Making Room

Transcript

Alright. Thank you very much. And hello again my dear radio friend. How in the world are you? Well, I’m so glad to be back together with you. I look forward to these times when we can share from God’s Word. This is your good friend, Bob Cook. And a little greeting that I use to identify is the fact that this is a time when we walk around in the Word of God, take it verse by verse, put a handle on it, so you can get hold of it for yourself. I’ve just been asking God to fill my heart and my mind, and my voice as well, with His power and His truth, and His love. I will see what He does in answer to prayer.

We’re looking at Ephesians Chapter 3. Paul has started his apostolic prayer, and he said, “I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in Heaven and Earth is named, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might, by His spirit in the inner man. Any change has to start inside of me and inside of you.’ Our prayer has to be Lord changed me. And God starts with strengthening us because this is a battle. The devil fights you every inch of the way. Peter says, “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour. To battle every inch of the way but Christ is victor. Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” Christ is victor and the Bible says, “Thanks be unto God to which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the fragrance of His knowledge by us in every place.” So you’re a winner, you’re on the winning side, but you better be sure that you have God’s strength with you.

Eric Hutchings, is a dear friend of mine for many years. I first met him back in the 1940s in connection with British Youth for Christ. And he left a law career to own some real estate and run a hotel or two and then went into the gospel ministry and became quite an evangelist. And so we were friends through the years. One of the last times I saw him before his promotion to Heaven, he had just finished an evangelistic series in a certain town in Great Britain, and he found that there was great occurrence of the occult there. People were under the influence of demonic forces. So he had with him a person who’s special gift it would seem, was combating those forces by prayer and by faith. But I was interested in what he said about this man, he said the man told him, you must never go to conflict with Satan and his hosts unless you are sure that you are right in your own soul and you’ve been fortified by a period of prayer, oftentimes fasting and prayer. He said he had learned the hard way, tragically, in going into conflict with the occult, with demonic forces, unprepared. He’s come away defeated and bruised and learned that he must not tackle Satan without the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit of God. Now, that’s the testimony of a person who’s calling it is from God to combat, enter into combat, with the forces of Satan.

You know, of course all over the world that, there are many cases of people who are either under the oppression, oppression of Satan’s forces or who are actually indwelt by. In my own opinion, a Christian, a true believer, it is possible for a true believer to be oppressed by Satan, but not to be indwelt by demons, because the Holy Spirit of God dwells within a true believer. And there’s no room there for them both. But in any case, I said all of this just to remind you, beloved, don’t enter into the battle with evil without the power of God. He mentions that for strengthened with might, and you remember I told you, he uses the two words. One word is related to our word dynamite and dynamic, Greek word dunamis, which actually means a power that never burns out, never gives up. The other is a sort of a bulldozer word that just chews up the mountains. Nothing can stand before it. So he uses that in a verb form. In other words, strengthen with a bulldozer kind of strength that nothing can stop and with a power that never burns out. Isn’t that something. Talk about burn out.

It’s my opinion that a Christian living a normal Spirit-filled Christian life and obeying the guidance of the Spirit of God in terms of the timing and pacing of your life, need not fear what we call burnout. “They that wait upon the Lord so renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint.” There’s renewed strength. You don’t have to burn out. Strengthened with might, by His spirit in the inner man. The change has to start on the inside, doesn’t it? Have you been able to muster the courage and to pray in these terms, “Lord changed me. Change me in the circumstances and change me in this relationship. And change me in this family and change me in this geographical location and change me in this societal culture. Lord change me, strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man.” The change has to start inside.

