A New Day Everyday

Get something fresh from the Lord every day from His Word.


Scripture: Mark 9, 1 Peter 2

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Yes, that little greeting establishes the fact that this is indeed your friend, Dr. Cook, and I’m glad to be back with you. I woke up feeling great. Isn’t it nice to wake up feeling just wonderful? Some folk never have that luxury, I know. Some of you every waking moment, your body is wracked with pain. Some have said, after 70 if you don’t hurt somewhere, you’re dead, and I know what it is to hurt as well, but I feel great today. Hallelujah, and the grace of God is so real and the love of God just pours over my heart until my eyes fill with tears and my heart fills up with a glad hallelujah. So grateful for Jesus and for the love of God and I’m grateful also for you, beloved friend, because you’re being there, listening, on the listening end of the radio ministry. Well that makes it possible for me to share with you, some things from the Word of God, which is precisely what I want to do now.

I’m just finishing up some thoughts in the last verse of Mark chapter 9. He said, “Have salt in yourselves”. The last time we got together I mentioned to you that the way to start that experience of reality, the reality of God in your life, is to know the Lord Jesus personally as your Lord and Savior. The way to do that is to follow God’s procedure. He’s written it very, very plainly. He says, receive Him and talk to Him, and ask Him in, and then trust Him to do what His name means. “For whosoever shall call on the Lord shall be saved”. There’s another passage, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth, Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved”. Same thing, talk to Him, confess Him as your Lord, ask Him to be Lord and Savior and then trust Him down deep in your heart. That’s where it’s at. When that happens, you’ve taken the first step towards spiritual reality.

What else? Well, many people never get beyond that. You ask them for a word of testimony, say, “Brother so and so, give us a word of testimony”. He’ll stand up and say, “Well, 30 years ago, as a lad, I trusted the Lord Jesus as my Savior and He’s never failed me”, and he’ll sit down and feel quite satisfied with himself because he’s told you something that happened three decades ago. That’s good but see, it doesn’t give any evidence of spiritual vitality for today. Can’t depend upon what happened three decades ago.

This husband-and-wife the story goes, were in a marriage counselor’s office and the marriage counselor had been told by the lady that the husband never showed any love. Remember that story? And so, the counselor turned to the old man, he said, “Have you ever told your wife that you loved her”? He answered with some asperity, he said, “I told her I loved her 40 years ago and if I ever change my mind I’ll let her know”. Well, that isn’t good enough, is it? Isn’t good enough in human relationships and it isn’t good enough in your relationship with the Savior. You need to have an up-to-date experience, today with your Lord.

How do you do that? I think it starts with the Word of God. I noticed that there are many professing Christians whose Bibles tend to gather dust, and you don’t see them feeding on the Word of God, you don’t hear them talking about something precious that the Lord gave them this morning in their morning devotions. And so, I come back to what Stephen, Dr. Stephen Olford taught me many years ago, back in the early 1940s when I first met him on his first, I think it was his first trip over to the U.S. as a young preacher, and I asked him how he managed to feed, to sustain his own soul given a busy traveling schedule, such as he had. He said, “Well”, he said, “I’ve learned certain things to do. Number one, stick with a portion of Scripture, whether it’s a few verses or a chapter or whatever, stick with a given portion of Scripture until God says something to you from that portion”. Not a sermon outline now preachers, don’t be sermonizing. Listen for God’s voice to you. Stick with the passage until it says something to you.

Second, write that down or if you can’t write it, any school teacher knows you haven’t got it, so write it down in a blank book, notebook or something. Write down what God said to you from that passage.

Third, pray it back to God, ‘This Lord is what Thou hath said to me’, Pray it back to God until your heart gets warm and tender, and your eyes are wet with the realization that God actually spoke to you from His Word that day.A precious experience, I guarantee you. And, fourth, share that with someone, as soon as you can, that very day. Like shooting a shotgun is a repercussive affect, when you share the Word of God you give it out to someone else, but it also has what we call, a kick, and makes an impact in your own soul at the same time.

Get something fresh from the Lord every day from His Word. Pray it back to God until your heart is hot with the truth, then share it with somebody else. That’s what Stephen Olford told me, many years ago, I wrote it down in a book that is going around the world. A little book called, “Now That I Believe”, and that has been of help I’m sure, to many other people, and because of his thoughtfulness in telling me how he keeps his own soul fresh, salty that is, in the Word.

