Christian Consistency
If we’re going to have our children touched by the Savior, we have to have a life that’s real with Him.
Transcript
Alright thank you very much, and hello again 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, so glad to be back with you. Grateful for those who make it possible for me, day by day, to share God’s precious, inspired, inerrant, infallible, eternal Word, the Bible with you. So, is everything Alright at your house? I trust so. Now, somebody listening to me had to answer in a negative, like one lady said, “When you ask, ‘How in the world are you?’, I say, ‘Don’t ask’”. If you’ve struck a rough day beloved, remember God never promised that every day would be coming up roses. Jesus our blessed Lord said, “In the world ye shall have persecution, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world”. God’s plan is not for you and for me to run away from trouble and to escape it, but to go through it triumphantly, and so Paul says in second Corinthians 2:14, “Now, thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the fragrance of His knowledge by us in every place”. When you’re under pressure, God is making perfume out of your life. So if you’re under pressure today, just remember, God’s going to bring you through, not just into but through, “When thou passest through the waters they shall not overflow thee”.
Someone said to me yesterday, this of course will not be heard by you for some weeks, but for me it was, it was yesterday. Said his job is disappearing and he’s being phased out and all of his preparation for a professional life is seemingly going for naught and he can’t understand it. Well I had just finished saying to that congregation, when circumstances are at their worst you have the right to assume that God is planning a much better deal for you, and that is always true beloved. If you are under pressure this minute, while I’m talking with you, just remember God has plans for you that are better than you could ever ask for. Trust Him, trust Him, trust your blessed Lord your bring you through. Well, three minutes have gone and maybe somebody needed that, so that’s why I said it. I just pray that every day what I have to say to you may be full of God’s love and wisdom and power and may fit your particular need. If that happens well, it’s an answer to prayer.
We were looking at Mark weren’t we, Mark chapter 10, where they brought young children to the Lord Jesus, that He should touch them. His disciples rebuked those that brought them, said, get on out of here, you’re in the way. The mark of professional religion is that it cannot stand to be interrupted in its routines. You can mark that one down in the notebook of your mind because it’s absolutely true. The mark of professionalism in religion is that it is wedded to routine and it cannot stand to be interrupted. I had to learn long ago that interruptions often times are God’s provision for blessing.
When I was president of Youth for Christ International, back in the good old days we say, it would be in the late 40s and 50s, our office for awhile was in the loop of Chicago on Monroe Street. We rented a large, second floor loft, it was actually was one wide open space of many hundreds of square feet, and we put some portable partitions around so we could create offices, and that was headquarters for awhile. Well, 220 W. Monroe was very near to the Union Depot. The trains were still running some of them, and it was also just a couple blocks away from the terminus of the airport buses, at the Powerhouse Hotel. So either way, people who had a few hours to kill often times decided to kill it, you guessed it, in my office. They’d come in and say, “Oh Bob, I had a couple hours to kill, thought I’d come and see you”. I used to grumble in my heart and say, “Oh God, people who have nothing to do come and do it in my office”. The Lord spoke to me one day about it and said, I’m sending these people here to you for my purposes, and so it wasn’t long before I adopted the procedure of praying with people as soon as I decently could after they arrived, just to find out why the Lord it sent them, and we had some, some very precious experiences in that regard.
Interruptions, don’t fight them. Recognize interruptions to your schedule as part of God’s provision for something fresh and new by way of blessing, then you won’t get frustrated and upset. The mark of professionalism and religion is that it’s wedded to routine, so the disciple said, come on you’re in the way, get on out here with those little kids. But, the Lord Jesus, it says “He was much displeased”. This is one of the few places where the Holy Bible records the fact that the Lord Jesus was upset about things, “He was much displeased”, and He said, “Suffer”, that means allow, “the little children to come unto Me and forbid them not, for of such little children is the kingdom of God. Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as little child does, he shall not enter therein”.
