Pray Through The Day

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing alright today? Oh, I trust so, bless your heart.

Well, we’re looking at Mark chapter 6 and we’ve come now through most of the chapter. We were looking at this story of what happened when the Lord Jesus sent the disciples before Him to the other side of the Sea of Galilee and it said, “He departed into a mountain to pray”. Just by way of review, you remember that we reminded ourselves that it’s a very good idea to pray after you’ve had a good ministry of some sort. Our Lord Jesus just finished teaching all day long, to this huge crowd, then He fed them, now it said, “He went up into a mountain to pray”. Ministry demands prayer after, not only before. You’re the most vulnerable right after you had a great victory, remember that.

So, they were in the midst of the sea, rowing, because the sails weren’t much good, the wind was directly in their faces, and the only way they could get across was to row, evidently. And He came to them, and the fourth watch of the night, walking on the sea, and they were frightened of course, they thought it was a ghost and immediately He talked with them and said, “Be of good cheer. It is I. Be not afraid”. He saw them, He came to them, He talked with them, and He went up into the ship to them. God is always aware of you. “Thou God seest me”, was the statement made by a Sarah’s maid Hagar, there in the wilderness. God is always aware of you. The psalmist said, “The darkness hideth not from thee, the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. Where then shall I go from Thy presence”? So, it said, “He saw them”. He saw them and He came to them and He talked with them. God is willing to talk with you. You can hear His voice if you will. How do you do this? Through the Word of God.” God who hath at different times and in different manners, spoke in time past under the fathers by the prophets, and these day, unto us by His son”. Thy Word, the entrance of thy words giveth light, and so the Lord Jesus Christ is the living Word and you have the written word, the Bible, and then you have the indwelling word, the Holy Spirit of God, who speaks to you directly in your heart and mind, based on, always based on the Word of God. God will never say something to you directly that is not in conformity with His Word. Isaiah 8:22, “The law unto the testimony for if they speak not according to this Word it is because there is no light in them”. Yes you can hear God’s voice in hours of panic or trouble or stress or perplexity or danger, you can hear His voice. He spoke to them and He said, “Be of good cheer. It is I. Be not afraid”. How wonderful that is to know that the Lord Jesus will say to you in these times of need, cheer up, I’m here. You don’t have to be afraid. Well that’s all review and you remember the last time we got together, we were talking about the different, be of good cheer’s. Matthew 9:2, sins forgiven, be of good cheer, sins are forgiven, and then the presence that we’ve just been talking about, be of good cheer, it is I, be not afraid. His presence near you makes all the difference in the world, and then provision, “In the world, ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. John records our Lord Jesus is saying, John 16:33, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world”. He has made provision for your being a victor. You don’t have to wonder, will I make it, you know, you don’t have to wonder, will I make it. He has made provision for you to be a victor.

Then we come now to something we didn’t get to talk about the last time and that is His plans for you, and we go over to Acts chapter 23. In this regard, let me turn the pages of my big Bible here so I can look at the in the passage and read it with you, This has to do with something that happened to the apostle Paul and it says, that, “The Lord stood by Paul in the night and said, ‘Be of good cheer Paul, for hath thou has testified of Me in Jerusalem so must thou bear witness also at Rome’”. Now, Paul is in Jerusalem, is in deep trouble, he’s been taken prisoner, he’s been accused by the religious groups of heresy and then also treason, and he’s now in kept in the castle, to keep him from being mobbed by the crowd outside.

