A Believer’s Faith

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? You doin’ alright today? Well, bless your heart, some of you have some very special days. I know for one couple it’s a wedding anniversary and, uh, for other people it’s a birthday, and for other people I’m afraid it’s a day when you remember that somebody very dear to you slipped away into the glory.

All different kinds of days we have, aren’t they? But, for every one of us, uh, who is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, we can look up and say, “This is the day that the Lord hath made. We will be glad and rejoice in it.”

God’s plans are already laid for you, beloved, and it can be His wonderful, glorious day, even though circumstances may not be what you want or they may be happy ones.

Happy has to start inside. The joy of the Lord is your strength, so may God give you His blessed, wonderful peace and joy this very day-is my prayer.

Yes, this is your friend Dr. Cook and I’m glad to be back with you for these moments when we look into God’s blessed Word and seek to draw from it those practical lessons that will give us help and encouragement and direction for the hours that lie before us.

What we’ve been doing is doing a little wrap up review of Colossians. We went through it verse by verse and now we’re just sort of hitting the high spots, uh, wrapping it up before we go onto something else.

Currently, we’re reviewing some thoughts from Colossians three. Remember those verbs that we looked at a couple of days ago?

“Seek” is verse one. “Seek those things which are above.” “Set” is verse two. “Set your affection on things above.” “Mortify”; verse five. Put them to death, in other words. “{Mortify} your members upon the earth. “Immorality”, in other words, wrong emphasis on your emotions. Wrong direction, wrong purpose. “Covetousness” and all that.

And then “put off” by faith and “put on” by faith those things that you…put off those things that you know are contrary to the blessed Spirit of God and put on, by faith, those things that honor your blessed Lord Jesus Christ.

Compassion, mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, forbearance, forgiveness, and love. Put them on. You do this by faith, remember? Peter says, “Add to your faith, virtue; to virtue, knowledge; to knowledge, temperance; to temperance, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.”

You add to your personality by faith. This is a great lesson. Once you learn it the possibilities of self-improvement, by the grace of God and by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit are limitless. Put on, put off by faith.

And then, let the peace of God rule in your hearts. Let God’s peace be the referee in anything where you have to make a decision. “And let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly.” Put God’s word in the computer of your mind so the Holy Spirit can crank it out when it’s needed. “He will bring,” Jesus said, “all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

You can’t remember something you didn’t first forget! And so, you need to put God’s Word into the memory bank, into the computer, so the faithful Holy Spirit can bring it out. Well, we were talking about all those different things.

Now we go on into verse seventeen where he says, “Whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.”

Small thought here. Do you ever realize that words do something? Now if you give some thought to it you’ll realize, immediately, that is so. Someone greets you cordially, and encourages you, and gives a word of appreciation you feel better. The words actually did something to you.

Someone else criticized you or puts you down and you feel bad. The words did something to you. They discouraged you. So he says, “Whatever ye do in word or in deed; all in the name of…” and when we say ‘in the name of’ we mean ‘by the authority of’, ‘for the sake of’, ‘for the glory of’, and ‘at the explicit direction of’ your master, the Lord Jesus.

That’s what that means. “In the name of” means…not just a formula when you say, “In Jesus’ name.” I’m glad to pray in the name of the Lord Jesus. I don’t always do that because God knows my heart and formulas are not part of what God requires.

Isaiah chapter one says that God gets tired of formula praying. You wanna think about that, some of you who are so closely wedded to certain expressions. It’s not the expression itself that counts. It’s whether or not you and I are right with God and humbly bowing before Him and obeying His Word. That’s what Isaiah one teaches us.

Anyway, to pray ‘in the name of Jesus’ (I mean to say) is more than saying ‘in Jesus’ name’. Now, ordinarily, I end all my prayers that way. We pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I love to do that because that’s how I feel about Him.

The formula itself, however, is not nearly so important as your relationship with the person. What you do, and what is accomplished in what you say, and what is accomplished in the deeds that you perform are to be by the authority of, at the direction of, for the sake of, and for the ultimate glory of your Lord Jesus Christ.

That is the teaching of Colossians three-seventeen.
Now, he begins to work that out. What does it mean in life’s situations to do what you do in His name?

