Look Through Your Tears

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends, how in the world are you? You doing Alright? Oh, I trust so, bless your heart. I know some people listen to the broadcast just as they’re waking up, and the fact is that you don’t always wake up feeling the same way, do you? Some days you wake up with a groan and other days you wake up with a smile. However the day may have started for you, or for those of you who are listening at the midnight hour, or in midday, just remember that the Lord Jesus doesn’t change with the weather, He’s the same. Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, and today, and forever. You can trust Him. You can look heavenward, even now, and say, “Lord Jesus, see me through.” He will. Hallelujah for that.

Well, now, you and I have been walking around in the Book of Mark, and we’ve come to the very last verse. And the last time we got together I was commenting on the fact that the apostles went forth, preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, confirming His Word with signs following. And I think the last time we got together we talked about the fact that God does work with us. The Lord working with them and confirming His Word. Oh, what a blessed fact that is, that when you and I are engaged in obeying God’s blessed Word, He works with us, He ties His almightiness to our finite human limitations, and He deigns to do through us, something altogether godly. Isn’t that a great concept? Oh, boy, I like that. I like that.

“They went everywhere heralding,” it’s the verb ‘kerusso,’ they were heralding the Gospel, preached everywhere. “The Lord working with them.” And that verb ‘working with’ is translated exactly as it appears in the original language. There’s a verb that means to work and then there’s a little prefix that means ‘with.’ Working with them, and confirming the Word with miracles following.

Now, let’s think just for a moment about this matter of how God confirms His Word. He confirms it by the life and actions of His servants. I’m thinking now of the Shunammite woman who had prepared for Elijah, the prophet, a place where he could live. And now and then when he came past there, she and her husband would invite him to stay with them. She said to her husband, “Let’s make a place for Elijah to stay.” Well, it took the life of Elijah and the outpoured power of God to convince her.

The same thing is true of the widow woman at Zarephath. Now, he was there, it says, “many days,” which is another way of saying a whole year. “The barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail,” according to the word of Elijah. After these things, now, she’s been living with a daily miracle, after these things, the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick. His sickness was so sore there was no breath left in him. She said to Elijah, “What have I to do with thee, O man of God, have thou come to call my sins to remembrance and slay my son?”

Now, Elijah brought the child up into his own room, and laid him on his own bed and cried out to God, and said, “Oh, God. I pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him again.” And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah. The soul of the child came into him again and he revived. Elijah took the child, brought him down out of the chamber, into the house and delivered him unto his mother, and said, “See, thy son liveth.” Now. What did the woman say? And the woman said to Elijah, “Now by this, I know that thou art a man of God and that the Word of the Lord, in thy mouth, is truth. By this, I know.”

Now, she had been living with a constant miracle, but it took the crisis of God touching the most precious thing in her life, her precious boy. It took the crisis of God’s touch upon the most precious thing in her life to convince her that Elijah and God Almighty were real, and that Elijah was God’s man. The Lord confirming the Word. How does He confirm it? He confirms it through what He does through your life, day by day, in the crisis situations. Now, God wants to be real in the day by day routine. He was that, as He stretched the supply of meal and oil so they could live. God wants to be real in every part of all of your life. “Whatsoever ye do in word of deed, do all,” says Paul. “In the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.” But God proves Himself to other people by the way He works in your life in times of crisis.

Now, that is going to give you an entirely different attitude toward testings. Something happens, an accident, an illness, you’ve lost your job, your health is failing, your in-laws are crosswise of you and refuse to be reconciled, you’ve lost your sweetheart and broken up, or whatever it may be. All these different sorts of special things that happen, we don’t want them, we don’t plan them, they happen. Now, when they happen, you have your choice, you can either grumble and complain and collapse, or you can say, “Lord, prove yourself through this, prove yourself through this experience.” Every trial and every testing and every crisis can be an opportunity for God Almighty to work through your life.

