All Our Needs

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, dear friends. How are you? How in the world – I should say – are you?

That little corny greeting has established itself as kind of a trademark, hasn’t it? I can be talking to a crowd that is sitting there perfectly solemn, and maybe even a little rigor mortis, and then I’ll say, “Well, many of you are with me on the radio in the morning and I’ll give you this greeting, ‘How in the world are you?’” and they’ll all come alive. Strange, isn’t it, how we identify with certain phrases?

Well, this is your friend, Bob Cook, and I’m glad to be back with you. I’ve just been praying that God might put His power and truth and love in my voice, and first of all, in my heart as I speak with you.

People are hurting and, and wondering, and drifting, and needy. All sorts of needs present themselves and I have no way of knowing, of course, humanly what you need just now, but I’ve been praying that the Holy Spirit might take the Word of God and, and fit it to your personal need.

In any case, the Lord Jesus Christ is, Himself, the supply of all our need. Have you ever seen that truth in Philippians 4:19? When, when you think of your need, when I use, when I use the phrase, “The supply of your need,” you say, “Well, Brother Cook, I need money to pay the rent,” or “I need healing to heal my body,” or “I need guidance to help me make the right decision,” or “I need comfort to dry my tears and keep me from grieving.”

We think in terms of particulars, don’t we, when we use the word “need”? But Paul the apostle said, “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory.”

How does He do it? By Christ Jesus, and the person, the living person who dwells in your heart by faith, becomes Himself, the supplier of your need. Christ is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Wisdom is knowing what to do with what you know. Righteousness is the quality of being spontaneously good. Sanctification is the quality of being set apart for God to use – holy. And redemption is the quality of wrapping up all of life in the package of God’s redeeming grace and making it a continuing miracle, and all of that comes to you and to me every day by faith in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hallelujah for that!

So, I started out by saying, I pray that God may meet the specific needs of listeners, and I’ve no way of knowing what they are, but I know who can meet the need. Hallelujah! That’s different isn’t it?

Well, you and I’ve been walking around in the first chapter of 1 Timothy, and I’m lifting my old, big Bible over here in front of me now, so that I can look at 1 Timothy 1:17 now. Says Paul in his beautiful doxology, “Unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be glory and honor for ever and ever. Amen.”

I think the last time we got together we were just thinking about this matter of the King. He is the King of the universe; that means His law, His word is absolute. God Himself is the ultimate absolute, and you can see how, how much of an insult it must be to Almighty God when the philosophers of our day and the, the great minds (so-called) say “Well, there really aren’t any absolutes. Everything is relative. Nothing is really right or wrong, it only depends upon the circumstances in which you find yourself.” And as the Watergate people said, one of them, when someone asked, “Why did you do?” his answer came back: “Well, it seemed a good thing to do at the time.” The mark someone has set of an educated person is that, that he says, “at that time,” and “so far as I know.”

All things are relative to the human mind, but God, our God, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, if you know Him by faith in Jesus, Our heavenly Father is the ultimate absolute. He’s the King, and He’s eternal. There isn’t any beginning or any end. All of history is one grade present panorama to God.

“Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world,” and I think when we went off there the last time I was just reminding us that since you, many of you, belong to the Lord Jesus, you, you’ve committed yourself to Him as your Lord and your Savior. You are now part and parcel of what Almighty God is doing in His eternal plans. What you say what you do, where you go, and how you react to things, and what you plan, and what you decide, and the person you are – all of this is part of the eternal scheme of things. You, because of Jesus our Lord, are part of eternity. He’s the King eternal. Doesn’t that make a different cast for the, for the doing of every day’s work?

Somebody works for an insurance company, somebody manages a hotel, somebody is an auto mechanic, someone works on trucks, someone is a doctor, an expert in oncology, somebody is a salesman laying out the cards of your calls today, someone is an educator, someone is a nurse, someone is a surgeon, someone is an attorney, someone is a pastor or a missionary. Oh, all different kinds of someones, aren’t we? I haven’t begun, have I, to exhaust the list. I’ve left you out, haven’t I? Well, just be included, will you?

