Real Truth Matters Podcast

This episode discusses how to combat and cure our spiritual downturns. As already explained, all Christians suffer this malady from time to time. No one is exempt. Therefore, if we experience it, it stands to reason that we need to know how to see its end and experience recovery from spiritual declension. Please listen and share this episode with other Christians so they, along with you, know the cure for backsliding.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

This episode focuses on how to maintain fellowship with God. Suppose you have learned how to enter into fellowship with God; you’ve listened to this podcast, and your communion with God has been helped. How do you maintain it?  There are external as well as internal forces working against your walk with God. These things are constantly striving to disrupt your intimacy with the Lord. One of the purposes for the Apostle John to write his first epistle was to help his readers know how to walk and maintain communion with the living God, the God of light. Michael Durham shares from I John the key principles of maintaining a close walk with God. The first principle is to keep your confession of sin up to date. 

An important ingredient for fellowship with God is transparency. All relationships must be based on honesty if they are to thrive. You need to try to impress the Lord with a pseudo-spirituality, a spirituality that you are pretending to have. We all have issues with sin. We are not to act as if we don't, but we are to acknowledge our sin to God, confessing our need for His grace and aid. 

Since it has been so long since we’ve dealt with the topic, this episode reviews what we have learned thus far about how to have fellowship with the living God. For a refresher, please go back to season two and listen to episodes 25-30. 

If revival is the renewal of healthy New Testament Christianity, then one question remains. How do you experience revival? How can you return to a place of vibrancy in your relationship with the Lord Jesus? In this episode, we outline three biblical mandates that, if believed and experienced, will lead you back to spiritual well-being. Please listen, and then share with family and friends.

Revival is a return to normal New Testament Christianity. It is to walk in the Spirit consistently. In this episode, Michael Durham considers the indicators that evidence that a believer or a church needs revival. God wants His children to walk in the experience of their inheritance in Christ. But all of us know that we do not always do so. So, listen and discover what the signs of spiritual regression are. We need to know these indicators before our symptoms become a full-blown disease. 

We try to find a more biblical view of revival in this episode. One of the prevailing reasons revival is not occurring is the unbiblical attitudes about revival. Some have an idea that revival is a great evangelistic campaign, and others believe in humanistic formulas to be the key to having a revival. And others consider revival a purely sovereign work of God alone. These perspectives are hindering genuine revival, which is Christians returning to healthy New Testament Christianity. 

In this episode, we discuss special moves or outpourings of God on His people. Many call these movements of God’s Spirit working in powerful ways revivals. The word revival has come to mean different things to different people. It is highly imperative that we rightly define the word so that confusion does not reign. It is also essential that we rightly understand the word to experience it when needed.

How do you know if God is leading you on a specific path? Well, do not despair. The Lord is too kind to leave us to a guessing game. The Bible gives six markers or identifiers that mark the way of the Lord. You could say these six markers are six tests, tests by which we see if something is God’s will or not. So don’t panic; God commands us to exam Him and all other spirits who would pretend to the Holy Spirit. Thank God that He gave us a book whereby we can test all things and, therefore, able to hold fast to that which is good. 

How do you know if God is leading you on a specific path? Well, do not despair. The Lord is too kind to leave us to a guessing game. The Bible gives six markers or identifiers that mark the way of the Lord. You could say these six markers are six tests, tests by which we see if something is God’s will or not. So don’t panic; God commands us to examine Him and all other spirits who would pretend to be the Holy Spirit. Thank God that He gave us a book whereby we can test all things and, therefore, hold fast to that which is good.