The Deal Of Your Life

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much, and hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing alright? Well, I’m singing bass this morning for some reason or other but otherwise, I’m feeling fine, and so glad to be back with you. We’ve been looking for a couple of days at a passage in Deuteronomy chapter 6 – the question of meaningfulness in life. “When thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, what mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments?” Problem with most people is that life gets to be a drag and a bore.

One of the great famous broadcasters of our time recently ended his life with a shotgun blast. Dave Garroway was found at about 9:30 one morning recently by his housekeeper lying dead with a shotgun beside him. And one wonders why would such a fine person who initiated the famous program, television program called Today and whose genial relaxed and laid back style became a benchmark of proficiency and success? Why would a person want to end his life? I don’t know. I don’t know.

I only know that so many people come to a place where they think nothing matters anymore and life is a drag and there’s no meaning to anything and so therefore they make that one tragic mistake that cannot be rectified. They blow themselves away into eternity in some way or another. If I’m speaking to someone today, this minute, who is so low down that you just feel like giving up, don’t. It’s always too soon to quit. And if you commit your life to the Lord Jesus Christ, the good shepherd will bring you through, “Yea though I walk through the valley, I will fear no evil; when thou passest through the waters, they shall not overflow thee.”

God brings you through. Give Him a chance. Don’t quit. Don’t give up on life. The whole thrust of these broadcasts is to remind you that God puts meaning into life if you let Him. This is all review but it’s for somebody who may need it and who’ve just tuned in the broadcast. The first factor of meaningfulness for you and for me comes in deliverance. We were Pharaoh’s slaves and God brought us out. Deliverance. God will deliver you from fear or from guilt or from greed or from pride or from resentment and the hatred which it engenders — God will deliver you from these things. Yes, He will.

All you have to do is to turn your life over to Him in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And when God takes hold of you, He gives you the victory. He delivers you. And then there was the concept of the miraculous. God showed miracles and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh and before our very eyes. God is the God of the miraculous. He will answer prayer. He doesn’t do for you and for me those things that we should do for ourselves – God will never answer your mail, God will never do your homework for you; the things that you and I ought to do for ourselves, He will not do but when you have done your best and you’re trusting in an almighty God, He reserves the right to intervene in human existence with His almighty power.

Believe in the God of the miraculous today. It will bring meaning to your life. And then it says, “He brought us out from Egypt that He might bring us in to give us the land which he promised unto our fathers. The idea of purpose was the third thing we talked about in this matter of bringing meaningfulness to life. Many a person is just drifting on to oblivion and life doesn’t really mean a lot at any given time because there’s no purpose to it. But when you link up forces with almighty God, you become part of His eternal plan and everything you say and do is meaningful then because it’s part of God’s plan.

Have you experienced that for yourself as yet, dear, friend? Have you experienced in your own life the consciousness that what you are doing at any given moment is part of God’s plan for you? Oh, this is so important. And now, how do you achieve that? First of all, you light up your whole life as a living sacrifice. Romans 12:1 “Beseech you that you present your body as a living sacrifice”. You give your whole life to God by faith. Don’t hold back a thing – money and friends and loved ones and job and past and present and future and career and dreams and hopes and fears – every part of all of your life, just give it to Him by faith.

Second, train your mind to think in scriptural concepts, that is to say, get into the Word of God and let the Holy Spirit of God speak to you in terms that are compatible with God’s will. God always works in line with His Word. “Thou hast exalted thy word above all thy name,” the Bible says. “Forever, O Lord Thy word is settled in heaven.” So line up your thinking in terms of Biblical concepts so that the Holy Spirit of God can guide you with reference to God’s eternal plans as therein revealed. Do you follow this?

Give your life to Him and then give your mind to Him by lining up your thoughts with Biblical concepts. And then, third, to get into the purpose of God, take the step of obedience that seems to be indicated at the time. Take the step of obedience that seems to be indicated at the time. Whenever you pray and wait on God, the Holy Spirit of God will indicate at least one step of obedience that you can take. If you want to be conscious of being in the very center of the will of God, dare to obey what God is saying to your heart right now.

Obey, for instance, that generous impulse. You’re passing someone who seems to have a need and momentarily, you think, “I ought to help,” but you’re busy, you’re preoccupied and like the priest on the way to Jericho, you don’t have time to stop and help the injured person and so you go on. Instead, dare to obey that generous impulse. I had said this, I suppose, a year or so ago on the broadcast. Someone wrote me a charming letter and said, “I took seriously, Mr. Cook, what you said that day and I began to look for ways of working out this very matter of giving myself away for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

She said, “I had been to the store and had put up my groceries into the trunk of the car and was about to return home. It was a snowy wintry day,” she said, “and the snow was deep upon the ground. As I started the car, I saw a lady, quite old, and stooped and looking frail, struggling along with two heavy bags of groceries, one in each arm and trying somehow to make her way through the snow. I pulled over. I obeyed that impulse. I pulled the car over and said, ‘Would you like to have me take you home?’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I was just praying that God would send somebody to help me. I don’t think I could make it. I’m not feeling that well,’”

And so groceries and the lady were brought into the car and within a few moments, she was deposited right at her front door, safe and sound and happy. Now, that’s a very simple matter, isn’t it? Helping somebody with their groceries. And yet in such a simple matter, God’s perfect will can be revealed through you. Our Lord Jesus said, “If you give so much as a cup of cold water to someone, in Jesus’ name, you’re not going to fail to receive your heavenly reward for it.” God keeps very careful accounts, beloved. And He’s not going to lose track of the things you do to obey the Spirit of God after you prayed about being in God’s will.

Take the step of obedience immediately whenever the Holy Spirit of God whispers it to your heart. Give your life to God, give your mind to God through the Bible and by yielding to the Spirit of God, take the step of obedience when you are prompted to do so, okay? This will get you and keep you in the will of God. Simple, isn’t it? Deceptively simple but amazingly profound and effective. The concept of purpose. “Now,” says he, “the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always that He might preserve us alive as it is at this very day.

The final concept of meaning that we want to talk about is the idea that when you yield your life to God and obey His will, you receive the best possible arrangement in life. The best possible deal, as people would say today. You get the best possible deal in life when you do the will of God. Now, you and I know that disobeying God’s law ends up in heartache and in woe. “The way of transgressors is hard,” says the Bible. “Be sure your sin will find you out,” the Word of God says. “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man but the end thereof are the ways of death,” said Solomon, the wise man.

He said, “What fruit,” this is Paul talking, “what fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.” The Bible is pretty plain in teaching us that if we go our own way, it is going to end only in heartache and disappointment, disillusionment, and ultimate destruction. Now, of course, all you have to do is to look around you to see that this is so. The man who is a slave to drink or drugs or other forms perhaps of self indulgence, the person who says, “I want to do my own thing,” and so he proceeds – he or she – proceeds to lash out at life in one way or in another always comes to a point where nothing seems to be right.

Dreams are shattered, hopes are gone, friends have forsaken, money is gone, health is gone, and you come and say, “Well, buddy, is that what you wanted when you said “Let me do my own thing?’” “No,” he says sadly, “that isn’t what I had in mind.” The way of transgressors is hard. I guess you and I know that, don’t we? Some of us know it by bitter experience. Well, then, what is the alternative? The alternative, beloved, is to turn your life over to the Lord Jesus Christ so that the will of God can be done in your life. And when that happens, this verse says, “you get the best possible deal in life.”

Dear Father today, we ask that we may be kept in the center of Thy will, happy and satisfied with God’s best, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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