Stop And Take A Drink

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends, how in the world are you? Well, loving special greetings to all of you from your good friend, Bob Cook. I’m glad to be back with you, and I want to share with you again from God’s Word, the seventh chapter of the Gospel of John. We’re looking especially at verses 37 and 38, “In that last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, ‘If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his innermost being,” or from within him, “Shall flow rivers of living water.'” Last time we got together, I was emphasizing the fact that the Holy Spirit in describing what happened said, “It was the last day, the great day of the feast.” People were observing religious observances, and in their midst there was one who was giving them the divine offer of salvation and fulfillment, personal fulfillment, but through the Holy Spirit. Many of them didn’t realize it, but there He was. And so it is for you, my friend, as you listen, this could very well be God’s very special last day call to you.

What did He say? “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” Then the next phrase is an apposition to come unto me and drink. “He that believeth on me.” When the scripture uses the word “believe,” it is in the sense of commitment, opening your life to the Lord Jesus Christ and committing yourself to Him, and absorbing, receiving, all of the eternal blessings that He will then pour out upon you. Take this statement apart and see what it says, “If any man thirst.” Many years ago, it was pointed out to me by one of God’s choice servants who encouraged Bob Cook from time to time, that God deals with people who really want Him. If any man thirst. The essence of divine opportunity hinges upon human desire and heart hunger. In the Beatitudes, the Lord Jesus said, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.” The prophet Jeremiah said, quoting God’s Word to the people, “Ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” Moses in his word to the people so many centuries ago said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy strength, all thy might, all thy soul.” God wants a special desire to come from our hearts to be really in earnest about things. Casual praying doesn’t get very far.

Our Lord Jesus said in Mark Chapter 11, “What things soever ye desire, believe that you receive them and ye shall have them.” “What things soever ye desire when ye pray.” That word “desire” is a very strong word, it means beg, plead, crave, demand, desire, and ask. All of those different meanings you’ll find in your Greek lexicon if you look up that verb in the original Greek New Testament. What you really crave, what you really want, what you really are asking for, what you’re really are begging for, what you really are demanding that God do for you, it’s John Knox praying there in his little room at the corner of some of those streets there in Edinburgh, I went past the house where he used to live years and years ago. And it’s John Knox praying, “O God, give me Scotland, or I’ll die.” Oh, have you ever gone that route in dealing with God? Now, I understand you can’t work yourself up to an emotional pitch and then try to somehow to fabricate a prayer that will measure up to these standards. I understand that. But what Jesus was saying was, “If you really get hungry and thirsty for me, you’re gonna be satisfied.” “If any man thirst.” How much do you want God to fill your life?

Now, there are various aspects that you have to consider. One is, oftentimes we draw back because a life completely full of God would rule out certain things that may be very dear to the individual. Have you faced that? The fact that your weak and pointless praying may be traced to some areas in your life that you don’t want God to meddle with. You’re willing to pray, “Lord bless me and guide me,” but you’re not willing to say, “Lord, in Jesus’ name I forsake this.” You see, God expects you to do the forsaking by faith, and He does the cleansing. That’s how that works. Until your mind is made up that this is what you want God to do, nothing will happen, no matter how well you pray. “He that covereth his sin shall not prosper, but who so confesseth and forsaketh it shall have mercy,” we read in the Book of Proverbs. And so if any man thirst, drives me immediately to a confrontation with my own duplicity, where my mixed motives have stood in the way of a full experience of the Holy Spirit of God in my life.

Will you face that today, friend? How much do you want fullness? Well, He says, “If any man thirst.” Are you willing to face those things that have been weakening your approach to God? And have been standing in the way of complete commitment to your Lord. Thirst, how much do you want God? It must be noted that God sometimes allows circumstances to nudge us closer to Him. People have said to me through the years as I visited them as their pastor, they would say, “Well, I guess God had to lay me aside, so I’d take time to seek Him.” God lovingly nudges us in His direction. “Not knowing,” says Paul, “That the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.”

