How God Keeps Us

God keeps us through His Holy Spirit, His Word and His power that can control our lives. Hide God's Word in your heart and mind so it changes how you live.


Scripture: 1 Peter 1:3-5, Romans 6:19

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again my dear radio friend. How in the world are you? Yes, that little greeting establishes the fact that this your friend Bob Cook. And you and I are together again across the miles, with the Word of God.

One of the most beautiful relationships I know is to be with God’s people, and the Word. There is a sharing there that goes beyond mutual liking. We like each other because we’re such nice people, right? (Laughs) Yeah. But there’s something beyond that when you share the Word of God together. And that’s what we do here. I try to put a handle on God’s Word so you can get hold of it for yourself. I pray in that direction every time I approach these microphones.

And if God has done that in days past, and if again today He will graciously enable me to give you something practical for yourself, well then that prayer will have been answered, bless your heart.

Look at 1 Peter, that’s where we are —the first chapter. We’ve been born again to an inheritance, reserved — that’s our word ‘kept’ — kept in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith and to salvation. God keeps the inheritance intact while He keeps you fit to receive it. How does God keep? He keeps through the person of the Holy Spirit. Second, He keeps through his Word, He keeps through his Word. “Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee.”

Now the psychologist says that all behavior is caused. And if that be true, there needs to be a cause for the behavior of the Christian. And you’ll find it in these two entities of which I have spoken — the Holy Spirit of God indwelling in the believer, and the Word of God controlling your thought. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” And so you, you hide the Word of God in your heart, and that actually means if you want to be technical about it, you put it not only in your conscious memory, but in your unconscious mind — the ‘computer’ portion of your mind — so that it becomes part of your instinctual response to the various stimuli of life.

I sometimes use, as an illustration, the idea of learning to drive. Do you remember when you first learned to drive an automobile? Oh how concerned you were, and how careful you were with every move. Start the motor, depress the clutch, put the car in gear, feed a little gas from the accelerator and let the clutch out at the same time, and stall the motor — you remember that? Finally with a series of convulsive jerks and jumps, the car got into motion and you were going down the road precariously, watching out for everything when some car approached you coming from the other direction. You pulled clear off the road, probably up onto Mrs. McGillicutty’s lawn, in order to allow the other approaching vehicle to go by.

Every move was a crisis — you had to think about it. You remember that? Oh I can remember that for sure, and it’s been a good many years. I learned to drive when I was 15. And they didn’t have the laws in Ohio that made you wait till 16 in those days. Remember? So, and I remember the, the care with which I, with, with which I thought about every move. Until, it became a matter of automatic response.

Today, after you’ve driven the car for a number of years you get in the car, turn on the key, start the motor, put it in gear, pull out and hit somebody. Huh? (Laughs) Well no, maybe not that. But you, you don’t, you don’t think, “Now I must turn the steering wheel, now I must slow down, now I must put on the brake, now I must watch out for this truck that is approaching me.” You don’t think through those things, you simply do them. Why? Because they have become part of your established pattern of reaction.

It seems to me that God does this for you and for me when we put His word into the ‘computer’ portion of our lives. How do you do that? Well, to get anything into your unconscious mind, you think about it hard and then you let go of it. If you want Scripture to get into your mind you, you read it, you meditate on it and think about it, you memorize it and say it over.

The Navigators told me many years ago, “If you’ll say a verse over once a day for seven weeks, you will have it and it will have you.” I’ve found that to be true. I went through their topical memory system back in the 1940’s. And I know that that’s true. You say a verse with its reference over once a day for seven weeks, you’ll have the verse and it will have you.

And so you think about a thing very hard, and then let go it. And it goes back into the unconscious mind. And God, the faithful Holy Spirit of God, cranks it out one might say, just when you need it. He shall bring all things to your remembrance. Can’t remember something you didn’t first forget. So you have to put it in there. And then the Spirit of God will bring it out to your conscious mind just when it’s needed. Yes God keeps through His Word.

I think you and I have to agree as well that God keeps us not only by the indwelling Holy Spirit and by the, the Word of God hidden in our hearts and minds, but also by the intervention of His providence. Undoubtedly the angels are in operation in your life and mine. How many times have you been thwarted let us say, in doing something you had planned to do and you found later on that it was quite a beneficial thing that you had not been allowed to do that? How many times have things strangely worked out so that you, you just didn’t do something that you might otherwise have done?

