Risk the Situation on God

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much and hello again, dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing alright? Yes, that little greeting establishes the fact that this is indeed your friend, Dr. Cook and I’m glad to be back with you. What a joy it is to share the Word of God together in these brief moments that we have day by day.

Paul says, “I’m praying for you folk at Colossae and I’m praying that your hearts might be comforted.” We talked about that the last time we got together. God is the God of all comfort and the blessed Holy Spirit has been given to the believer and His name, as the Lord Jesus called him, is The Comforter. If you’ll open your life to the Spirit of God, he’ll make real to you all of the blessed touch of your Heavenly Father in comfort and in blessing and in peace. That’s God’s wonderful promise.

Now he says, “That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love.” The Ministry of the Spirit of God is to shed abroad God’s love in our lives. Romans 5:5, “Hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given unto us.” Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5, “The love of Christ constraineth us because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then we’re all dead: And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which loved and died for them,” and so on.

The love of Christ makes us do what we do, says Paul. And the Person who makes God’s love real, who sheds it abroad in your life, that’s a phrase that is similar to the idea of turning on a light. When you turn on a light in the dark room, the light may be in the ceiling, but all of the brilliance of illumination is shed abroad throughout the whole room, isn’t it? Now that’s the idea. This wonderful person, the Holy Spirit of God, lights up every part of all of your life and He does it, He does it by infusing the very love of God, John 3:16 kind of love, agape. God so loved the world, Calvary love. That kind of love is shed abroad in your heart.

Now, whatever denomination one belongs to really doesn’t matter at this point, it is a fact, I think, without any possible contradiction, it is a fact that people who have opened their hearts and lives to the fullness of the Spirit of God. Ephesians 5:18 says, “Be filled with the spirit.” People who have opened their lives to the fullness of the Spirit of God, manifest a divine atmosphere of love in their relationships with other human beings and this is a heavenly love not touched or corrupted with any earthly human carnal sinful factors.

This is God’s wonderful Calvary love. Reaching out to people, accepting them as they are, loving them for Jesus’ sake, seeking to bring them into a relationship with the Lord, belonging as believers to each other. The more you know God, the more you know the presence and power of the blessed Holy Spirit of God, the more He will shed abroad God’s love in your life. And as a result, the closer you will feel to other believers, being knit together in love. When you have felt the touch of God upon your life, I can assure you that you are going to feel more warm and acceptive and belonging, so to speak, to other believers. That’s a fact. If you have difficulty with some of God’s dear children… You know, some of God’s children are not impossible, but they certainly are difficult, isn’t that true?

Not everybody is as nice as you and I. Well, if you have difficulty with people and who doesn’t, the answer is not in trying to change to the people. The answer is in getting alone with your Lord until your own heart is filled with His love, unqualified personal regard where you’re not trying to change the person, you’re just accepting the person because Jesus accepted him or her. And you belong to every other believer in a very special wonderful way. Oh, this is such a transforming truth. Once it gets hold of your life, you’ll never really be the same, beloved. Once you realize that when God fills your heart with love, you are automatically in tune with other people who love Jesus. And that careful calculating appraisal of the other person. “What’s he up to now? What’s he want now?” And so on. That’s gonna be entirely absent. No, you won’t be naive. You won’t be gullible. My old boss, Vic Cory, used to say, “You don’t have to have a high degree, a high coefficient of gullibility in order to be spiritual.” I remember his saying that on occasion.

You won’t be naive and gullible, you’ll know what the score is, but you will have love for people that doesn’t defend itself against them, that doesn’t reject them, and that doesn’t criticize them. Knit together in love. I think the miracle of Christian fellowship is that God takes people who are so diverse and who bonds them together so that they belong.

My interpreter in Japan many years ago was, Reverend Oda. We called him Oda Sensei. The word “Sensei” is the respectful suffix that they use for teachers and reverends and that sort of a thing. Oda Sensei, what a precious man of God he was. He’s now with the Lord. But as we traveled, of course, he was the product of a different culture, a different nature and nation, a different language, different customs. And I was this come-lately American, who was over there, but he was my interpreter. And how close, how close we became in the things of Christ. He looked at me one day and said with a chuckle, he said, “Brother” he said, “I’m so close to you that when I’m interpreting for you, even when you cough, I cough.” [chuckle] Well, that’s pretty close.

Do you have any experience of that with other believers? You can, you know. To be so full of God’s love that you feel a belonging to other children of His. And they don’t have to talk your language, and they don’t have to follow your customs, they don’t have to like what you like to eat, and they don’t have to dress the way you dress. And their methods of Christian work may be altogether different from yours, but oh, you belong to them and they to you, because you both belong to Jesus. What a wonderful oneness that is in Christ. Our Savior prayed in his high priestly prayer, as recorded in John 17, “That they all may be one, even as thou, Father and I are one.” To be one with other Christians in that blessed union where the individual is distinctive but the union brings us both together. Oh, that’s great, being knit together in love.

Now, what’s the result of it? Unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, the full assurance of understanding. The riches of the full assurance of understanding. God wants you to understand what He’s up to. He wants you to know his purposes, He wants you to know what He desires to accomplish through your life. And part of the way you get understanding, is to let Him fill your life with Himself. This full assurance concept is found elsewhere. And the writer to the Hebrews says, “We desire that every one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end.” You have the assurance of understanding, where you realize what God’s purposes are as revealed in his blessed Word. You have the full assurance of hope. Peter says, “We’ve been born again to a living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Your hope is in a person, not in a position, not in an organization, but in a wonderful living person, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then over in Hebrews 10:22, it ought to be, “Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” Understanding and hope and faith. Full assurance.

Let’s talk about this matter of being assured. Where does it come from? “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” Base your assurance, not on your feelings and not on what you have done or haven’t done, but on the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the promises of God as found in His infallible, inerrant Word, the Bible. The full assurance of understanding. Read your Bible, find out what God says. Dr. James M. Gray used to say, “find out what the Bible says, you’ll have very little difficulty with what it means.”

What does the Bible say, the full assurance of understanding. What is God’s will for me, the full assurance of understanding. Then commit yourself unreservedly to this wonderful Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and you have the full assurance of hope. Because he said, “Because I live, ye shall live also.” We know that we have a place in heaven. He said, “I go to prepare a place for you.” We know that he’s coming again. “If I go away, I will come again and receive you to myself.” We know that we are accepted in Him and that we are complete in Him, we’ll get to that blessed truth a little later on in this second chapter of Colossians. Complete in Christ.

So you have the full assurance, then, of hope. How do you make it real? You apply faith, the full assurance of faith. Faith risks the situation on God. Faith says, “God, You said it, I believe it and that settles it.” And when you have committed yourself to that position of believing God’s Word and acting on it, there isn’t any more wobble left in your status. You are assured. You know what you know. You know whom you have believed, as Paul says, and you know that the Word of God tells you certain things and you’re acting upon them. So you’ve got the full assurance of understanding, the full assurance of hope and the full assurance of faith. God wants you to be sure where you stand.

How do you begin that? You start with the Word of God, you commit yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and you act on what you know to be God’s will in faith. That is how to be assured with God.

Now, the next time we get together, we’ll talk about the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and the Father in Christ. That’s a blessed passage there, and I’m eager to get at it with you.

Dear Father, today, may we have that blessed assurance that’s based on Thy eternal Word and that commits us to obedience in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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