Living Truth

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much, and hello again radio friends. How in the world are you? Everything Alright at your house? Well, I trust so. Yes, I pause so that you can answer. I know many of you do. Bless your heart. We got something going between us, haven’t we? There is a oneness of spirit that goes beyond the miles and beyond the fact that some of you never… You and I haven’t met personally. People come up to me, it’s good for a laugh often times. Someone will come up and say, “Oh, you look so different from the way I had pictured you on radio.” Well, I hope it’s not too great a shock.

My father used to say, “My face, I don’t mind it for I’m behind it. It’s the man out in front gets the jar.” Well, by the way, say did you know that after 50 people get the face they deserve, the kind of person you are begins to show up, doesn’t it? And your character oftentimes is written large upon your own face as the years go by. It’s a frightening thought. It ought to drive every one of us to our knees that we might seek God and His Holy Spirit might carve upon our countenances the beauty of God. That’s what Moses prayed. “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.” A little side thought there, I threw it in free.

You and I are looking at Colossians, some random wrap-up thoughts. The last time we got together, we were meditating on Colossians 1:11 about the fact that you can know the inexhaustible power of God. The dynamite of God — dunamos — is the Greek word and the brute force, the mountain moving force and power of God designated by the Greek word “kratos.” You can know personally that power in a continuing daily outflow of God’s power through your life strengthened with all might according to His glorious power.

See, the index of how you can have is how much does God have. Unto all patience. The result of God’s strength in your life is not to blow up or to show up or to give up but to stay down. Patience. Greek word means “stay under.” Unto all patience and longsuffering. It’s Greek word, “makrothumia” means large heartedness. Make room in your heart for people with their faults not as you wish they were. And then he says “with joy; with joy.” The joy of the Lord is part of the strength of the Lord in your life. Had you ever realized that it takes strength to be joyful?

There are some circumstances where it simply flattened you otherwise, but when your heart is filled with God’s spirit and God’s power is strengthening you, God’s joy can show through the worst of circumstances because there’s power enough there to make it so. Life is cruel enough just to crush you, if you let it. Some of you dear ones know that to be so true. You’ve been through the wringer; you’ve been through sorrow; you’ve been through sickness; you’ve been through heartbreak where human beings have been cruel to you and all of that. I know it. God bless you.

Life is cruel and so are unsaved sinful people and it would crush you if you let it. But if you turn to God by faith and let Him strengthen you, instead, you can show His wonderful joy and peace under pressure. I quoted 2 Corinthians 2:14 the last time we got together, I believe. Now, “Thanks be unto God which always causeth us to triumph in Christ and maketh manifest the perfume of His knowledge by us in every place.” You’re God’s perfume under pressure. God can do that as you trust Him. Oh, let Him do that for you and for me today is our prayer, isn’t it?

Now, another random thought from chapter one shows up in verse 27. “God would make known the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The secret of the Christian life is a person, the Lord Jesus Christ living in you by His blessed indwelling Holy Spirit. The secret of the Christian life is a person, not a position, not a pronouncement. And you say, “Well, this is where I stand.” Many people think of Christianity as being a point of view so that it’d be comparable to someone saying, “Well, I’m a progressive or I’m a conservative or I’m a Democrat or I’m a Republican or whatever it may be.”

No, the Christian life is not just a point of view. It does involve a sanctified viewpoint, of course. It’s not a gelatinous amorphous intellectual nothing. Of course, it does involve a viewpoint and it does involve doctrine, the teachings of the word of God are important. The word of God is the source of faith, “The faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God,” the Bible says. All of this is important but the secret of the dynamic of the Christian life is a person living in you. God built you for Himself.

Sin came into the human race and so it was that evil forces could reside in human beings and to this day, they do, but when you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and He becomes your savior, the blessed Holy Spirit of God enters into your life to dwell there and a person, the Lord Jesus, is revealed through you. The secret of the Christian life is a person living in you to will and to do of God’s good pleasure. Paul says in Philippians 2, “It is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”

Paul himself said in Galatians 2, “No longer I the old Saul of Tarsus with murder in his heart, “But Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” The secret of the Christian life. Now, apply this, would you, beloved? Some of you have been trying so hard to achieve a normal Christian life in your own experience. And you have so many ups and downs and so many failures but you keep trying. Well, I would give you A for effort but you’re going about it the wrong way.

