Short Advice, Long Love

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much and hello again, dear radio friends, how in the world are you? You’re doing alright today? Well, I trust so. Yes, of course I always wait for you to answer, why not? I wait for you to tell me how you are, sure I do. Well, yes, this is your friend, Dr. Cook and I’m glad to be back with you. And we’re looking now into the closing verse of Colossians Chapter 1, and then we go on into Chapter 2 as time remains for us. Do you like this idea of taking it verse by verse and word-by-word? It helps me, I know because it puts me in touch with the truth of the Bible, as we relate various truths and doctrines and phrases and words to the rest of the inerrant, infallible Word of God, the Bible.

Well, anyhow, Paul said, “My goal is to warn, to teach and present every person perfect, in Christ Jesus.” He said, “I’m not satisfied till you are grown up in Christ.” The word, “Perfect” means mature or grown-up. So he says, “I’m working at this.” “Where unto I also labor.” He said, “I’m working at it.” I remember one of our co-workers in Youth for Christ, many years ago who had a position of some responsibility, but who sometimes would get a little tardy with meeting his deadlines. And I would come and I say, “How you doing?” He’d say, “I’m working on it.” [laughter]

That was back in the 1950s, I suppose even today when I meet him, he’s now retired, but serving the Lord vigorously preaching around and all of that, but even today when I meet him, he’ll smile, look at me and say, “I’m working on it.” Well, are you working at helping anybody grow up? See, these things don’t happen, you don’t drift into sanctity or a spiritual maturity. If you drift, my friend, you’ll drift the other way. No boat ever drifted upstream. And if you just let things be laissez-faire, if you just let things be and don’t bother, the drift is always downstream, always down. So, Paul says, “I’m working at this… To see you precious people in Colossae, to see you grown up in Christ.” How do you do that, how do you work at helping somebody else grow up? Have you ever thought about that? Well everyone I think you have to have them on your heart, you have to think about them and pray about them. There has to be on our part enough concern about the individual to have him or her on our mind. You say, “Well, what difference does that make?” It makes a great deal of difference. God answers prayer.

I know, that any blessing there is in my own ministry, comes as a result of the prayers of God’s dear people and of my own loved ones who constantly pray for me, I know that. And God answers prayer and when you begin to pray for someone, he is enabled by His Holy Spirit to work in that somebody’s life. Alright, the first thing that I’ve said to you, if you’re gonna work at helping somebody else grow up, get him or her on your mind and heart enough that you’re constantly praying for that person. I think, two, that you have to face up to the fact that they do have their shortcomings, and frailties and faults, maybe sins and you have to accept the person and love him or her as he or she is. “To accept the person as he is,” Carl Rogers, the psychologist and psychiatrist says in one of his books, “The client will get no good from you, unless he is accepted, respected, and beloved.” You have to accept him for what he is, you have to respect him because he’s a human being made in the image, however marred now by sin and sickness, made in the image of his creator and you have to love him just as he is. Love is unqualified. Personal regard. There isn’t any ifs, ands or howevers or never-the-lesses in love. You have to love him, have to have him on your heart, have to accept him, have to respect him or her.

How do you work at helping somebody else grow up? First, have them on your heart to pray constantly for them. Two, accept them and love them as they are. Number three, form a bond of confidence, with the person so that you can, without offense talk about matters that are sensitive although important. You don’t barge into somebody’s life and say, “See here now, I’m gonna help you grow up as a Christian. There are two, three things that need fixing.” Oh no, don’t do that. You have to spend enough time with the person, to where he or she feels safe with you, to be able to sit still in the presence of another human being without having to make a speech or say anything or do anything because there is a sense of being safe with you, that needs to be cultivated, you have to work at it. You’ve have to spend time with the individual and show that you’re interested in him or her as they are at present. I remember a self-confessed agnostic. He said he was an atheist, but I think he’s closer to what we would call an agnostic. He just didn’t know whether or not there was any God. I remember him saying, petulantly to me as I spoke to him of things eternal. We were both of us leaning against the rail of an ocean-going ship.

