Every Day Trusting

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Everything Alright at your house? Yea, of course I wait for you to answer, you know that! (laughs) Many of you do, don’t you? Bless your heart. We’re together, even though separated by many miles, but this modern miracle of radio and the kindness of God’s people who provide it, make it possible for me to be with you there at the breakfast table or at the steering wheel of your car or even before you awake-some of you are just drowsily awaking because the broadcast comes on very early where you are. Whatever it may be, oh I’m so glad that you and I belong in the love and friendship that there is in Jesus Christ. It’s great isn’t it? Yes, it is.

We’ve been walking around in God’s Word, in this concept of the goodness, “Surely goodness, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”. Had you stopped to think of the fact that although you may be a believer you still are a candidate for God’s mercy? “Not according to our righteousness, works of righteousness, we have done”, Paul said, “but according to His mercy He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly”, Paul says in second Corinthians. “As we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not”.

You and I, beloved, are a candidate for God’s mercy and what a comfort it is to my heart, to realize that that mercy is there, available, 24 hours of the day and night. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me”. It is of the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed. His faithfulness, His love and His long-suffering and His loving kindness. God’s mercy is part of His moment by moment provision. And oh how comforting that is when, now and then, you’ve fallen, you’ve stumbled, you’ve blown it, as we say, then you look back ruefully upon the circumstances just behind you and you say, “Well, I failed again”. God’s mercy is there. “His mercy endureth forever”, says the psalmist.

There’s one psalm in every verse of which that refrain occurs, you remember that? “The Lord is good., His mercy endures forever”, Psalm 106 starts out that way, Psalm 107 starts out that way, “His mercy endureth forever”.
Oh thank God for His mercy. Now I’m talking to somebody who is discouraged today, discouraged with yourself or with members of your family or with your coworkers on the job or with life itself. Life seems to have closed in on you, and every place you look there seems to be a closed door and people don’t seem to understand, and the fact is that they don’t really understand, because they don’t live inside of your skin. They can’t really feel like you do, because the circumstances don’t hit them the same way as they attack your own life.

And you’re discouraged and you’re down and you’re about to give up, and I just want to remind you that you are in the hands of a merciful God. He isn’t about to drop you now, He hasn’t brought you this far to drop you now, and He’s going to take care of you.

A friend of mine wrote in a book of his, that he and his wife had prayed for a straying daughter for years. They had lectured her, they had exhorted her, they had brought her to meetings and conferences, and had people pray for her and all of that, and she still, still was so far from trusting God. So much so, that now in a futile attempt at taking her life, she swallowed a number of the tablets of some medication or other which, while not being fatal, brought her into a comatose condition where she was more or less like a vegetable, and there she lay in the hospital.

Nothing seemed to work, and oh, how they prayed and cried. Finally he says in this book that he wrote, finally he said, “My wife and I just gave up”, he said, “Lord, we just plead for your mercy, that’s all. Just have mercy”, and it seemed as though two things happened. One, God gave peace to their own hearts, these aching-hearted parents, and the second thing is the situation began to turn around, physically, and then spiritually.

Oh, I’ve gone through this from time to time, and I guess some of you have too, if you have lived a while. You get to the end of yourself and every pathway that you can pick out seems to end in frustration, every method that you may choose seems to fail-you cannot for the life of you see how your way through the problem that faces you, and all you can do is just to cry and say, “Lord, have mercy on us”. And you know something? He does, He does. He’ll not fail you. He’s there listening, waiting, watching, holding on, loving, guiding, disciplining, and doing what is His perfect will in your life.

Don’t let go today, don’t give up, don’t give up on yourself and don’t give up on loved ones around you, and don’t give up on God. He’s merciful, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me”. Mercy is part of the way God works when you let Him. Now, if you refuse to do His will, if you don’t want Him in your life then nobody can help you.

Walter Columbach was a blind evangelist who ministered in one of our churches many years ago, now with the Lord a good many years; an automobile accident took his life as he stood out in the highway while someone was changing a tire, and a car came and hit him and killed him. But while he lived he was a great evangelist. Memorized the entire New Testament and much of the old, and though blind he would quote his own scriptures and preach with power.

