Make No Delay

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Everything going Alright? Oh, I certainly trust so, bless your heart. I feel great today. I’m glad to know that many of you are on the listening end there, sharing with me, as we open God’s blessed inerrant, inspired, infallible, eternal word the Bible. We’re looking at Psalm 116, and we’ve come now to this question, “What shall I render unto the Lord, for all His benefits toward me?”, he said, “I’ll take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord”. Last time we get together we thought for a few moments about the cup of salvation that means the totality of God’s wonderful, hospitable approach to you, in inviting you into His Heaven and His home, because Jesus paid it all. Take the cup of salvation, open your heart wide to God today, and let Him fill your life with Himself. What else? You want to prove that you love God? He said, “I going to call upon the name of the Lord Jesus”, said, “Whatsoever shall be asked in My name that will I do, that the Father may be glorified and the son. If He shall ask anything in My name, I will do it”. The name of the Lord Jesus Christ, what does that mean? Is it a formula? Is it because you end your prayer with a halfhearted, “in Jesus’ name”, is that what he means? No, that isn’t all of it. Now, I delight to pray in Jesus’ name because it’s a lifelong habit, for one thing, it’s scriptural for another, it blesses my soul for another, and the so for most of your prayers and mine, we do end them by saying, “We pray all of this in Jesus’ name”. However, I doubt that many Christians really know what they mean when they say that. It’s more a formula to many folks. Sacred, I’ve had people scold me because occasionally, I have ended my prayer with a simple, “Amen”, and they said, “Why didn’t you say in Jesus” name?”, well it’s a formula with many people.

The fact of the matter is, that when the psalmist says, “I’ll call upon the name of the Lord”, in those days the name that was used most often was Jehovah. Other names, of course, are applied to God in the Bible, Elohim, Jehovah-jireh, all the rest, but the name of the Lord was specifically a name that meant, God brings salvation. “I am, that I am, hath sent you”, God said to Moses. This person, this wonderful, living, loving, Heavenly Father, His name, it denotes all that He is. “God is love and He that loveth not, knoweth not God for God is love”, and all of the qualifications of the fruit of the Spirit are wrapped up in the attributes of God; Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. God is a spirit; eternal, omniscient, omnipresent, and immutable or unchangeable, all of these things we say about God, all of that is wrapped up in His name. The chief meaning, however, of the name of God, is that God brings salvation. He’s the one that brings salvation. He saves. And so, when you call upon the name of the Lord, you are recognizing, number one, that you need Him, number two, that He loves and pays attention to you, number three, that He is your only hope, you don’t have any hope aside from God in His mercy and His love in Christ Jesus, and then finally, that you are depending on Him to hear your prayer and to answer it and to change your life. “Call upon the name of the Lord”, Jeremiah 33:3, “Call unto Me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not”. The illustration of what this means, is found earlier in Psalm 116, where he said, “The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of the grave got hold on me, I found trouble and sorrow, then called I upon the name of the Lord. Oh, Lord I beseech Thee. Deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord, righteous ye are God is merciful, Lord preserve of the civil, I was brought low and He helped me. He delivered my soul from death”, and so on. The name of the Lord means you’re trusting Him to meet you right where you are in the need that you have.

I’m afraid many of us pray only in generalities. What a great blessing it is been to me through the years, to pray and specifics. That is to say if you need the rent money, don’t pray that God will bless everybody else. Pray about the rent money. If you’re sick, pray about your need of healing. If you’re angry pray that God will of defuse your burning anger. If you’re deeply hurt, pray that God will heal hurt. The specifics.