A pastor friend of mine went to pay a call on a lady who was terminally ill and in great pain. And he spoke with her gently for a moment, and then read some scripture and then he said, “Now I’m going to pray for you.” She broke in and she said, “What are you gonna pray for, pastor?” He said, “Well, I’m gonna pray that God will give you peace, and ease your pain, and that He will keep His hand on you, be pleased to heal you, Alright. And if not, that He’ll take you gloriously to Himself.” She said, “Oh, no.” She said, “Don’t, that isn’t what I want.” And he said, “What do you want?” She said, “Pray that I won’t waste all this suffering.” She said, “I want it to count for God.” “Pray that I won’t waste all this suffering.” She was in intense pain, constantly, but she wanted it, somehow, to glorify God. Oh, I need that! Don’t you? I need to look at my trials and heartaches, ’cause we all have them. I need to look through my tears, sometimes, at things I don’t like in life, and then to look up and say, “Dear Lord, I want you to be honored in all of this, I want you to be glorified, I want you to be proved as God. I want somehow, that your Word will be confirmed to other people’s lives, by what they see you doing in my life.”

Do you follow that? The Lord confirming His Word. There’s something in human nature that has to be shown. And I think that concept of the miraculous is not given to us to be a show and tell kind of a proposition. But where God knows in His infinite wisdom that a demonstration of His miraculous power is going to confirm the truth of the Gospel that’s being preached, and He does pour that power out, confirming His Word, with signs following. Well, we’ve walked clear through the Book of Mark, haven’t we? Let’s just take a quick overview of the whole Book for a minute, shall we? Mark, Chapter 1, introduces us to the beginning ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, where He said, “The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is at hand, repent ye and believe the Gospel.” The time is fulfilled, no chance to fool around, this is God’s time. The Kingdom of God is at hand, what God wants is not for you to have a good opinion of Him, but for you to give Him His place on the throne of your life.

How do you do this? Two ways. One, repent. That is, turn away from sin. And second, believe the Gospel; that is, commit yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ, as Lord and as Savior. “He that covereth his sin shall not prosper but whoso confesseth and forsaketh it shall have mercy.”

Repentance means confess and forsake. And true faith simply means committing yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord. That was His beginning message and what He continued all the way to do. His blessed promise of changing the work, the ultimate work of people who follow Him, is in verse 17 of Mark 1, “Come ye after me and I will make you to become fishers of men.” They were fishing for fish, and the Lord never scolded them for that. As a matter of fact, they were seen fishing other times during His earthly ministry. They didn’t stop their employment entirely, evidently, just because they were following the Lord Jesus Christ, but He said, “I’m gonna change the major thrust of your life. Instead of fishing for fish as the main business in life, you’re gonna be fishing for people, and bringing them to me. I’ll make you fishers of men.”

Small thought here. Has it ever occurred to you that what God wants most of all is to use you as one who can, as this text says, “fish for men”? For people? That is to say, as a person who can introduce others to Christ and bring them to Him. Oh, the most glorious thing in all the world is to be present when someone prays that penitence prayer and asks Jesus Christ to save him or her, to come in to the heart and save that life. What a glorious thing that is. And to have that as your main business in life transforms all of the other routines, even the boring ones and makes them glorious, because your main business is reaching other people and introducing them to the Savior. “Come ye after me,” He said. The closer you get to Jesus the more you’ll want to share Him with others. The closer you walk with the Savior, the more effective you’re going to be in fishing for people. You wanna think about that in your own heart?

How is it with you, beloved? You may have a true and sincere faith in the Savior, but have you been tasting the fulfillment of that glorious promise that says, “If you follow Him, He’ll make something of you, and that something is a fisher of people.” A soul winner, in other words. He said He would do it. Would you let Him begin that work in you today? Instead of drawing back and saying, “Oh, I’m shy. I’m bashful.” Instead of saying why you can’t, let faith reach out and let the Lord Jesus tell you how He can, through you.

Lord Jesus Christ, make something of us today, soul winners, that is, in fulfillment of Thy promise I ask in Thy dear name, Amen.

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