Desiring His Will

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much and hello again radio friends. How in the world are you? Well, of course I wait for you to answer. I know a lot of you do.

Some of you say, “Don’t ask!”
One lady wrote me and she said, “When you ask how you are I just say “Oh yuck.” (laughs)

Well, you must…you must have a…a rough time of it in the mornings, dear lady. If you do, as it appears, look up and say, “Lord Jesus, I don’t feel too good but I want to serve You today. Be my Lord and see me through.” He will.

If you’ve struck a rough day ever- if you strike a rough time ever in the day, look up and say, “Lord I’m Yours. Help me now. See me through now. Walk with me now. Hold tight to me now.” And He will.

‘Yea, though I walk through the valley I will fear no evil,’ said the Psalmist, ‘for Thou art with me!’

We’re talking about being complete in Christ. ‘In Him all the treasures,’… the wisdom and knowledge… ‘in Him’…a daily walk of miracle… ‘rooted and built up in Him’… rooted means source of life; ‘built up’ means…means the architectural, uh, scheme of life. The development of life.

‘In Him all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.’ All you ever need to know about almighty God is found in your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in God’s inerrant, infallible word the Bible.

In Him you’re marked as His very own. That’s what we were talking about the last time we got together as indicated in verse 11 there.

Now, in verse 12 he said, “…buried with Him in baptism wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God Who hath raised Him from the dead.”

Buried with Him and risen with Him. The source of divine life is your identification with the Lord Jesus.

Wendell P. Loveless, my friend of many years, wrote, uh, a chorus many years ago.
“To me, to live is Christ. To me, to live is Christ.
I died with Him. I rose with Him. To me, to live is Christ.”
See, identification with the Lord Jesus is the secret of victorious and joyful Christian living. You take your place by faith with Him on the cross where He died for your sins and then by faith you accept all that He is right now for you! “Christ is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption.” The four great ‘need’ areas of life.
Wisdom is knowing what to do with what you know.

Righteousness is the quality of being spontaneously good and right.

Sanctification is the quality of living holy without being sanctimonious.
And redemption is the idea of wrapping up all of life and making it a continuing miracle for the glory of God.

Jesus does that for you as you trust Him by faith. He is all of that to you! And you can look up at any given moment and say, “Lord Jesus, be my wisdom.” And when you’re tempted you can say, “Lord Jesus, be my righteousness.” And when you feel so worldly and crass and carnal you can say, “Lord Jesus, be my sanctification.” And when life seems purposeless and you don’t seem to know which way you’re moving you can say, “Lord Jesus! Be my redemption! Make life make sense!” And He will. Oh, yes. He will.

So, this relationship with Christ gives you a new life although you are the same you.

Let me share a portion of a letter I got just the other day. This lady lives in…in Florida and she said, “My radio in my car broke about nine months ago. The only station I could ever get was the religious station nearby so, for something to listen to at six forty-five am on my way to work, 20 miles, I would leave the radio on for company. Then, I started to pay attention to your morning broadcasts. I’d begun going to church about five months earlier. I was being torn between ‘do I want to give up my present, fun-loving self and become a hum-drum boring Christian?’ It seems the questions I had about God and myself were never answered in church, but you seemed to know just what it was I was questioning and your sermon was on that very subject that day. I had my radio fixed and began listening to other stations, but about two weeks later it broke again! And, once again, by a miracle, the only station was that religious station. I took it as a sign from God, (laughs) I haven’t had my radio fixed, and Jesus is now a part of my life! Praise the Lord for you and your talks. The one that did it was when you said, “It is time to take a stand for yourself if you really believe in your Lord. Quit procrastinating and ask Jesus to become part of your life.” I asked Him to enter into my life. Well, nothing happened then. I didn’t feel any different but as the days went by, and I kept listening to you, it all began to make sense. I was now one of the people with a radiant inner-self because Jesus is part of me. My fun-loving self is now just beaming with the Lord. And as for thinking of a Christian life as being boring, well, if you could see the difference in my life you would know.” And so on.

Nice letter. Thanks, friend. I wanted to share that because, you see, that’s where it’s at. This whole matter of being complete in Christ. You’re identified with Him. He takes the person that is ‘you’- this lady speaks of herself as a ‘fun-loving’ person, and I imagine she’s full of, of humor and, and wit and sparkle and enjoys a hearty laugh and so on.
Well, uh, whatever kind of person you are. You may be born as a gloomy-Gus or you may be born as an ebullient, uh, vivacious, uh, on-the-jump kind of a person; we’re all built a little differently personality-wise.

And so, whatever kind of a person you are, the Lord Jesus Christ takes you, when you yield yourself to Him, you become identified with the Saviour who, who sanctifies and who makes radiant the human properties that you have. Simon Peter was a blurter. He always spoke, you know, spoke right out; whatever he thought. Notice the difference in him after Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit of God was given to the church and Simon Peter was now filled with the Holy Spirit.