There was a missionary who spoke as I heard him, shortly after the close of World War II. It happened that he had been evacuated from his missionary post out in the southern Pacific area somewhere, and was traveling home on a zigzag path, on a rusty old freighter. He and a few of the missionaries were on that ship as it wallowed its way through the waters of the South Pacific, trying a zigzag course, trying to escape the watchful eyes of the submariners who represented the enemy. One day, to their horror, they saw the spume of spray that follows the periscope of a submarine as it stealthily creeps along beneath the surface of the ocean, and as they saw that periscope, turning to look at them, and the spray that it followed, the little spume of spray that came up as the waves that came against it and they plowed on through them. This missionary said as I recall he said, “You know, I thought I knew how to pray before, but, he said, “As we stood by the rail and watched that submarine approach us, I learned how to pray specifically, and so did all the rest of us. We prayed, “Lord stop his engines, Lord jam his torpedo tubes, Lord make the crew sick, so they can’t operate, Lord”, and he said, “We prayed all over that submarine”. Strangely, there was no torpedo and the submarine lowered it’s periscope, and was on its way to somewhere, but certainly not to attack that missionary ship. “We prayed”, said he, “I learned to pray specifically”. Might be good idea for you and for me to learn that same kind of praying, under the heading of calling on the name of the Lord. I will take the cup of salvation that means open your heart wide to all that God has for you, call upon the name of the Lord, that means involve God in the crisis situations of life, as well in the as in the business of everyday living, call upon the name of the Lord, “Then called I, upon the name of the Lord”. Over in Psalm 107, it has the story of people who, when they got into a jam of one sort or another, called unto God, “Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, He delivered them out of there, then they cried unto the Lord”, verse 13, “in their trouble. He saved them”, in verse 19, “Then they cry unto the Lord, in their trouble and He saveth them out of their distresses”, and the verse 20, “Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble and He bringeth them”, so on.

Involve God specifically in your life, if you want to prove that you love Him, involve Him specifically in your life. Will you remember to do that? Start doing it today, start doing it today, involve God specifically in the details of your life, the crises, the grade crushing burdens, as well as the seemingly insignificant things that go on from day-to-day. Involve God, walk with God, Enoch walked with God, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?”, asked the Prophet. Get in agreement with God and start walking with Him and talking with Him and involving Him in your decisions, and see how He works. “Delight thyself also in the Lord and He shall give thee the desires of mine heart”. God likes to please you, just like a grandparent loves to please a little grandchild, not going to give that child anything that would harm him or her, but oh, how up how a parent or grandparent loves to see the little face light up with delight, when something is done to please the little childish heart. God looks down upon us in the same way and Jesus said, “If He being He will know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give good things to them that ask Him. God gives us good things, He delights in us, He likes to give us the desires of our heart when we are in line with His perfect, eternal will. “Call upon the name of the Lord”, means trust Him to save you, trust Him to guide you, trust Him to keep you, involve Him in the details of everyday life before you answer a phone, whisper a prayer, before you open a letter, whisper a prayer. Maybe a check or a bill there is a difference. Before you sign a contract, whisper a prayer. God has already read the fine print. Before you make a personnel decision, before you make a life decision, of life companion, who will you marry, before you make a job decision, where will I work in for whom, pray your way through all of these matters involving God in them. That’s what it means to call on the name of the Lord. Now, we get into verse 14 of Psalm 116, and he said, “I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all His people”, what does it mean to pay your vows? It means keep your word, your premises to God.

We had during World War II, and during the Korean incident, they never called that a war, isn’t that strange, because we didn’t declare war it was an incident. Of course, many thousands of lives were taken in that so-called incident, weren’t they? A bitter business. And then, Vietnam. We have the stories are all of these different a military takes experiences, we have the stories of people who were under fire and said, “God, if you get me out of here, I’ll live for you”. Now, in some cases, they did, they followed on through, but in other cases, they forgot and went back to their own selfish ways. The psalmist, no doubt, had made some promises to God that he delayed keeping, he said, I’ll pay my vows now, I’m going to get down to business. If you want to prove to God that you love Him, if you want to really show that you love God, you better review some of those unkept promises, and you better ask yourself, “Now, what is there that I have been putting off? If I know it’s the will of God, I know that I should do it, but I’ve been putting it off. What is it?”, and when the spirit of God whispers it to your heart, you to get to business and do it. There’s no substitute for obedience, there’s no substitute for action in the will of God. “I will pay my vows unto the Lord now”.

Oh, I don’t have to tell you beloved, what we’re talking about, you know so well, you know so well. There are things in each of our lives that we simply have refused to deal with, either because we didn’t want to because it was too painful, or because we liked what we were then doing more than we wanted the will of God, isn’t it the truth? Now then, let’s get honest with our Lord and say “Dear Lord, I’ve put this off long enough, I’m going to do your will now. Whatever is involved, getting right with somebody, paying some promise that you promised missionary-wise, or starting to help your church, or your Christian radio station, or your missionary society, whatever it is or witnessing to someone who needs the Lord Jesus Christ, or writing a letter but apology, or whatever, I don’t know what it is. Don’t have to know, only you and God need to know.” Oh, get started making things right with your Lord, “I will pay my vows unto the Lord now”, there’s one other thought here, we’ll get at that the next time we get together.

Dear Father, in Jesus’ name, we commit ourselves to Thee. Help us, oh God, to prove that we love Thee, Amen.

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