All of us today can be conscious that what we do in the office, or the shop, or the school room, or the home, or the operating room, or the street, or wherever it may be, that what we do and what we are is part of God’s eternal plan. And God, Philippians 2:13, says, “It is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” You are part of what God is doing today in New York, or Philadelphia, or Chicago, or Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, or Seattle, or Little Rock, or wherever, you know. You are part of what God is doing today.

That makes it so important, doesn’t it, that you and I walk yielded to our Lord. “Yield yourselves unto God,” says Paul, “as those that are alive from the dead and your members as instruments…” – the members of your body, that is – “… as instruments of righteousness unto God.” You see, the prayer that I need to learn to pray is, “Lord just use me as an instrument of Your righteousness today.” Give your mind consciously to God. Have you ever done that?

I think all of us are conscious of the stray thoughts that intrude upon us from time to time, especially when we try to pray. Isn’t it true that when you try to kneel down and pray and, and really seek God, that is the time when your mind seems to go off woolgathering the, the most? All the stray thoughts that seem to cluster around at that time. I think the, the enemy of our souls sees to it that those difficulties come. You can give your mind to God. “Every thought,” says Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.”

And so, if you’re troubled by thoughts that go astray, by faith you put your mind under the control of the King, and you become capable, let us say, of thinking eternal thoughts. Put your body under His control. Put your schedule under His control. Did you know that God knows where He wants you to go today and that interruptions oftentimes turn out to be His provision for great blessing?

I learned that years ago. When I was president of Youth for Christ and our office was in the loop of Chicago, we were only a few blocks away from either the, the limousine terminal for the airport or the railroad stations, when the passenger trains were still carrying a great many more passengers than perhaps they do today. And so it was that people who were in between planes or, or trains, knowing my address, would, would drop in and they’d say, “Well, Bob, I didn’t have anything to do for couple hours. Thought I’d come and see you,” and I would groan inwardly and say, “Why is it that people who have nothing to do have to do it in my office?” Because I’d have a dozen things lined up that I wanted to do.

Well, the Lord spoke to my heart about it and, and, and I began to realize that these were not interruptions per se, but they were God’s provision for something that He wanted to do either in my life or the other person’s life. And so it wasn’t very long until I learned to say, “Well, now, the Lord must have sent you here. Let’s have some prayer and find out what you’re here for.” We’d seek the Lord together, and the Brother would be, would be blessed in his own soul, go on his way rejoicing, and I would be helped, and in the process I would have avoided fussing about the matter.

Interruptions, beloved, in your schedule, can be part of God’s wonderful, sovereign provision. Give your schedule to God, give your mind to God, give your body to God, give your planning to God, give your schedule to God, give your feelings to God.

Now, I know just as you do that, that lecturing somebody doesn’t change the way he feels. Your heart is breaking over something, and you’re crying, and someone comes up and says, “Don’t feel bad. Don’t cry.” Does that help you feel any different? No. Probably makes you feel a little resentful because you think the individual doesn’t know how bad you’re hurting. Good advice doesn’t make me feel better.

The only thing that can make me feel different is a person. The presence of a loved person can make you feel different, and so it is that the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in your life, by the indwelling Holy Spirit, can make a difference in your feelings. Give your feelings to God by faith. Level with Him.

Dr. Pettingill used to say in his arch and shortcut kind of a manner, he said, “If you wake up feeling grouchy, don’t tell God, ‘Everything’s alright.’ Tell Him you’re grouchy.”

Well, alright. Tell God the truth about how you feel and then take by faith His gentle touch upon your emotions. You can receive, by faith, all that you need in the Lord Jesus Christ because God is King and He’s eternal and He makes you part of His eternal plans. Oh, that’s great!

Now, how this works out is that God’s purpose is to bring people to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus. “God is not willing,” Peter says, “that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” “The reason the second coming of Christ is delayed,” says Peter, “is that, that God is long-suffering.” He’s waiting and He’s working and His main goal is to gather others under His merciful wings in order that they might be saved. God’s main purpose is salvation. Do you believe that? Once having accepted that axiom, “God’s main purpose is salvation,” and then you see what you do and what you say can be fitted into that purpose, and you are part of His eternal plans. Great thought isn’t it? Let God use you to win somebody to Jesus today.

Dear Father today, fit us into Thy eternal plan, I pray, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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