He was still straightforward. He still spoke out. He was still the spokesman for the group. You know, read the gospels and you’ll see, you’ll find it saying, “Simon Peter answered and said…” Nobody ever asked him anything but he ‘answered and said’. (hearty chuckle)

He was the spokesman alright! But now, as the Spirit of God is controlling him, what he says has tremendous effect, glorifies the Lord Jesus, and brings thousands of others to trust the Saviour.

See, God isn’t going to change the kind of person you are. God is going to take your human qualities, beloved, and cause them to glorify Him. Isn’t that a beautiful concept?

Oh, I want that to happen more and more in my life. I just finished praying today that God would make these, these later years of my life the best! I want to be full of the Spirit of God. I want to be blessed with the blessing of the Lord. I want to spill over the truth of God. I want people to feel God’s love even in the tones of my voice. I want these to be years that are just marked by His presence.

But there, there’s the secret! Identification with the Lord Jesus. Buried with Him and risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God who raised Him from the dead! Because the Lord Jesus Christ is alive, ascended now to the right hand of God the Father, we have an advocate with the Father-Jesus Christ the Righteous, and Paul says, “There is one God and one Mediator between God and men; the man Christ Jesus.”

He mentions your name. “He ever liveth,” the writer to the Hebrews says, “He ever liveth to make intercession for them that come unto God by Him.”
And when you pray in the name of the Lord Jesus- that is to say, when you come to a holy God, claiming only the merits of your Saviour; that’s what that means. It’s not just a religious formula when you say ‘In Jesus’ name’.
We’re not formula people. But when you pray, claiming only the merits and the righteousness of your wonderful Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; when you come to God the Father through Him then you’re accepted in the beloved, you’re complete in Him, and you’re identified with Him, and you share in His eternal life!

All yours! By faith- he (Paul) says the faith of the operation of God.
See, the miracle of the Christian life is not you trying to act like a Christian. The miracle of the Christian life is that almighty God is walking in your shoes, operating through your life. Isn’t that great?
When someone is, is designated by a government to do some kind of special, sensitive work we call him or her an “Operative”. What does that mean?
That person is doing what the government wants done and it is being done through a given human being. Now Paul says, “Risen with Him, through the faith of the operation of God.”

When you latch onto God by faith, and you trust the Lord Jesus to be to you all that He can be: Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification and Redemption. “All and in all,” as Paul says later on in Colossians. When you trust that way, you then become part of what God is doing in the world right now!
You’re God’s operative. God is working in you. Philippians two-thirteen: “For it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”

God takes care of the two problems of human nature. One is; you don’t want to do the right thing a lot of times. The ‘will’ to do right is not always there.

“It is God that worketh in you, both to will,” he said, and then oftentimes, when you want to do the right thing you can’t or you don’t. And so, God takes care of that as well, “It is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do.”

God will enable you to do the right thing anytime you want Him to.
The next time you know that there is something you ought to do or, conversely, something you ought not to do, but you find your own human willpower in opposition to that-have you been in a place like that? ‘I know I should but I just don’t want to.’- the next time you face a situation like that, look up and say, “Blessed Lord, fulfill in me that word that says ‘It is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure.’ Make me want Your will and then help me to do it in this matter!”
Be specific, don’t just pray in generalities and say, “Lord, bless me.” Be specific! Say, “God, I know I should do this but I don’t want to and I’m willing for You to change my will so that I’ll want to do Your will, and then help me do it!”

You pray along that line, my friend, and you’ll be amazed at what God will do in answer to prayer.

Complete in Him means He is walking in your shoes. Isn’t that good?
Then he said, “You, being dead in your sins, hath He quickened together with Christ. Complete in Christ means a new source of life. Quickening.

What needs to be ‘quickened’? Something that’s dead. Quickened means ‘make alive’. And so, he says, “He’s quickened you.” Now, there are areas in, in poor, fallen, sinful human nature and all of us have that. We’re sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. Sin came into the world: “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned…”

We have a sin nature. Now, the problem is what do we do about it? Well, Paul says, in Ephesians two, “You hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in times past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.”

There is a law of sin and death. Paul talks about it in Romans eight. There is a law of sin and death. The more you sin the more you will sin and the more you sin the..the…the deader you get, so to speak, if one could use that incongruous kind of figure of speech.

But he says, “You hath He quickened.” Complete in Christ means you have His life!

“Christ in you, the hope of glory.” “Nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me,” said Paul.

Oh! His life; keeping you spiritually alive today.

Enjoy it! Enjoy it! And live for Him.

Dear heavenly Father, today, may the life of the Lord Jesus be real in us. I ask in His name, amen.

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