Turning Yourself Over To God

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing alright? Oh, this is your friend, Bob Cook. I’m glad to be back with you praising The Lord. Happy in Him.

And I trust things are going well for you. If you struck a rough day, beloved, look up and say “Lord Jesus, see me through this one,” and He will. You don’t have to have any unsuccessful days when you’re trusting your blessed Lord. “When He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth ahead.” And Our Lord Jesus will never ask you to go through a day or a night where His presence is not real and where you will not be able to discern the footsteps that have a nail print in them. He’d goeth ahead. He’ll lead you this very day. Trust Him, trust Him.

You and I are just doing a long farewell to the 37th Psalm, winding up our thought, and we’ve been started now in verse 40. “The Lord shall help them.” I was talking about that when we got off the air the last time. Remember? “And deliver them.” Now “help” has to do with helping you, enabling you to finish an assignment, to complete some work successfully. Then he says “and deliver them.” That has to do with rescuing you out of a situation that you can’t handle. Oh, life is full of them, and to our sorrow we have to admit that oftentimes we tried to handle these situations ourselves and we have failed in the process.

Learn with me. I have to learn these lessons over and over again. You’d think I’d know enough wouldn’t you? But I have to keep relearning them just like the rest of us, because we’re human beings, I guess. Learn the process of committing a situation to your God instead of trying to handle it yourself. You’re irritated and the temptation is to blow your stack. Commit yourself to the Lord in faith before the explosion. You’re tempted to do or say something wrong. Turn it over to your Blessed Lord and let Him deliver you, let Him rescue you from the situation. Do you know about this? If you don’t understand what I am saying to you, give it a try.

The next time you’re faced with a situation you know you can’t handle, just turn to your Blessed Lord and say “Lord, handle this for me,” and see what happens. He’ll “deliver,” it says. He rescues you out of an impossible situation; one that you can’t handle. Now what happens actually, is the more you let God rescue you, the stronger you get in your spiritual life, because it becomes fixed habit, pattern, to let God control.

And so Paul writes in Romans 15, “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” That word “believe” is commitment. When you keep on committing yourself to the Lord, you get filled with joy and peace and, he says, “abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.” The more you commit yourself to God, the stronger you are in your own spiritual life, because you’re forming the habit of turning control over to your Lord. He’ll deliver them. He’ll rescue you out of a situation that you just can’t handle.

Small thought here: Don’t put yourself in the way of being tested. Many a person has the feeling, “Well, you know the Lord will take of me somehow. I’ll just go blundering on and He’ll take care of me somehow.” Don’t get yourself into a bind willingly. Don’t put yourself into situation where you know that you’re in for trouble. Why should you do that? Learn when to run away.

Paul said to Timothy “Flee also youthful desires.” Timothy was young man and he had the testing and temptations of the very young. Well, some of us are not so young anymore. I’m on the shady side of 70 and pushing 80, and 80 is pushing right back. But you see, the tests that we face are different at different stages of life, to be sure, but it’s awfully good sense just to detour around things that you know are going to head you for trouble. Good idea? Yes, a very good idea. If, however, in the process of living, you’re up against a situation you can’t handle, call for help. “Call unto Me and I will answer thee,” the Bible says, “and show the great and mighty things which thou knowest not.”

“This poor man cried and the Lord heard him and delivered him out of all his troubles,” said the Psalmist. God is still listening for your call and He’ll answer that. The word “deliver” means “rescue.” He’ll rescue you in a situation where you just can’t handle it, but you know he can, and you turn it over to Him. Now, it says “He shall deliver them from the wicked.” Now here’s a little different, a little different slant to that verb. Rescue you not only from situations that you can’t handle, but rescue you from the conspiracy and the plans and the finagling and the strategy of those who are opposing God. Oh, there have been so many, so many instances of that, I don’t know which one to pick.

I think momentarily of our meeting that we had in Cannes, France, down the Riviera. What a place for a youth conference! I don’t know who picked it, but when I got there I was somewhat aghast at the prospects. But we had a whole week of conference with delegates from all over Europe and some from the Orient and many from the US. This would have been back in 1949.

And one of the things we faced was that there were, well, the police force was split right down the middle. Half of the police force leaned toward the communist side. The other half was sort of a regular police. And while you can imagine the difficulty in getting a permit to do anything, because when one said “yes,” the other said “no.” And so what we did – realizing that we were up against an impossible situation there with people who had no time for the gospel and who were intent upon opposing each other – we had an all-night praying meeting and prayed about it. And miraculously there came through a number of permissions, one of which was for Gil Dodds – who at that point was the fastest human being in running a mile indoors – for Gil Dodds to run an exhibition mile along the waterfront. And we got the permission from both the communist police and the regular police.

