Rooted And Grounded

Transcript

Alright. Thank you very much and hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? You’re doing all right? I trust so. Bless your heart. It’s nice to be back with you. This is your good friend, Bob Cook, and I’m delighted for the privilege and I do consider it a holy God-given privilege of sharing His Word with you day by day.

Do you know whose birthday it is today? The founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth. He was born in 1829. Every place I’ve gone throughout the whole world, I found that the people of the Salvation Army were on the job winning souls, helping to help those who were poor, distressed, in trouble, in disaster, and all of them needing the message of hope and new life through the Lord Jesus Christ. Whenever you’re in contact with the Salvation Army, help them, encourage them, and thank God for them. Wonderful, wonderful ministry.

Well, you and I have been looking at II Peter 1 and the passage that we’ve been dealing with has stated that you can — although God has already given you everything that pertains to life and godliness, it’s all yours already. By faith you can claim it. In the second place, all of this is implemented in your life through the work of the Holy Spirit as he applies God’s Word whereby are given unto us succeeding great and precious promises that by these promises you might be partakers of the divine nature. A profile of God’s very attributes shining out of your life because the Word of God has taken hold in you. Then he said there’s something you can do by faith. “Add to your faith virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, Calvary love.”

And now we’ve gotten into the discussion of that last word and to brotherly kindness. In your King James Version it says “charity.” That’s our word “Calvary love,” John 3:16 kind of love, Greek word “agape,” Calvary love. We talked about that a little the last time we got together. It’s shed abroad this wonderful godly love. It’s shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. When you become a Christian, opening your heart by faith so that the Lord Jesus Christ is Lord and is Savior, then the Holy Spirit comes in to dwell within you, and when He does he brings with Him the very love of God and just sheds it around. He sprinkles it around. He distributes it around in your hearts. It’s a great figure of speech, “shed abroad.”

And then this Calvary love motivates us. “The love of Christ constraineth us,” Paul says in II Corinthians 5:14. It becomes the basis on which we serve. “By love serve one another. You’ve been called to liberty, only use not this liberty as an occasion of the flesh but by love serve one another,” Galatians 5:13 is that reference. The mechanics of service is not the doing. It starts in the caring heart, by love serve. When there’s real Calvary love, you never hesitate at what there is to do. You want to think about that? When there’s real Calvary love in your heart, you don’t hesitate about the doing of things because you’re already launched upon a commitment to doing whatever is necessary to serve the other person’s need. That would serve, of course, as I explained to you is a very meaningful and practical and almost dramatic word. If you want to transliterate it, it means “serve like a slave.” Serve like a slave. Your own rights and ambitions and desires and prejudices and hopes and fears and future dreams, all of them subservient to your desire to serve others in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Serving.

And then we also — this is only a review but it’s for the sake for someone who may just have tuned in to the broadcast and you need to catch up with us. Then we talked about abounding, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and in all judgment. God’s love multiplies itself. You exercise a little faith. Faith is the same way. You exercise a little faith and you’ll have more faith. “Thereby is the righteousness of God revealed,” we see in Romans 1:17, “Thereby is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith.” And the glory of God is something that multiplies itself. “We all with open face,” this I think is II Corinthians 3:18, isn’t it? “We all with open face beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image,” just like Him, “from glory to glory.” A little bit of God’s glory shining through your life will result in a chance for more of it to shine out.

So love abounds. It spills over. It multiplies. Don’t be afraid of letting your heart be filled with God’s love and don’t be afraid of showing that kind of love. Now, there is a phony self-seeking kind of love that seeks to take advantage of other people. Don’t fall into that trap. But there is a godly Holy Spirit love that is wholesome and when you express it, other people feel safe with you because they know you’re not trying to get something from them. You understand me? God’s Calvary love is the giving kind of love. God so loved that He gave His only begotten son. By love serve one another. Calvary love. Divine love is a giving kind of love not a getting kind of love. Now, remember that in your dealing with other people, that wholesome, godly, open, non-threatening, non-finagling, no private agenda kind of godly love with which people feel safe. That’s the kind that you and I want to have characterizing our lives.