Well that’s true of all of us. And we have to realize that God’s keeping power extends to His providential control of situations around us. God is interested in you. “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” God isn’t going to give up on you today. I think that has to be good news to some of us. Perhaps I’m speaking with someone who is so discouraged because life, or people, or both, have fallen in on you and, and things have gone into reverse, and you’re, you’re so discouraged, you’re about to give up on yourself and everybody else.

Don’t do it. God is not through with you and with me just yet. . “He that hath begun a good work in you will perform it” how long, “until the day of Jesus Christ.” God has promised Himself that He’s going to get you safe home to heaven. And He’s going to keep working on it. So God is not going to drop you today. He’s not going to forsake you today. His word says, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee” — that’s His promise.

How often I remind God of that. Child-like I come to Him and say, “God you promised not to leave me. Stand with me now. “Oh how precious the presence of God is when you realize as you pray and as you trust, that He is actually working. It is God which worketh in you, both to will and to do, of His Good pleasure.” God is actually controlling the force of circumstances as well as your own reaction to them because you’re His.

The miracle of the Christian life is far more than, than a profession of faith — that is important. “The miracle of the Christian life, Paul says, “is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” God is actually working in your life, to make sure that you’re kept in a world full of dangers, temptations, and trials. Hallelujah for that! Isn’t that a precious truth? You who are kept by the power of God.

Now how does this all work? Through faith. Surrender my friend, was built into your bones. You’re going to give up to something. And most of us because we’re fallen sons and daughters of Adam, end up giving up to sin and self. I quoted that verse I think, in the last broadcast — let me go back to it. It’s Romans 6, and it should be about verse 19. Paul said, “I speak after the manner of men because just don’t understand” — 6:19. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh.”

Now he says, “Let me explain this to you. As you have yielded your members” — that’s the members of your body — “servants” — that’s our word ‘slaves’ — “slaves to uncleanness, and to inequity, unto inequity” — that in other words you’ve given yourself up to, to uncleanness. And the result was more sin. When you give up to sin, the result is more sin — always remember that. You never get anywhere good by giving up to something bad, all right.

“As you’ve yielded yourselves slaves to uncleanness,” and the result was more un-, inequity. Even so, now same process, same process, giving up — “even so now, yield your members slaves to righteousness, and the result will be holiness.” When you were the servants of sin, you didn’t have righteousness. What fruit did you have in those things whereof you’re now ashamed? “Why,” he said, “the end of those things is death. But now being made free of sin and become servants to God.” You have your fruit unto holiness and the end to that is everlasting life.

You were built to give up, surrender is in your bones. You’re going to give up to something. And the process of giving up is always the same. Just think for a moment how most of us handle temptation. There’s a little mental, moral monitor back there in your mind somewhere that says, “Shall I? Shall I not? Shall I blow my top or shall I not? Shall I do this thing or shall I not?” And you think about it, and think about it, and think about it, and finally you get tired of considering it and fighting it, and you give up, you collapse, you give up, you say, “Oh well, I give up.”

And you go ahead and do whatever it was. Now that’s what happens millions of times a day among the people in the world. You think about a thing, you, and you give up. Am I right? Now, the same process, the same, very same process, needs to be put into action but a different objective. You give up. Instead of giving up to sin, you give up to Jesus. “Lord Jesus, I give up to you. Lord Jesus, handle this thing. Lord Jesus, keep me now.” See, you give up to Him by faith. “You who are kept by the power of God through faith” see?

What is faith? ‘Forsaking All I Trust Him’ — that’s a little acronym that someone has made up of the letters in the word ‘FAITH’. You give up to Jesus. You let Him consciously; let Him have the steering wheel of your life. And when that happens, He handles it.

There’s one thing that I — I’ve told you about it once or twice before, but just let me share it with you again. There was an occasion when someone in my office was, was giving me a going over — this is a good many years ago now. And the voice droned on, and I could feel the pressure mounting up inside of me. And I thought to myself, “If something doesn’t happen I’m going to blow up.” And I knew that that would be definitely the wrong thing to do. And, and on and on and on, this diatribe of criticism went on. And I remember bowing my head and, and whispering a prayer and saying, “Lord Jesus, handle me now, take care of me now, help me now. I can’t handle this.”

And do you know dear friends, it was as though somebody released a valve somewhere and the pressure went out of my heart and mind. I became calm, and I became friendly. And the interview ended on a friendly note because Jesus took the pressure, He handled me. God kept me in answer to prayer through faith. That’ll work for you every time — you try it.

Dear Father, keep us today by the Spirit, by your Word, by the power of God working through us, in Jesus name. Amen.

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



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