Focused

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear 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. I look forward to these times and we can share from the Word of God.

We’re winding up our thought in Mark chapter 9. Our Jesus said, “Have salt in yourselves and have peace one with another”. The peace of God that passes all understanding. Now, our duty is to live peaceably. Paul says, “As much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men, follow holiness, follow peace with all men and holiness, without which no man can see the Lord”. That word follow is our idea of pursuing it. Pursue it, go after it.

So then we began thinking about that matter about peace, and we thought about Romans 5:1, “Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. God commended His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. The penalty is paid, the war is over. All that God is waiting for is for you to lay down arms unto come back to Him. It’s a sad thing that the human race is irate in enmity against God, “Enemies in your minds”, Paul says, “because of wicked works”. This is the condemnation, “That men loved darkness rather than light”, we read in John chapter 3, so what God is waiting for, and some of you need to hear this this very moment because you’ve never yet open your heart and life to Jesus Christ as Lord. God is waiting for you to say, Lord I give up the war, I’m going to quit fighting you, I’m going to open my heart and life to you. By faith, I invite Jesus Christ to come into my life and be my Lord and my Savior, to forgive my sins and to make me a child of God. God is waiting for that from you, because everything He can do has been done, so the peace of God that comes through quitting the war, give up fighting God today, would you my dear friend? Somebody needs to hear this, give up fighting God.

You say, oh, if I had another chance I’d succeed. Oh, if I could start over. If I had a different job. If I lived in a different place, or if I’d had a different background or whatever. All these different alibis that we give for our meanness and our mediocrity and our failures. God doesn’t want to let all that. All He wants is you. Give up the fight. Come home to God.

Then we looked at does Isaiah 26:3, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in the Thee”. The focus of attention needs to be on God, not on yourself. As long as you focus attention on yourself, you’ll be miserable. Did you know that? You incubate your troubles and your ills and your bad feelings, as long as you focus attention on yourself.

When I was in college, and that’s a good many years ago, I graduated in 1934, can you believe it? I’m so young! Anyhow, when I was in college at Wheaton, they brought a psychiatrist in to speak to the students. He was, I take it, not what we would call a believer. I think he may have been a God-fearing man, but I don’t think he was a believer, as I recall it. In any case, he told us this story, he said that there was a newspaper lady that came to him as a patient, and told him that, from time to time, she would just sort of blowup and have a tantrum when pressures got too great. She said, “I have to get rid of this”. She said, “You have to heal me doctor”. She said, “The boss told me that one more time, he’s going to fire me”. Well, the doctor said, he told her, “Get a different job”. She said, “You to understand. I can’t get a different job. My mother depends on me, I’m her only support and I just, I can’t afford to lose my job. You have to help me”.

He said he asked her this question, “Do you have an attic in your house”? “Yes”, she said, “we do”. “Do you have any kind of a stairway that leads up to it”? “Yes”, she said, “there is a stairway”. He said, “Do this every day before you go to work, go up in the attic, kneel down on the bare floor, and pray for something besides yourself until your tears have flowed, and you make a little ring of tears on the floor there in front of you”. She said, “You do understand that I can’t change my religion”. He said, “I’m not asking you to change your religion. I’m just asking you to start praying for something besides yourself and your own feelings”.

Well, he told us that within a couple of weeks, that patient came back to see him, now she was radiant, she was happy. She said, “Doctor, I can’t tell you the difference that it has made just to go up in the attic and before I go to work to pray for something beside myself, until my tears have flowed”. Not a Christian, but a dedicated professional who knew that when you put the focus of attention on something besides yourself, you get better. Now, the ultimate betterment beloved, is to put the focus of attention on God, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee because he trusteth in Thee”. You trust that which you think about the most. Trust is the willingness to risk a situation on something or someone, and what consumes your thoughts, what occupies your thoughts, becomes the basis of that on which you risk your destiny. You can prove that to yourself very clearly.

Here’s a person, here’s a person who thinks of nothing but money. What risks does he take? He takes the risks which he considers will enhance his financial position. See, he trusts in other words, in that on which he is thinking, namely money. Here’s a person who is a, well he’s a wolf frankly, a ladies man. What is he, what risks does he take? He takes the risks that will enhance his position with the opposite sex, because that’s what he’s thinking about. Here’s a person who is a politician running for office. He thinks about that constantly. What does he do? His behavior, his conduct and the risks that he takes are related directly to the possibility of holding office, winning an election and holding office. Now, isn’t that all true? Yea, you know it’s true.

Well now, the focus of your attention becomes the basis of your trust. You want to put that down in the notebook of your mind? The focus of your attention becomes the basis of your trust. In other words, your willingness to risk a situation on something or somebody. The focus of your of your attention becomes the basis of your trust and when he says, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee because he trusteth in Thee”, he is simply stating that the more you think about God, the more your trust God, and the more you’ll be at peace with God with yourself and with your environment. That’s a simple truth, but profound isn’t it?

One of my professors said to me years ago, he said, “You know when I first heard you, Cook and read some of your books, I thought, He’s too simplistic”, but he said, “I began to think about it”, he said, “I realize that some of those truths are pretty profound after all”. Well listen, you don’t have to be obtuse to be profound. You don’t have to make things hard to understand in order to enunciate great in eternal truths. K I S S is the is the acronym for a signal that many a wife has given to her public speaker husband. Do you know what that is K I S S? He would look down and she’d throw him a kiss. What did it mean? K I S S, keep it short and simple.

Alright, now this is all review but it got a little long and maybe it was helpful. Psalm 119:165 said, “Great peace have thee that love thy law and nothing shall offend them”. Why? Because when you’re operating on the basis of a higher set of principles, the lower so to speak, the lower set of principles fades in importance. A higher set of principles, gravity can be overcome by a greater force that lifts an object in spite of the pull of the Earth’s gravity. “Great peace have they that love thy law”.

God’s Word is the ultimate written truth. Our Lord Jesus is the person of truth. The Holy Spirit of God bears witness to the truth. God’s Word, the Bible, is the ultimate written truth, and when you fall in love with the Bible, you make certain that your life will be lived on the principles contained therein, and other ideas and other principles will automatically take second place. This is particularly true in the matter of your feelings about other people and circumstances,

“Great peace have they that love thy law and nothing shall offend them”. What does that mean? To be offended means to be hurt, to be snubbed to be discouraged, to be frustrated, to be hindered in what you’d like to accomplish, all of this and probably more. He says, “Great peace have they that love thy law”. Why? Because when you’re operating on the basis of God’s inerrant, eternal Word, the Bible, you trust those promises and those commands more than you trust any other set of circumstances or any other pronouncement of principle. For instance, take care of yourself, we say, because nobody else is going to do it. That is something you hear every day in one form or in another. The Bible says that, “If you put God first, He will see that you are taken care of”, Matthew 6:33, “but seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you”. My father used to give away most of his money and the relatives would say, “Charlie, you’re foolish. You should be putting something away in a nest egg”, but he used to support Dr. Fuller and oh so many different, different Christian works and all that, and then one day, he was laid off. The job he was at ceased about by 1929. The very day he was laid off and got his pink slip in the pay envelope, he came home to one of those telegrams on the table from the veterans saying that he had been granted a pension because of his service in the Spanish-American war. I remember he showed me that telegram and he looked at me and smiled and said, “See my boy, God takes care”. Yes He does. Put God first, things will be second.

Dear Father today, may we put Thee first so that Thou canst take care of us, in Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.

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