God works on us just that we might seek Him. Joe Mrozek said in 1948, in the first great Youth for Christ Congress in Switzerland, there in Beatenberg. And we had delegates from all over the world, one of whom was Joe Mrozek, a lawyer from Poland. He had lost everything, everything, that is, in the war. All of his family, his law library, and his home, his office. He stood on a pile of rubble 18 or 20 feet high, and knew that at the bottom of that pile of rubble lay the bodies of his loved ones. Joe Mrozek, I remember him. He arrived ragged and tired, wearing shoes, the bottoms of which were filled with holes. He was literally back on his feet again. [chuckle] Bless him. Well, we clothed him and fixed him up before we sent him back to Poland, I’ll let you know that. But he stood there and gave his testimony, and he finished with these words, plaintive, tragic, but so true. He said, “I guess God had to take things and people away from me so that I could find Him.”

Oh, don’t fight God today. The things that are happening in your life are calculated to drive you to your knees, not to distraction; not to bitterness, and not to despair, but to your knees where you’ll seek God. Would you remember that? Something happens that you don’t like, some accident, some reversal, some disappointment, some deep hurt. And you say, “Why does this have to happen to me?” Just remember, God doesn’t make any mistakes. And He wants you to be more like the Lord Jesus when you’ve gone through it. Let what happens today drive you to your knees. “If any man thirst.” Jesus waits until you get thirsty for Him, then he’ll satisfy your heart.

He said, “Let him come unto me and drink.” And that phrase is in parallel position with the next one. “He that believeth on me.” To believe on the Lord Jesus means to come to Him and accept what He has for you. “Come unto me and drink.” It means believe on Him, and that means come to Him and accept what He has for you. In other words, commitment, commit yourself unequivocally to the Lord Jesus Christ. Surrender, yield yourselves to God. You see, surrender is built into your bones, beloved. You’re going inevitably to surrender to something or somebody. You’re never your own person completely. Surrender is built into your bones and into your nerve synapses. And so Paul says, “As ye have yielded the members of your body slaves to unrighteousness, even so now,” same way, same process, same action, “Even so now yield yourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead and your members of your body as servants of righteousness.” Romans 6 is the passage.

Say beloved, would you work on that today? Would you work on the idea of yielding yourself to God just the way you have given up other times to temptation and to evil? You see, you fall into temptation by first it presents itself, second you think about it, shall I? Shall I not? The little mental moral monitor somewhere back in your brain is saying, “Shall I, shall I not?” Finally, you grow weary of resisting, and you cave in; you yield, and you go down. Isn’t that true? You try, you grow weary, you cave in, you yield. Now, the Word of God says the same thing needs to happen, but in a different direction. Cave in all right, give up all right, yield all right, but to Jesus.

How often I have said, “Oh, Lord, I can’t handle this, you’ll have to handle it for me. Unless you take control, Lord, I’m sunk.” I can recall on one occasion, I was in a conversation with someone who was just hammering away at me; people do that sometimes. And I could feel the pressure rising within me, resentment and anger, not to say rage. I could feel the pressure rising within me. And I knew that if it kept on the way it was going there was gonna be an explosion. And Bob Cook would be saying some things that he’d be sorry for. And I remember praying deep in my spirit, “Oh, Jesus, I can’t handle this, you take care of it for me.”

And friends, I tell you the truth. I could feel the resentment and the anger going out of my spirit just like you release the steam from a pressure cooker. And all of a sudden I was calm, and I was actually happy. [chuckle] Hallelujah. Oh, have you learned this, that you can take the person you are, bring it to Jesus, surrender to Him, and He satisfies you with His own presence. “Let him come unto me and drink.” You don’t offer a thirsty man a piece of cake or a turkey sandwich. A person who’s dying of thirst needs one thing, and that’s water. “Let him come unto me and drink.” God will satisfy the hunger of your heart, the thirst of your heart with that which exactly you need. Precious, precious truth. Oh, instead of caving into self and giving up and yielding to yourself in sin, give up to Jesus, that’s what this means. I’ll take the rest of John 7:38 the next time we get together.

Father God today, may we yield to Jesus and drink deeply of the water of life. I ask in His name, Amen.

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