It’s not through trying, it’s through trusting and committing. You got trouble with your thoughts? Do wondering vagrant thoughts like evil birds flying in and out of your brain and you think “Why in the world am I thinking that?” Why don’t you simply by faith, turn your thinking over to the Lord Jesus Christ? Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10 that we ought to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. By faith, you can turn your thought process over to the Lord Jesus. It is a fact that when you try not to think about something, you end up thinking about it, isn’t that true? You say to yourself, “I won’t think about it.” What happens? Why, it’s fastened upon your consciousness and it sticks there.

So it’s not a matter of repressing your thoughts. It’s a matter rather of committing your thoughts to the one who can stir them and control them, who can, so to speak, who can program your computer. There’s a big computer between your two ears far more complex than anything that IBM ever built. God is able to program that computer so that it thinks the right thing. “Commit thy work unto the Lord and thy thoughts shall be established,” said Solomon. Oh, do you have trouble with your thoughts? Huh?

Well, the secret is a person who can program the computer. “By faith, turn your thoughts and your feelings over to the Lord.” I said feelings. Do you have trouble with the way you feel about some people or some situations? And the pastor comes to visit you and you say, “I can’t help it, pastor. I can’t help how I feel.” I know it. I know it. But Jesus can make a difference. He can change how you feel. You turn it over to him. The secret of the Christian life is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Turn your feelings over to Him.

Some of you are so very timid and the very thought of speaking to another about your faith throws you into a tailspin emotionally. You just get all upset even at the very thought of having to speak to somebody else you’re shy and timid especially about things eternal. Well, there are one or two reasons for that. Many people are timid because they don’t know what to say. Get some scriptures into your heart and mind and you’ll have the basis for speaking to other people. Memorizing the word of God and meditating upon it is one of the great sources of successful witnessing to others.

So you’ll find out what to say if you’ll dwell in the word of God more than you have. Beyond that, however, take that natural timidity of yours and turn it over to your Lord Jesus Christ and He’ll make it so that you not only are able to speak to others about your Lord but you’ll be delighted because you’d be sharing a person with them. It’s a joy to introduce a dear friend to another dear friend, isn’t it? “I want you to meet so and so,” and it’s a joy to introduce people. And so it is that it will be your joy to introduce your friends to the Lord Jesus Christ who has now become to you the dearest person in all of the universe, your Lord and your Savior.

And so get into the word so that you have something to say about Him and pray so that His Holy Spirit can guide you. Take by faith the guidance of the blessed spirit of God and then share your Lord Jesus with other people. Christ living in you is greater than your feelings, greater than your fears, greater than your timidity, greater than your tendency to back off from things. Some of us hate to face controversy and we tend to back away, don’t we? The Lord Jesus Christ is greater than every, and any shortcoming that you may have. Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Don’t forget the last four words of that verse, “He Himself is the hope of glory.” How do you know that you’re going to get to Heaven? Because the Lord Jesus Christ is living within you this minute. He’s alive from the dead. He said, “Behold, I am He that was dead and behold I am alive forevermore.” He’s alive and he has prepared a place for you. He said so. “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

There’s a place in Heaven for you. There’s a person who is alive that guarantees it. And He has all the authority necessary to fulfill that guarantee for He said to His disciples all power is a Greek word, “exousia” authority — All authority He’s given unto me in heaven and on Earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations. Our Lord Jesus is alive. He has the power to fulfill his promise. He has prepared a place for us in heaven and He Himself, then, is the essence of our hope for eternal ages beyond. Worship your blessed Lord today. Thank Him for saving you and serve Him the best you can with His enablement moment by moment.

Dear Father, today, may we know the glory and the joy of the Lord Jesus Christ living His life through us, Amen.

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