See, if you neglect God’s Word, you starve your own soul. If you neglect God’s Word, your soul gets dusty, musty, moldy, dirty, soiled. We talk about, “The washing of water by the Word”, that’s what Paul called it. The washing of water by the Word. The Word of God is bread, the bread of life. It’s also according to what the Bible says in the words of imagery, “It’s a hammer of fire and it’s sharper than any two edged sword” the writer to the Hebrew says. It’s an effective instrument and it’s inspired of God. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, “It’s God breathed”, Paul says. Thoroughly furnished unto all good works, readied for everything good that want God wants you to do.

Have you ever gone through a day and all of a sudden you realize there was something you ought to do, but you didn’t feel ready for it? A good something or other that you ought to do or say, but you weren’t ready? You remember that? Well, I think it’s happened to all of us. Now, the way to be ready for good things that God wants you to do, is to have your soul tuned up by the Word by the Word of God, so that you are ready. I’ll go back to that dream that I mentioned to you. I woke up feeling these thoughts in my mind. The essence of success is to be ready, not to react. See, a thermometer reacts, a thermostat controls. You and I need to be more like the thermostat that can control the temperature, than the thermometer the just reacts to it.

Well, the Word of God. Feed on it, pray it back those things that God’s Holy Spirit whispers to your heart, pray them back to God until your own heart is warm and tender, and your eyes have been moistened with tears of gratitude, and you know that God has spoken to you and you’ve spoken to Him about it and you’re ready Him, for every good work. Paul goes on say, “If children and heirs, joint heirs with Christ”, that’s the first thing.

Second, have a daily meeting with your Lord in the Word. You cheat yourself and you make yourself a refugee, like an accident going somewhere to happen, if you neglect the Word of God.

So then what? “Have salt in yourselves”. Then what? Work at the idea of communicating all of the above, that experience with Christ, that truth from the Word, work at the idea of communicating that to people in terms that are effective and understandable. “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man”, Paul says. Grace in your words, salt in your ideas. “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt”.

Gracious words. They said of the Lord Jesus, “They marveled at the gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth”. Always with grace. What does it mean to have speech with grace? Number one, it’s words that come from a heart that knows how much God had to forgive you. You have tasted the grace of God. “If so, be ye have tasted”, says Peter in his first epistle chapter 2, “so be that ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious”. Have you been to Calvary? Have you hit bottom, as Paul Rader used to say on repentance? Have you come to a place where you knew that only Jesus and His saving grace were a hope for you? Have you tasted the grace of God? Then let your words portray that. There is no place for proud words. There is no place for biting, critical words. There is no place for slanderous words. There is no place for gossipy words. There is no place for unclean words. There is no place even for the slang that is modernized form of profanity. No place for that kind of words if you’re going to have gracious words.

Work at communicating what God has said and done in your life, with God’s grace, and then do it intelligently. “Grace seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man”. If you’re talking to a garage mechanic, you talk in terms he understands, tools and repairs of all that. If you’re talking to a farmer, you use terms he understands, seed and harvest and growth, and all that. Jesus did that, didn’t He? When he spoke to the crowds, He used those illustrations of seed and farming and birds and flowers. When He spoke to other crowds, He included different concepts like coinage and profit, and all the rest. Our Lord Jesus spoke in terms that people understood. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to lower yourself to the language of the street. It doesn’t mean that if you’re going to talk to folk in the slums, in Greenwich Village, or wherever, that you have to adapt their street, gutter language. I used to say to my students, “You don’t have to eat garbage, to know that it is garbage”. You don’t have to be smeared with the world’s dirt, in order to communicate with them, but you do have to speak in terms of concepts they understand, “Seasoned with salt”.

Well that’s all for this time. I trust it’s been of help to someone. The Lord just laid it on my heart to share with you, my beloved friend.

Dear Father today, may we be people whose lives are full of the reality of Christ, for God’s glory, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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



Thank you for supporting this ministry. While this transcription is presented to you free-of-charge, it does cost to prepare for distribution. We appreciate any financial donations to help keep Walk With The King broadcasts and materials free and available to all.

To help support this ministry's work, please click here to make a tax-deductible donation.

Thank you for listening to Walk With The King and have a blessed day.

All rights reserved, Walk With The King, Inc.