Focus On The Facts

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much, nice to be put on the air with a friendly voice, and radio friends, how are you today? Are you doing alright? I trust so. I am just delighted for the privilege of sharing the Word of God with you, because it blesses me while I share it with you and so I’m just a little bit selfish, I must admit, in wanting, oh, just longing to get at these radio broadcasts, day by day with you and the Word of God. You never need to tell a person that he’s saved. Would you remember that? You never need to tell a person that he’s saved, God the Holy Spirit will do that. If you have to tell a person that he’s been saved there is some reasonable shadow of doubt as to whether anything has really happened in his life.

Notice Acts 15:8, “God which knoweth the hearts bore them the Gentiles witness giving them the Holy Ghost even as he did unto us.” Paul said, “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” So that the incoming of the Holy Spirit of God occurs at conversion. Now, the in filling of the Spirit of God may indeed be subsequent to your conversion, it may take some time until you are willing to open by faith every room in your heart house and allow the Holy Spirit of God to take control and thus arrive at that point where you can say with complete honesty, “I thank thee that thou hast filled me with thy Holy Spirit.” But the Spirit of God comes in to dwell in your life and to bear witness that you are a child of God, when you are saved, when you are converted, when you trust the Lord Jesus as your savior. Paul said that, “The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirits that we are the children of God and if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. If so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. We’ve not received the spirit of bondage but the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, father.”

That word Abba is a biblical rendition of what we would call papa. Hubert Mitchell, my missionary friend, often says, “Papa God.” Abba Father. Now, the Holy Spirit comes in, you see, to do that for you and for me, to tell us that we belong, to tell us that we belong, isn’t that great? We have received not the spirit of the world but the spirit which is of God that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Paul says in another place, “God hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father.” Oh, the spirit of belonging, the spirit of belonging, the Holy Spirit of God is given to you when you trust the Lord Jesus Christ. Galatians 4:6 is the verse I was looking for, “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts crying, Abba, Father.” Papa God. Oh, to belong, to belong to the heavenly family, and to know God as my very own Heavenly Father, what a lovely, wonderful thing, that is. “And so God which knoweth the heart,” this is Acts 15:8, “Bore them,” the Gentiles, “Witness, giving them the Gentiles the Holy Ghost even as he did unto us, us Jews. And he put no difference between us and them purifying their hearts by faith.”

I said as we began these moments, you don’t really need to tell a person that he’s saved, for once that heart has really opened up to the Lord Jesus Christ by faith and the Holy Spirit of God has come in to dwell in that life, he the Holy Spirit puts the baby cry of life into the believer’s heart. Some of you have witnessed the birth of a baby, and do you know how that little baby as he first greets the light of day; he’s not breathing, and so the doctor grasps him by those two little ankles, and gives him a very smart whack on his southern exposure and the shock causes him to draw breath and emit a lusty cry, and it is that baby cry that is so welcome in the delivery room, isn’t it? Now, ladies and gentlemen, there is a perfect parallel in spiritual matters. When the blessed Spirit of God enters into your life you are as Jesus said “born again” and one of the evidences that you are alive is the cry of your heart to God, reaching out for God, belonging to God, yearning for the love and sustenance and nourishment and warmth and compassion of God. Now, who does that? The Holy Spirit of God within you produces that reaction.

Now, not everybody reacts the same way, because we’re built differently in our emotional set up in our lives. Some people are quite self-contained, others are quite volatile and overflow and spill over at the slightest change of emotional weather, so we don’t expect everybody to react in the same way, do we? But we can know that every human being can down deep in his heart experience and know the presence of the Holy Spirit of God. You can know this just as much as you can know anything else, because it’s a personal experience with the Lord. God knows your heart, he knows when you’ve said yes to him, he knows when you’ve stopped fighting him, he knows when the war is over, he knows when you’ve confessed that last sin that stood between you and him, and he knows therefore, when you have really yielded to him. And at that point, the Holy Spirit of God whispers assurance to your heart. Now, most certainly when you’re dealing with someone and trying to help him trust the Lord Jesus, you can refer to some of the passages in the Word of God which bring assurance of salvation to people’s hearts.

