Real Truth Matters Podcast

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We have already looked at some of the causes and the root of not growing in grace but instead digressing. Spiritual declension is defined as any lessening of the heart’s fascination with Jesus Christ the Lord. In this episode on spiritual declension, we continue by learning how to detect it. It is essential to overcome spiritual decline by recognizing it early. What are the telltale signs of spiritual digression? It isn't what you would normally think.

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How is it possible for the child of God to turn away from following the Lord? How do sheep go astray? What makes people who have been loved by God, who has done nothing but good to them, drift in their love for Him? In this episode, RTM founder and director Michael Durham will answer these questions. There is one root from which all spiritual decline grows.

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Do you know why you suffer times of low devotion, a weak heart, and lukewarmness? There’s more to it than meets the eye. With this podcast, we begin a new topic we want to dive into for the next few weeks. That topic is spiritual declension. Now, what do those two words mean? Please listen as Michael Durham explains.

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There are two approaches to the Christian life that make up the majority of Christians. One is a reliance upon emotionalism, a philosophy that promotes the experience of feeling positive emotions is what is considered vibrant Christianity. The other approach is intellectualism, which believes that the Christian faith is mostly cerebral. It elevates knowledge and equates with it spiritual maturity. However, both approaches are not promoted or substantiated in the Bible. The Scriptures declare a third approach, the only way to live more abundantly. 

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In our last episode, we looked at 1 John 2:24-28. John says there is an abiding message, which is Christ, who is the Gospel, and this message indwells and abides with you. Jesus equates Himself with His words. If you have the Word of God implanted within, then you have Christ within. But John also says that the Holy Spirit must communicate that Word to us in an experiential way. Listen and discover this principle of maintaining fellowship with God. 

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The next biblical principle to maintain fellowship with our God is very crucial to the ability to experience God anytime. The principle is that you must keep your experience of truth up to date. In other words, you must often experience the power of the truth. You should be feeling its influence and impact on a very consistent basis.  Listen and discover in this first of two episodes how to experience God in the truth of His word.

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The next principle for maintaining fellowship with God. It is keeping your focus eternal, in other words, having and maintaining an eternal perspective and not an earthly or temporal focus. John gives us the two spectrums of human perspective, and these are the only two. Either you have a temporal view of life, meaning a view that believes all of life consists here in this world, or you have an eternal view of life, meaning life is more than an allotted time on this earth and that after death, life continues. According to both Jesus and the Apostle John, this plays a greater factor in walking with God than most Christians realize.

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As we continue to learn how to maintain fellowship with God, a fifth principle stated in 1 John is to keep brotherly love up to date. Loving the brethren helps us to walk in the light. Loving brothers and sisters in Christ assist you to love God more. Because you experience fellowship with God, you love the brethren, but because you love them, you experience more fellowship with God. It becomes a full circle. 

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When loving obedience is given to the Lord Jesus, then fellowship with Him is experienced. The very act of obedience is a kind of communion with God. It is you expressing your love and faith in Him. It is you telling Him that you see Him for what He is, absolutely and altogether beautiful and faithful. That is communion and is received by the Lord as the language of the heart, the language of deep affection. 

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The Apostle John demonstrated in his First Epistle that if we quickly and consistently confess our sins, meaning we agree with God, then the blood of Christ removes the stain of our sins. This leads us to another question we want us to explore in this episode. If we are already justified, meaning declared judicially right with God, and all of our sins, past, present, and future, have been forgiven us, why then does God require confession of sin? Why does the blood of our Savior need to cleanse us of sin already pardoned?

In this episode, Michael Durham, answers these questions and demonstrates that fellowship with God requires keeping your confession of sin up to date.