Alright, in such a situation how would you feel, how would I feel? I think I’d be upset. I’d say, Lord what are You trying to do to me here? I’m trying to serve you and all this is happening. But God spoke to him and He said, “Be of good cheer Paul”. Yes, you’re in the castle, yes, you’re a prisoner, yes, your life is in danger, yes people have vowed to kill you. The following verse, verse 12, Acts 23:12 said, “When it was day, certain of the people banded the together bound themselves under a curse saying they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed Paul. They were more than forty, which made this conspiracy. Now, in a time then of great danger, certainly of personal discomfort and inconvenience, because was he was a captive and they probably bound him, then what? God says, I got plans for you. You’ve got to testify for me, not only in Jerusalem, but it Rome. I got plans for you. “Commit thy way unto the Lord and He shall direct thy paths”. “I know the thoughts that I think concerning you”, God says, “thoughts of good and not of evil to give you a desired end”. He Himself knew what He would do. We read of our Lord Jesus in John chapter 6. God knows, “He knoweth the way that I take”, said Job, “and when He has tried be I shall come forth as gold”. “I being in the way”, said the servant of Abraham, “I being in the way the Lord led me”, Paul says, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God”. James says, “If any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally, it shall be given him”. What does all this say to us? God knows what He’s doing, “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world”, Paul said, so God knows what He’s doing and He has plans for you. I simply cannot buy the idea that God set the world going and then moved off and let it take its own course, so that it’s not really very important whether you pray to be guided at 10 o’clock of a Tuesday morning on some specific matter,– because it’s up to you. I don’t believe that.

God will let you go your own way if you wish, because in that Romans 1, “Because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them up”. He will give you up if you insist on it and let you go your own way, and reap the terrible penalties of that. If you insist on it, yes He will, but God has plans for you beloved, and those plans are all inclusive. Now think a minute, think of the universe in which you live. It’s a universe that we are constantly discovering as to its infinite detail right down to the sub submicroscopic world. The electron microscope has now revealed to us that there are infinite reaches of detail and things that are working according to divinely prescribed plan that we didn’t even suspect.

When I was a boy in high school we talked about molecules. No one spoke about atoms, in those days back in the early 1920’s. That’s a long time ago isn’t it? They talked about molecules then. Then they talked about atoms and now they’ve broken the atom down into its component parts, and they’re finding that that all of these sub, submicroscopic elements, that you can only be aware of through the electronic microscopic magnification, that all of them are functioning according to predetermined plan, and there is not a random universe just wandering around waiting to explode, but God has put thought into planning all of these things, from the tiniest detail, right straight out to the great, stellar spaces that operate on split-second timing by which we set our atomic clocks. Hey, if there’s a God that that’s careful about details of a creation, don’t you think that He has put thought into what happens to you, my dear friend. Jesus said, “Ye are of more value than many sparrows”. The creation is valuable to God, not one little bird falls without His knowing it, but Jesus says, you’re of much more value and if God has taken care of the details of creation, don’t you think it stands to reason that He is going to have even more care for you, His precious child? Why of course it’s true. Jesus said, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. He didn’t say counted, He said numbered. There is a separate number assigned to every hair follicle on your head. Now, that’s entirely possible in the age of the computer, but to God, God has annotated all of this in His infinite, painstaking care of each of His creatures.

You stop to think about that for a minute and you’ll realize that it makes an awful lot a sense to pray your way through the day. Pray your way through the day, pray when you wake up. Those first few, fleeting moments are very important. The impressions that come to your heart and mind in those first few moments of consciousness are so important. Pray when you wake up, pray before you tackle the first job of the day, pray before you answer the phone, you know who it is on the other end of the wire, pray before you open a letter, you don’t know it’s a bill or a check or a threat, or a nice friendly letter, pray before you make a decision, pray before you hire, someone pray before you fire someone, pray before you go shopping, before you buy, before you sell, pray before you sign a contract, pray before you go on a date, pray before you take a job or leave one, pray your way through the day and then when the day is over you can turn out the whole pocket full of memories and say with delight, Jesus led me all the way.

See God has plans for you. He planned for the universe, He certainly has a better plan for you who are of much more value. One of you my listeners is of more value than the entire world. Jesus said it, didn’t He? “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”, or what shall a man give, once he’s lost soul, what can he give in exchange for his soul, how can he buy it back? Impossible. You are so valuable to God that He has plans for you. Now, don’t you want to fit into His plans? There is no manual that says do this at 10 o’clock on a Tuesday morning, but the indwelling Holy Spirit will guide you, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God”. So, today depend on your Lord to guide you through the day, He says cheer up I got plans for you. It’s great, isn’t it?

Dear Father today, may we be found praying our way through the day, so that we can fit in with Thy divine plans, I ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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