I learned this from a preacher friend of mine years ago. He told in my hearing of having dealt with a GI who was about to be shipped overseas and who felt pretty upset about it as a matter of fact, and this preacher friend of mine came wandering through the barracks one day and found this soldier seated on his army cot, dejected and upset. And I won’t take the time to tell all of the story, although it’s an extremely interesting human interest kind of story, but the fact was that this young man had been praying, he prayed so hard that he wore the edges of his army boots, the edge of the toe there, he wore that down as he scraped them along the floor. He prayed so long, stayed so long on his knees that he had developed calluses on his knees. He had religious mottos and pictures and a crucifix up on the wall by his bed, because in groping for anything that might help him he had simply bought up whatever he could find in the religious bookstore, and he had all these things around him and yet he was still quite upset over the prospect of being shipped overseas and the uncertainties that lay before him at that point.

Now, my friend referred him simply to John 1:12 which reads, “But as many as received him,” that’s Christ, “But as many as received Christ to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name which were born not of blood nor of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God.” Born again, how? By receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. My friend pointed out to this GI that there are two things God asks you to do, he asks you to receive the Lord Jesus as a wonderful, lovely person into your life, and then he asks you to trust the Lord Jesus to do what his name means. His name is Jesus and that name means savior. In the old days, they used to name people after what they did and so there’s today, Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Banker and Mr. Baker, and my name is Mr. Cook. And yeah, they used to name people after what they did. Now, the Lord Jesus, his name is savior. And so if you trust him you’ll trust him to do what his name means, that is to save you.

And so my friend pointed this out to the young man. And he said, “Now, do you want to talk to Jesus and invite him into your life?” “Yes,” he thought he would. So they got down on their knees, there in the barracks beside the army cot and this young man said to the Lord Jesus that he did want to invite him into his heart, that he did want him to forgive all his sins and that he did want him to be his own savior. He was going to trust him to do what his name means, to save him, and he said, “Amen,” and that was that. Well now, what are you going to do? Are you gonna say, “Okay, buddy, you did it so you’re saved.” Oh, no. I say I learned this technique from my friend who said, “We sat down again and I opened the Word of God to John 1:12 and I turned the Bible upside down so the print was facing the young man and I said, ‘Now, would you read that verse for me once out loud?’ And the young man read it, ‘But as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.'”

Now, my friend said to him, “Can you find yourself in that verse, anywhere? Are you in there?” The boy looked at him with perplexity and said, “No, sir. I don’t think I do.” Well, he said, “Would you read it again out loud?” And he said, “But as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God even to them that believe… ” and he stopped. He said, “Yes, sir, I’m in there. I received him and I believed him. I’m in there.” He said, “I’m not scared anymore.” And his face lit up with a heavenly light. You don’t have to tell people they’re saved, the Holy Spirit of God will do it. As they look at God’s word, and if they have truly committed themselves to the savior they’ll know and you’ll know because it’s real. It’s great, isn’t it?

Now our time is nearly gone and I do want to emphasize in these last few seconds, what I have said to you. I wanna nail it down, if I may. Number one, when you face a problem, start with the facts, what has God been doing and saying. This will form a kind of an anchor for your thinking, it will form a navigational bearing point, so to speak, we’ll change the figure of speech in a minute, it’ll form a navigational bearing point for the navigation of your reasoning about this problem. What has God been doing? What has God been saying? You can start solving your problems that way. Second, leadership comes from tying yourself to what God has been doing. Leadership comes from tying yourself to what God has been doing. Are you willing to risk anything on God? You better settle that today. Third, assurance of salvation is something you never need to produce. God will do it by his blessed Holy Spirit as you lead people into the Word and into complete surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s great truth, isn’t it? Yes, it is. Well, let’s pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, apply Thy truth to our hearts this day, we ask in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen, Amen. God bless you, my dear friend, all the way. That’s all for now.

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