Stop here long enough to ask the question, what did He mean when He said, “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child does”? What did He mean? Well, take a look at that little child. Doesn’t know very much, but it knows enough to trust and to believe what it’s told. You tell little child that the moon is made of green cheese, and for him or her that’s so because you said it. Trust, simplicity, unmixed motives, the motives of a little child are right straight out there on the surface, aren’t they? Trust, simplicity, unmixed motives, and the willingness to commit himself or herself to the person involved, be it parent or friend or whatever.
You come to the Lord Jesus, He wants you to have unmixed motives, He wants you to be simple, direct and honest. Honesty before God is one of the great qualities that make for spiritual progress. When you learn to be honest with God, you’ve taken the first, giant step toward spiritual progress. Simplicity, honesty, unmixed motives, and the willingness to trust one’s self to the other. You come to Jesus. Well, the song said, “I came to Jesus as I was, weary and worn and sad, I found in Him a resting place and He has made me glad.” “Just as I am”, the songwriter said, “without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, and that Thou bidst me come to Thee, oh Lamb of God, just as I am.” Poor, wretched, blind, it’s a reference to Revelation chapter 3 as you know, “Poor, wretched, blind, sight, riches, healing of the mind is all I need in Thee to find, Oh Lamb of God I come”.
Come like a little child. Don’t stumble over the gospel because you want to make it complex. Sin complicates, salvation simplifies. Well He said, “’Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child does, he shall not enter therein’, and He took them up in His arms, put His hands upon them, and blessed them”. Oh, wouldn’t you have liked to be one of those little children in the arms of the Savior? Feeling the touch of His tender hand upon your head? That would be wonderful. I often wonder what happened to those youngsters. The stuff of a good novel would probably be to follow through their lives after the transforming touch. Some of you Christian novelists might think about that, see what you come up with. Certainly they could never be quite the same again after He touched them.
Now, I want to spend a moment or two with you meditating on this matter of the touch of God upon a young life. You want to think about that with me? How do you achieve this? We won’t get through with it in this broadcast, but we can pick it up then the next time we get together, perhaps. How do you achieve this matter of the touch of the Lord? I told you the other day of the pastoral call I made where the lady came to the door after some delay, apologizing for the delay and saying, “We just didn’t want to stop because we were practicing the presence of our Lord”. She was praying with her little three-year-old. Little dolly of a girl, standing there smiling because she had enjoyed being in the presence of the Savior. I never forgot that encounter. I still have the picture of it in the, in the museum of my memory and I think of that, “We were practicing the presence of our Lord”.
Well, how do you achieve this? Number one, your own personal walk with the Lord is the starter. There is no possibility of deceiving a child over a long period of time. Children’s perceptions are not organized generally, but they are exceedingly sharp. If you and I are not the real thing, we’re not genuine in our spiritual life, the child picks that up immediately. You can’t expect, I think one of the great problems in Christian families today where mothers and fathers agonize over straying boys and girls that, that just break their hearts, one of the great problems is that these kids have never learned the reality of Christ in the home, because for them, mother and daddy were religious, but it was something that really wasn’t all that real. Now, it that hurts, maybe it should hurt.
You and I if we’re going to have our children touched by the Savior, we have to have a life that’s real with Him, don’t we? Yes, we do. And that means honesty before God, that means a life that is consistent, that means sin that is promptly confessed and forsaken, that means a humble walk before God, day by day, that means a prayer life that is real and regular and that gets answers, that means an engagement with the Word of God regularly, so that you’re feeding on the Word, that means a willingness to serve in any capacity you are asked in God’s work. Consistent Christian praying and living is the starter. Well, I have to ask myself that question, how consistent am I? What do my kids see? Well they’re grown now, have their own families, but the grandchildren are coming along and the question that remains for parents and grandparents, what do the kids see and do they see Jesus in you and me? Something to think about, isn’t it?
Dear Father today, oh may our spiritual life be real so that those whom we love the most may end up loving Jesus the most, 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!
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