I was on a trip from, I think, it was Los Angeles on up to San Francisco or something in the old days on an ocean-going ship there that went up the coast overnight. And I remember speaking with this man, and he broke off his conversation, and said, with some petulance and almost anger, “I don’t to be, ever want to be one of your blessed statistics. I don’t wanna be one of your converts, I want somebody to care about me.” Well, it was so pitiful although it was spoken in a petty manner. But that really is the heart of it. The problem with so many people, they don’t want my advice, they want me to want them, they want me to like them, they want me to respect them as they are. And I think this is part, isn’t it, of working at helping somebody else grow up spiritually? To spend enough time with the individual on a friendly non-threatening, non-judgmental basis to where he or she feels safe enough with you to open the heart and say some things that maybe need to be straightened out. Another thing is, be very, very short on advice and very long on example and love. There is more that’s caught C-A-U-G-H-T than taught T-A-U-G-H-T. More of it is caught than taught. I can’t remember, I have to confess, any of my father’s interminable lectures, which he gave me when I was a boy growing up, he was a great person and lecturer.

Had he had any formal education, he would have turned out to be a minister, I’m sure, because to the end of his days, he read and studied his Bible and was an avid reader and collector of all sorts of books, and all that. But he was a great one first and making me stand while he comfortably seated in his rocking chair would lecture me. Oh, I hated that. I got tired of standing for one thing, and the lecture seemed so long and he was correct about things no doubt about that, and I deserved whatever I was getting, but I would have the irritating teenage habit of shutting off my mind and just waiting for him to quit. Have you ever had junior do that to you? Finally, you break off in complete frustration and say, “Oh if you would only listen to me,” oh dear, that happens to us all I guess. There I was high school boy being lectured. I don’t remember what the dear man said to me, I really don’t. You know what I remember? I remember hearing him pray for his boy, at 5:00 in the morning when I woke up, sleepy-eyed rolling over in bed and saw him kneeling there beside the old rocking chair that was his favorite, he turned on the gas jet so that there was a little heat in the cold room as he knelt in the early morning hours, to pray for his motherless boy. I remember that. Oh yeah.

I remember the ease with which he would approach someone about the gospel. He was shy by nature, so much so that when he came to live with me after the years had passed, and Coreen and I had set up our home and he came to live with us for some years, so shy that when someone strange came into the home, he would go upstairs and shut the door. He wasn’t at ease in the presence of strangers, very shy man inside. But when he spoke about the Lord Jesus, he was charming and open and affable, and I remember seeing him approach people and speak of Christ to them in such a loving and open way. I remember that. A lot of other things I remember. Oh, I remember some of his faults he had lots of them just like you and like me, but you see the lectures are gone. If you’re gonna help somebody grow up in Christ be very, very sparing of advice, long on love and example. Alright, he says, “I’m working at this, I’m working at it.” Following up that person is very important. If in a conversation, there has surfaced a certain problem, let us say, then the next time you get together, instead of talking about the weather or the latest Sports Statistics, say, “Jim, how are you getting along on that matter, about which we prayed the last time, the Lord helping you on it?”

See follow-up is very important if you’re gonna work at helping somebody grow up. Well, those are just a few ideas. Pray earnestly, accept the person and love him. Short on advice and long on love and the example. Follow-up, so they know that you really care. When I came to see a young man in hospital, we’d had some conversations and I could see that he was resisting any kind of friendship on my part, I came to see him in the hospital, he looked up and he said, “Gee Doc, you really do care, don’t you?” It’s that follow up to the conversation that makes the difference. Alright? Let the person know you’re interested in him, not in what you can do about him, or say to him. To be interested in the person, to love the person, to pray for the person gives God a chance to work either through you or independently or through others in answer to prayer. Paul says, “I labor according to His working, which worketh in me mightily.” So then the last point that we have to make here if you’re gonna work at helping somebody else grow up in Christ, make sure that your own life is just full of God, make sure that everyday the blessed Spirit of God has access to every room in your heart house. Then He’ll use you to help others.

Dear Father, today, help us to work at helping others grow up in Jesus, Amen.

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