. But for today, we're going to move ahead and pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we just thank you so much for this dynamic experience of life that you've given us, that we can walk into and get to know you and learn more about you and to experience your presence and your goodness in our lives as you encourage us to follow after you, as you encourage us and draw us to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, and then to live according to, uh, to faith in the power of the Holy Spirit. Lord, we pray for you to go before us today. We pray for everyone listening. We pray for them to receive the things they need, Lord, um, and blessings and peace and, and healing if, if they need it. Lord, you know their needs better than I do, but we pray on their behalf for you and for ourselves. Lord, we pray for you to go before us today, uh, to open our eyes to what you want us to see, to see the beauty in this world and to see the wisdom that lies in following you and to applying your wisdom to our lives and every, every step along the path. Uh, Lord, we just pray for you to go before us, prepare things for us, for us to walk into where we can grow and to do your will on the earth. Lord, we thank you, we love you, we praise you, and all these things we pray in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.