For wives, it’s to submit. To husbands, it’s to love and be not bitter. For children it’s to obey. For fathers it’s to provoke not your children to anger. Don’t be unreasonable with your kids. For servants it’s to be faithful, obedient, and serve your employer not with eye service; trying to make yourself look good, but with singleness of heart, fearing God. And, do it heartily- that’s our word ‘psyched up’, as for the Lord and not just for people, knowing the payday, the real payday is coming someday at the hands of your heavenly paymaster, the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Ye serve,” that’s [the] Greek word douleuó; serve like a slave, your master, your heavenly paymaster, is the Lord Jesus Christ. “Do all in the name.” And then for masters, for employers, we said it, give your servants that which is just and equal; a fair wage, and uh, remember, your boss, if you’re an employer, your boss is the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven.

Learn to pray for your employees; verse two chapter four. And, be on the job-watchfulness. Watch, in the same…watch in your praying. Interesting! I never realized this when my father told it to me when I was just a boy but he, evidently, had gotten a hold of this truth that we’re looking at now in Colossians four two. He says, “When you pray look for the answer to come. Be looking for the answer, boy, when you pray.”

Continue in prayer and watch in the same. That “watch” in your praying. Give God thanks for what He’s going to do because “…faith is the substance of things hoped for the essen (sic)…evidence of things not seen”

You haven’t got the answer yet, so far as seeing it or holding it in your hand, or enjoying it, uh, substantially, but in God’s sight the prayer is answered and you can thank Him for it. So, he says, if you’re an employer, be fair with your employees; verse one, pray for your employees and pray in faithfulness and expectant faith; verse two, learn the secret of intercession, “praying for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance” and so on.

All of these things are involved in the matter of, uh, being a good employer. Now, we’re back to 3:17. He says what you do, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. God zeros in the most sensitive part of my life if I am really sincere about wanting to do things for Jesus.

The evidence of your spiritual reality shows up; not when you’re looking holy on Sunday morning at church and singing “Holy, Holy, Holy”. That’s not the evidence of whether you’re really spiritual. The evidence of whether you’re really spiritual shows up when you’re under pressure in everyday living.

And for many a wife the hardest thing in the world is to, is to look at that word “submit”, and to learn to say, “What is your opinion, dear?”; asking their husband, or to follow his direction even though the wife, being smarter than he oftentimes, knows that it’s not too smart a leadership.

That is the point at which Jesus can be real, and the sweetness and beauty, and loveliness of Jesus Christ can show up in a wife’s life, see? So, if you wanna live everything you say and do for the Lord Jesus it comes right down to this most sensitive part of the husband-wife relationship: “How am I gonna react to my husband?”

And for the husband, you know, he says, “Love your wives and be not bitter against them.” That, that reservoir of resentment that many a man carries against his helpmeet because of slights, real or fancied, in previous years. And so, whenever there’s a big family discussion it may start over burned toast but it ends up with some of these bitter things coming up that have been in the person’s heart for years, or months and years. He says, “Don’t be bitter.” Let God fill your life with heavenly love.

Romans 5:5, “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given unto us.” See, the sensitive place where real submission to Christ shows up is in your relationship with each other there as husbands and wives.

“Children, obey.” That’s the hardest thing for junior to do is to obey. Remember Steve Paine’s little boy, many years ago, saying, “Do I have to do it?” and Mother said, “Yes, you have to.” He said, “Well, if I have to do it I’ll do it and I won’t make any fuss about it.”

That’s what God wants you and me to do. To obey gladly and, and completely, uh, as He gives us direction. And so on. All the way through there you have the, you have the sensitive part of life being affected by your relationship to Jesus Christ.

Now, of course, I can’t tell you what is involved in your life. Maybe it’s an employee-employer relationship. Maybe it’s a husband-wife relationship. Maybe it’s a parent-child relationship. Maybe it’s a neighbor to neighbor relationship. I don’t know what it is. But, the point at which things get a little scratchy is the point where Jesus wants to become real because He’s Lord of the situation. Make the Lord Jesus Lord of the situation, will you?

There are so many different areas in life where you and I need to make Christ Lord. If you look at Philippians two, He needs to be Lord of your feelings; verse one. And He needs to be Lord of your motives; verse three. And He needs to be Lord of your mind; verse five. And He needs to be Lord of your, uh, testimony; verse fifteen. And it (sic) needs, he needs to be Lord of your ministry; verse sixteen, and so on.

To make Christ Lord of every area in your life is what this passage means when he says, “Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.”

Small thought here before we sign off for today. Thanksgiving makes your praying real to you! God knows whether or not you’re sincere. But oftentimes you don’t feel very religious. Isn’t it true? If you’ll start praising the Lord, you’ll find that your praying goes much better and is more real to you as a result.

Dear Father, today, I pray that our lives may be so bound up with our loyalty to Jesus that our faith will show up as being the real thing every step along the way. In His name I pray, amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!