You know, God has a way of doing things if you just trust Him. “He’ll deliver them from the wicked.” There are people in this world who are against God. You know that. And they are intent upon opposing anything you may wish to do for God. I guess you know that too, don’t you? What’s the answer? Call for help, He’ll deliver. Call for help, have a prayer meeting, have an all-night prayer meeting if necessary. Believe God for something that only He can do.

I have the feeling that I’m talking to some pastors who are just down in the dumps, so blue and so discouraged because everything seems to be going wrong. And you’ve got people who are against you for no good reason, and then probably some others that do have a good reason, preachers being what they are. We preachers manage to make enough mistakes to make a quite a few people mad at us from time to time. I know that. I know I have, anyway. And I’m talking to somebody who’s so blue, so down, so discouraged.

My Brother, find somebody with whom you can pray and spend some hours before God in prayer, waiting on God. You’d be surprised what He’ll do and how He’ll change things. Anything I tell you, I’ve been there. I was ready to quit one church many years ago. So discouraged, and one man came and prayed with me. Yes, he did; he was a plumber, untutored and unlearned. I don’t know if he’d even finished high school, but oh, did he know the Lord. Just a young fellow in his early 30’s, and he said to me one day – he showed up just about, I suppose, maybe 4:30 or 4:45 at the door – and he said, “preacher what’s the matter with you?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m sort of discouraged. I’m planning to see if I can find some other kind of work.” “Well,” he said, “have you prayed about it?” “Well,” I said, “I’ve prayed with my good wife, but, well, I just don’t share my troubles with everybody.” He said “I’m going pray with you. Give me your phone.” So he went to the phone, called up his wife, and when she answered he said, “I’m not going be home for supper. I’m going pray with a preacher,” and he quick hung up before she could say anything.

He said, “Where do you pray in this house?” “Well,” I said, “we pray all over, but you could go up in my study.” So we went upstairs in the house and knelt down in my little study, and he prayed for me, and I prayed, and he prayed and I prayed. And by and by the Lord begun to touch my heart and do something that needed doing, and from that point, from that very point, things changed. We had some people move away. We had a whole gang of new born-again people that moved in. I had a couple of funerals. “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord for their honoraria do follow them.” You know that. The whole scene changed, and there was a revival in that congregation. Well, I guess it must have been alright, because we stayed for another 3 1/2 or 4 years, and everybody cried when we left. So it was alright.

You can see God’s work. If you’re discouraged, seek the Lord. Seek the Lord. Don’t talk about it, don’t mumble about it, and meditate about it. Have some prayer. Find somebody who knows the way to the throne of grace and spend some hours before God and pray. And don’t have just a word of prayer. Pray around, and then pray around again, and pray around again; it’s a repeated and continuous period of prayer that breaks through to God. Well, somebody needed that, whoever it is.

He’ll “deliver them from the wicked.” If somebody is conspiring against you, you don’t have to fight him or her or them. Tell God on them. That’s the way to do that. And I say “save them,” and that word wraps up all what we have been saying before and makes life a continuing miracle. A saved person is one who has found out that God is all he needs, and that life is a continuing miracle of the grace of God as you go on trusting Him and serving Him. He’ll save them, do you know that? Do you know what it is to have every day be an adventure with the Lord? Do you? Have you walked close enough with Him to find that as you pray through the day it’s just a delightful adventure?

“He leadth me! O blessed thought, O words with heavenly comfort fraught; Whatever I do, wherever I be, Still ‘tis God’s hand that leadeth me.” Pray your way through the day. Let God save you in the sense… Not simply delivering you from hell and sending you to heaven. Yes, that’s involved, certainly, but let all of life become an adventure with your blessed Lord.

Mister, before you go the office, pray. When you get to the office, pray that God will guide you. And then as you answer the phone, pray. When you answer a letter, pray. When you hire or fire or transfer a person in personnel, pray. If you’re going to sign a contract, pray first. God has already read the fine print. Pray away through the day. Let God make life an adventure for you.

Well, time is gone and I’ve got one more word that I want to come back with the next time we get together. Okay?

Dear Father, may we trust Thee in a way that will make all of life a continuing miracle, and may we start it today. In Jesus’ name, I pray this, Amen.

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