Well, let me go on to Ephesians 3:17, “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints, the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. That ye might be filled with all the fullness of God, rooted and grounded in love, filled with all the fullness of God knowing personally by experience the love of Christ which passes knowledge.”

Now where does that start? Well, it starts in the beginning of the 17th verse that Christ might be at home in your hearts by faith. There’s a Greek verb “oikeo,” which means “to dwell,” “to be at home in.” and the verb that’s used here is a compound of that very verb with the prefix “kata” which means “right straight across.” So what he’s actually saying is that the Lord Jesus might feel at home in every part of your life right straight across the line. Now, you see that’s a big order, isn’t it? And yet there you have it.

You know what it is to feel at home, don’t you? When you’d come to your own home, you can take off your coat and your tie and kick off your shoes, feel comfortable. You can ask for a second plate of soup. They say home is a place where you can grumble and ask for a second helping of soup. Well, whatever. Feel at home. But when you go to stay with somebody else, you don’t always feel at home. Those of us who traveled down the road in Christian work are familiar with that. I’m sure every pastor and evangelist who has done some traveling in Christian work will immediately identify with what I’m about to tell you. You’re going to have a series of meetings in a given town and this is a town where there isn’t any hotel or motel nearby so you have to room with one of the families of the congregation where you’re going to minister.

And so you arrive in town and you’re a little bit early. So you come to the door and the lady comes to the door and she is not quite ready for you. She still got curlers in her hair and things aren’t quite set and so she says, “Oh, come in and make yourself at home.” Now, what she means is sit in that chair in the corner and don’t make any noise. Just stay there. That’s what she means when she says “make yourself at home.” Well, an hour or so later, the family gathers and you have dinner together and you go off to the meeting and the meeting goes well and after that you come back home and maybe you have a cup of coffee or something and talk a little and then they say, “Now, we’ll show you your room.” Well, it isn’t really your room. It’s Junior’s room and he’s sleeping downstairs on two chairs. But there it is. And they say, “Now, we generally get up about seven o’clock,” and what they’re saying is “Don’t sleep until noon and don’t get up at 5:00 and rustle around and wake us all up.” And then they say, “Well, just make yourself at home.”

Well, you know, this is it now and you get ready for bed and you kneel down beside the bed and you pray for Mama and the kids and the rest of the work that God has given you and then you get off to sleep and another day starts. Well, let’s say that meeting goes well and after a few days you begin to feel a little more relaxed in the atmosphere of this home where you’re a guest. And one day the man of the house says, “You know, I do a little extra carpenter work. Would you like to see my carpenter shop?” Yes, you sure would. So you get out in the basement and there he has a band saw and a circular saw and a coping saw and a planer and a joiner and I don’t know what all, you know, and a lathe. He’s got them all, bought them all at Sears or wherever, and he’s so proud of it and he shows you. There was one man that was showing off his carpenter shop and just about cut off one of his fingers. I had to take him to the hospital to get his fingers sewed back on.

So watch it, fellows, if you’re going to show off your shop. Then he says, “Now, I’ve been building a little extra bedroom in what used to be the attic because the boys are getting older and they’re going to need an extra room. Would you like to see that?” Yes, you would. So you’d go up this steep stairway, bump your head on the cross beam on the way up. I got a ridge on my head from bumping it on cross beams on the way up to attics, I think. And he shows it all to you and all of a sudden it dawns on me. He says, “You know, could I call you Bob?” “Why sure.” And we shake hands. “Hello, Bob.” “Hello, Frank.” And he says, “You know,” he says, “You’re just like one of the family.” Now, it took 10 days, let’s say or whatever, it took a while, but now you’re at home in the place.

Now, Paul says, “That Christ may be at home in your hearts by faith.” You let the Lord Jesus by faith into every area of your life, basement and attic and all the rest. Let Him into every area of your life, every room in your heart house. And then you’ll find that He brings His own wonderful Calvary love with him and you’ll be rooted and grounded in love.

We’ll take that up now where we left off here the next time we get together.

Dear Father, today, may Jesus Christ, our Savior, dwell in our hearts with His love. Amen.

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