Now, what else does he say? That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. And that word dwell means be at home, be at home in. That’s what that means. Christ feels at home in your heart. Have you welcomed Him? Have you welcomed the Savior and the blessed indwelling Holy Spirit? Have you welcomed God into every room in your heart house? Someone asked Doctor Oswald J Smith, who is now with the Lord, founder of People’s Church in Toronto, now pastored by his distinguished son, Paul B Smith. But somebody asked Doctor Oswald J Smith about this matter of the filling of the Spirit, and He said, “I’ll tell you.” He said, “Sit down with a pack of 3×5 index cards, and write down on a separate card every item in your life. Your personality, your habits, your failing your strength, your money, your relationships, your property. Anything you own. Clothes and articles that you own or a car or real estate, house, whatever. Write down everything about you, each item on a separate card.

And when you’ve exhausted the list and you can’t think of anything else about your life that you can detail, then you take each of those cards and hold them in your hand, one by one. And you pray,” said Doctor Smith, “Lord, I invite you by faith into this room in my life. I want you to take complete control and fill this area of my life. And I believe that Thou art answering me, because I’m asking in faith in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Then you take the next card, representing another area, and you hold that card in your hand and you say, “Lord, by faith, I’m inviting You into this area of my life. I want You to come in and take complete control and fill it with Your Holy Spirit. And so he said, “When you’ve gone through that entire list, all of those cards have been placed by faith in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said, “You can then look up and say, “Lord, I thank Thee that Thou hast filled me with Thy Holy Spirit.”

I tell you sometimes the story of Doctor Wasserzug . Mrs. Wasserzug, in Switzerland. Frau doctor we used to call her, Frau Doctor Wasserzug. She had an earned degree as did her late husband. But she was in charge of a the Bible school there, at Beatenberg, Switzerland, high on the mountains looking down 3000 feet to the jewel Lake, Lake Thun. T-H-U-N, Lake Thun. And across the lake was the Matterhorn and the Jungfrau and other majestic mountains of Switzerland, a gorgeous, beautiful scene where we met in 1948, for a Youth for Christ Congress. I had the privilege then of speaking with Mrs.Wasserzug on different occasions, and one day we were talking about the Holy Spirit of God and His relationship with the believer, and I asked her to tell me something of her own experience in this regard. She said, in the early years of the ministry that she and her husband had, they were very busy. They were out every night. Of course, they had the Bible school duties during the day and then at night, they were out every night somewhere either in German speaking Switzerland, or across the border into Germany, and with meetings. She said, “I’ve given away thousands upon thousands of gospel leaflets and tracks, and I spoke to many congregations,” but she said there wasn’t very much fruit from it.

There wasn’t very much happening and she said, “Finally, there came through this area, a lady who told me about by faith opening all of the rooms in my heart house to the blessed Holy Spirit of God.” And then she turned Mrs. Wasserzug did, and she said, “Do you see that big outcropping rock? Outcropping up there above us on the mountain?” And I looked up and I saw this huge boulder jutting out from the mountain side, and I said, “Yes, I see it.” Well, she said, “I climbed up there and I sat down on that big boulder, and I looked across the lake toward the Jungfrau, the Matterhorn, and the other mountains. And I began to pray. And she said, “By faith, I invited the Holy Spirit into every area of my life.” And then she said, “When I had done that,” she said, “I still was in prayer, and I looked up to God, and I said, “God, I thank Thee now that Thou hast filled me with Thy Holy Spirit.” She said, “Mister Cook, I can’t tell you I felt any different, at that point.” But she said, “The next time I preached the gospel, many people came to Christ. There was power there that I had not had before.”

It’s that simple, beloved. Do you want the touch of God upon your life? By faith just as you trusted Christ for salvation. Remember, Colossians 2:6, “As you receive Christ Jesus the or so walk ye,” That means live every day. “So walk ye in Him.” And so on the same basis in which you trusted Christ for salvation, so you open every room in your life to the Holy Spirit of God, and when you’ve done that, by faith through the Lord Jesus, you can say, “Lord I thank Thee that Thou hast filled me.” And He’ll keep on filling you as you keep on opening your life to Him, Christ, at home in your hearts by faith.

Dear Father, today, may our lives be filled with the presence of Christ and may He our blessed Savior feel at home in our hearts. I ask in His name, Amen.

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