Praying His Will

If you want things to be better, start doing all that you know to be the Will of God.


Scripture: 1 Peter 3:12

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Yes, this is your friend, Bob Cook, and I’m so grateful for the privilege of being back with you here and there across the continent, up and down the West Coast, in the mid-section of the country, and up and down on the East Coast by the matchless grace of our Lord I’m privileged to speak with you. Some of you just going to rest at the close of the day and others of you just waking up, some of you say you set your radio alarm so that you wake up to the beginning of this broadcast (Laughs), what an awful thought to wake up to my voice (Laughs). Well, if you want it that way that’s Alright with me just so you’re there and just so you get blessed. Wherever you are and whatever is going on with you, I pray that God may bless these moments for his glory and for our edification, that’s a long word meaning “build up”. I want to you to be built up in the things of God as we fellowship together on His Word.

We’re just walking around in 1 Peter, Chapter 3, and we’re finishing up our discussion of verse 12, “Live your life”, this is how to live a life of blessing, right? Good days, good words, hate evil, do good, seek peace, that means avoid the confrontational, and look for a peaceful way to face issues in life without necessarily, don’t compromise but look for peace.

Live your life realizing that God’s sees you, pray your prayers realizing He hears you and then he says, “But the face of the Lord is against them that do evil”. I want to talk with you about this just for a moment before we go on. Live your life knowing that God sees you. There’s never moment when you can say, well it doesn’t matter now. It’s does matter because God is watching you and me. And when we pray it says, “His ears are open to their cry”, but it has to be a cry, “call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not”, “for whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Everything in the scripture tells me I have to mean business when I pray. Solomon said, when you go in the house of the Lord, “Watch what you say to him, God is in heaven and thou on earth, therefore that thy words be few, when thou vowest a vow defer not to pay it”. Why should God be angry with you because you broke your promise? God wants me to be serious with him and I think one of the great problems in our day is that triviality of much that we call Christian life and work and praying.

Much of our praying in meetings, listen to the next time somebody leads in prayer, it’s a good speech to God with the eyes shut but to say that it was deeply in earnest or that it really reached heaven and there was some result from it, well you see it was just a word of prayer to open the meaning. Yeah, I know, the great problem we face in our day is the shallowness with which we approach the deity. Now I’m not a ritualist although I enjoy the beautiful services of the more formal churches among us but I suppose if you wanted to put me in some kind of a type, I’m more of an informal person and yet I think it must offend our Lord when he sees the casualness and the shallowness with which we approach worship services and our relationship to God in general.

“His ears are open to their prayers.” God waits for you to mean business and in your praying. Now having said that I’m not inveying against the ease and the perfect sense of peace when you just enjoy God’s presence, whenever I — one reason I like to drive is that I can talk to the Lord as I drive along and sometimes I will tell you I’ve prayed so earnestly that my eyes filled with tears and I had to pull off the road and wipe my eyes and blow my nose and get — so I could see the road again.

Yes, I do pray earnestly believe me, but other times I’ve said Lord I just want to love you and praise you and I would praise and express my love to him and worship him as I drove along and there was no sense then of desperation but just enjoying His presence and I think that’s alright, too. The point being however, that God knows what the score is when I say, “Our Father”, he knows what I’m thinking. “There’s not a word in my tongue but you, O Lord, knowest it altogether”, said the Psalmist. He knows what I’m thinking and Jesus said that He knew their thoughts, read the Gospels and find where it says, “Jesus knew their thoughts” and He said to them something that had to do with what they were thinking.

When He spoke to the man who was let down on a pallet through a hole in the roof by four companions as recorded in Mark’s 2nd Chapter and the Lord Jesus looked at the poor sick man, he said. “Son, thy sins are forgiven”, he saw their faith it says, they had the faith, the sick man didn’t. Small thought here, you can exercise faith for somebody else, did you realize that, “He saw their faith”. But he said to the sick man, “Son your sins are forgiven”, now these people in the crowd, they were thinking “who can forgive sins but God only. This is just a man, who can forgive sins but God only?”

And He said, whether it’s easier to say unto the sick and the palsy, thy sins are forgiven or rise and take up your pallet and go home, in other words which easier, to forgive him or to heal him, you birds can’t do either one. He knew what they were thinking but He said, “but that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sin, he saith to the sick of the palsy, ‘rise, take up thy bed and go thy way’ and the man took up his pallet that he’d been lying on and walked away.” Well–healed– because God had said the word.

Oh, to have the Savior speak the word of forgiveness and cleansing and all that we need is what, we want but when we come to him, you have to realize that he knows what we’re thinking, he knew what they were thinking that day in the incident recorded by Mark. And He knows what you’re thinking this minute. Often times I have to admit that what I say in my prayer does not exactly correspond with what I’m thinking in my heart, have you ever found that happening? You’re making a good prayer, its sounds good, but down in your heart you may be saying no to God on something that is a very special matter concerning which you’re not quite willing to come to grips.

Oh, that is such an important point and I have to learn it and re-learn it I guess maybe you do too. God knows what I’m thinking, I can’t fool him, He knows my thoughts so when I pray I have to be absolutely sincere, I have to tell Him the truth and if I want to get anywhere with God, I have to be in earnest, I can’t fool around. I have to tell Him and I have to risk the situation on Him.

Faith, that’s one of my “Cookisms”, you know that, faith is risking the situation on God. If we’re willing to risk the situation on whatever God is going to say and do in answer to your cry. His ears are open unto their prayers. Live your life with the realization that God sees you. Live your life with the realization that God hears your prayers. Now, what else, live your life, this is the blessed life we’re talking about, live your life with the realization that God does take sides. “The face of the Lord is against them that do evil”. God does take sides and He’s for you. The Old Testament prophet said, “The Lord is with you while ye be with him”, and the New Testament writer said, “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you”. God does take sides; God does involve himself in situations.

I take great comfort in inviting God’s participation in situations where I’m involved, to invite Him in to tell Him that you give Him the right to interfere with you, I learned that concept from Bob Pierce years ago, I heard him pray, he said, “God I’m going to give you the right to interfere with me. I don’t have to have it my way, you can interfere”. Well, I hadn’t even thought of it that way before. Give God the right to interfere with you, he’s the potter and you’re the clay. He’s the creator and you’re the creature. He’s in heaven and you’re on earth. Give him the right to interfere. Give him the right to do things His way and you won’t have any regrets when God is doing it. “The face of the Lord is against them that do evil”.

The Psalmist said, that when he was out of the will of God everything went wrong, 32nd Psalm, he said, even “my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long”, he said, “I felt so bad and I was in so much pain, I felt my bones were decaying”. I don’t know if he had osteoporosis or arthritis or whatever, who knows, but he was out of the will of God and things were going wrong, he felt bad, his health was involved, the whole bit, “the face of the Lord is against them that do evil”.

If you want things to be better, (things that is, situations, circumstances), start doing all that you know to be the will of God. Now, this may be, sound like over simplification, but you try it.

Dear Jesus, we’re yours, and today and we give ourselves to Thee, asking that the Holy Spirit of God may help us pray according to the will of God and get results, in Jesus name, Amen.

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



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