I remember a phrase he used to use repeatedly, “If you don’t want to be different, nobody can help you, but if you DO want to be different, Jesus can help you”. It’s that simple isn’t it? Goodness and mercy, mercy, “There was great and grace was free. Pardon, there was multiplied to me, there my burden soul found liberty at Calvary,” and when you bow at the pierced feet of the Lord Jesus, you’ll find that God is indeed merciful.

Now, somebody listening, listen-you’re in an impossible situation, you’re just about either to blow up or give up or both. Don’t do it. Trust God for His mercy instead, will you? Then drop me a postcard and tell me about it, and we’ll rejoice together. He said, “Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”. I just want to stop here long enough to remind you that we do have different days, but that God’s mercy is always there, available.

If this next thought shocks you, well let it. Did you know that you have as much need of God’s mercy when you’re happy, as when you’re sad? Did you know that you have as much need of the transforming grace of God when everything is going well, as you do when things are tough and you have to cry out for help? Yes, you do, because dear friend, it takes a miracle of the grace of God to make you and make me acceptable to God, even at our best. Even at our best, sin has ruined our usefulness to God, unless that miracle of His transforming grace and His outpoured goodness and mercy are operative in our lives all the days.

Would you try something? Would you try looking heaven-ward a little more often during days when you’re happy? Now when things are going wrong, it’s quite the easy for you and for me to pray, because we have been taught to do that, and it’s part of the way we live, but would you try this? Suppose you’re into a day where everything is right. Just look up and ask God to touch you specially that day and He’ll make the rightness of that day to shine with His own radiance and it’ll be a much better day, because of the mercy and the goodness of God in your life. You need God all the days of your life.

David Morkan told me one time that he was driving alone across great stretches of the Northwest, out in Wyoming or somewhere, Montana or Wyoming or one of those states where you have a good many miles in between towns and the occasional gas station it seems to be a millennium away. He was driving alone across these vast stretches of country where nobody was there, but he felt good and happy and he was thinking about the verse, “Sing unto the Lord a new song”- that was the verse he was meditating on- and he thought to himself, “I never sang to God, I’m going to do it”.

And so he said, “I rolled the window down as I drove, and I said out the window, ‘God, I’m going to sing this one for you’”, and he sang an old hymn of worship and praise to his Lord. Sing to the Lord. He asked for God’s presence and blessing, on a day when everything was going well, but he recognized his need of the Lord and he worshiped the God of his salvation. Well that’s what we’re getting at, all the days of my life.

Now, the other side of it is this; when the clouds are darkening and things don’t go right, we have a tendency to wonder whether God has forgotten us. I get letters from people who say this and this and this has happened, all these terrible things that have happened- has God forgotten me or is He punishing me for mistakes I’ve made? No, neither of the above. He hasn’t forgotten you and He isn’t punishing you.

Now, some circumstances in life have irrevocable results. If you jump out of the 13th story of a skyscraper, you’re going to hit the ground, whether or not you want to. Certain actions do have results, you understand that, and you can’t blame that on God. You can’t say, “Well, God forgot me”, or, “God is mad at me”, or, “God is punishing me and that’s why this happened”. No, it happened because of what we did.

The fact is however, that God doesn’t forget and He doesn’t forsake. The Bible says, “For he hath said, ‘I will never leave thee nor forsake thee’”, so that we may boldly say, “The Lord is my helper and I will not fear what man shall do unto me”.

So all the days means including the day when nothing seems to be going right. I have to tell you it’s a great comfort to me when we strike a day like that. It’s a great comfort to me to look up and say, “Lord, I don’t like it, but I just pray that you’ll see me through it with triumph and blessing, see me through this with the blessing of the Lord”. Somehow, He takes the sting out of words that might otherwise be hurtful and bitter, as you hear them addressed to you. Somehow He takes the fear out of circumstances that are gloomy and foreboding, and His Presence makes it all alright.

Dear Father today, walk with us, step by step, through all of the day, in Jesus’ name I pray this, Amen.

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