Wait For The Whisper

Wait on the Lord, the Bible says. As you wait before him, the Holy Spirit of God faithfully will whisper to your heart something that you need to believe and to act upon.


Scripture: John 20, Ephesians 3:20

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much and hello again radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing alright today? Well, I trust so. Bless your heart. This is your good friend, Bob Cook. And I’m glad to be back with you to share some highlights from the Word of God. I do these broadcasts at odd hours when I can. My schedule is cut up these days by a number of things, and so it happens that right now it’s four minutes after midnight. And it’s just you and me and the Lord and the Bible. Everything’s quiet. And I’m just glad for the chance to share some things with you. Does it ever come over you how good the Lord has been to give us to each other? I couldn’t have set this up by myself, nor indeed, I suppose, could any of you, if you wanted to that is. But God has put us together in this precious fellowship of His inerrant, inspired, infallible Word, the Bible. Some of the things that the Spirit of God says to all of us turned out to be very special to some of you. And that, of course, is an answer to my prayer. I pray everyday before I begin these messages that God will speak, especially, to some needy hearts. I’m glad when He does.

I’ve been just summarizing the highlights, you might say, in some of the chapters of the Gospel of John before we turn to another portion of the Word of God. I’m looking now at the 20th chapter and I just wanted to stop and emphasize the importance of being with God’s people regularly. Thomas missed out. Thomas, one of the 12, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. This is after His resurrection. The other disciples therefore said, “We’ve seen the Lord.” But he said, “I saw Him die. I was there. And except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side. I saw… I was there.” he was saying, when that Roman broad bladed spear went into His body, and blood and water came out. “Unless I can see that and put my hand into that wound, I won’t believe.” Now, don’t be too hard on Thomas. We call him doubting Thomas. That’s the appellation that we’ve hung on him through the years, doubting Thomas. Don’t be too hard on him. Death is a terrible reality, and when you’ve seen someone die, you know that it’s final.

And all that Thomas was doing was just being human, and at the same time, giving voice to the terrible hurt that was in his heart. When people lash out in what seems to be doubt or even verbal abuse, don’t lash back. They’re hurting and they’re human, and that’s just how it is. That was what it was with Thomas. Well, a week went by, and this is after eight days. “Again, His disciples were gathered and Thomas now was with them. Then came Jesus.” The door was being shut. He didn’t have to knock on the door, He just walked in. That new resurrection body was no longer limited by time and space. It was as though he said to the atoms in the door, “Move aside. Your creator is coming through.” And so, He came and stood in the midst and said, “Peace be unto you.” Then he said, “Thomas, all right. Where’s your finger? Reach your finger, behold my hands. Reach hither your hand, thrust it into my side. Be not faithless but believing.” And Thomas, of course, was convinced. He said, “My Lord, my God.”

There is only one option open to you, beloved. It’s either to believe God, or to be what Jesus called “faithless.” These are the options, and you have to choose one of them. Either you’re gonna have to say, “I’m from Missouri.”, “Show me.” and go on your doubting way. Perfectly human, but also perfectly mistaken, or else you’re going to look at the promises in the Word of God, and say, “I believe.” Well, Thomas was convinced. He said, “My Lord, my God.” Now our Lord Jesus says to him, “Now Thomas, because you’ve seen me, you’ve believed. Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” And that, of course, includes you and me. We go over to Peter’s epistle and he says, “Whom having not seen, ye love. In whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” The option that’s open to you is to believe God and His promises, and as a result, have a heart full of joy. Every time I have taken God at His Word and acted upon it, I have had joy. Every time I have doubted God’s Word and hung back, and refused to obey him, I’ve been upset. It’s that simple.

Would you dare to obey God on something today? Take the step of faith, trust. Well faith, I have a little definition, a Cook definition of faith. “Faith is the quality of risking a situation on God.” Dare to risk the outcome of a situation on God. He knows all about you. He’s figured it out, the end from the beginning, and He’s able. “God is able to do,” this is Ephesians 3:20, “able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.” Be not faithless, but believing. This is the option. Either you believe God, or you are what our Savior called, “faithless”, no faith. It’s quite a challenge, isn’t it? Let me leave it with you. Dare to believe God and act on His Word on something today. Jim Rayburn, years ago, stopped for a series of meetings at my church, ministering in particular to the young people in the church where Corine and I were serving in LaSalle, Illinois. I think our broadcast is still heard in that area, and I have loving memories of many precious people who became our friends, and our dear ones during five years of ministry in the Illinois Valley.

Well, Jim Rayburn came along. And he had a very direct way of dealing with the Scriptures and with human problems. And so it was good for him to be there and to challenge my young folk. After he’d been around for a day or two, he was sitting talking with me one day in the church office. My little study was up in the belfry of that church. They’ve since moved and gone out to the edge of town. They got a brand new beautiful sanctuary there and a lovely situation. But in my times back in the ’30s, it was an older church building and I had set up my pastor’s study in what used to be the belfry. Used to be bats in the belfry, now it’s Cook in the belfry. [chuckle] So we were sitting there talking, Rayburn and I, and he said, “Bob, do you believe the Word of God?” I said, “Why, of course. Why do you ask?” Well, he said, “I wanted to know. Do you believe… ” “Oh, yes,” I said, “I do.” Well, he said, “What portion of it did you believe and act on today?” Well, you know, that threw me because I wasn’t aware of having believed in that sense, anything at all that day. Could I leave that with you as a loving challenge, my beloved friend? As you read your Bible and as you pray, listen to the whisper of the Holy Spirit of God who indwells the believer.

As he points out something that you, you that is, need to believe God for today. And upon which you need to act in some step of obedience. I don’t know what it is. Maybe to call a neighbor and inquire about her health, and have just a prayer with her over the phone. Maybe to do some kind act of some sort. Maybe to return a song book that you’ve carried away from the church. That’s petty larceny, you know. Maybe to write a letter and apologize to somebody with whom you had a rather snappy disagreement at sometime or other. I don’t know. It maybe to start tithing your income. You know, the believer doesn’t have to tithe. We’re not under the law but under grace. But the promises of God to the tither, that is a person who gives God 10% of his income, are still there. “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, saith the Lord and prove me now herewith, if I will not open the windows of Heaven and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” Somebody asked RG LeTourneau in the old days how it was that he was so prosperous as a builder of heavy earth-moving machinery, and he said, “Well, I just shoveled it out, and God shovels it back in and he’s got a bigger shovel than I have. [chuckle]

Yeah. I don’t know, do I? What God maybe whispering to your heart. But I know that as you wait before him… “Wait on the Lord.” the Bible says. As you wait before him, the Holy Spirit of God faithfully will whisper to your heart something that you need to believe and to act upon. And when you do, oh… Back to that passage in 1 Peter, “Yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” All right. I’m looking at John 21, and here you have the discouraged disciples out fishing. Peter said, “I’m going fishing.” Now there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve heard some preacher say that Peter was wrong to do that. No, he was a fisherman and that was his livelihood. Nobody was going to send an offering to him. There were no love offerings in that day. He had to do something. Don’t hold it against him that he went fishing. The other said, “Oh, we’ll go with you.” So they went forth, entered into a ship immediately, and then 12 hours is encompassed in the space of one, two, three, four, five words. “And that night, they caught nothing.” Six words. “And that night, they caught nothing.”

Now, this wasn’t the kind of fishing that you and I ordinarily do. We sit there on the boat and throw out a line and wait for the fish to bite. This was commercial fishing. They used a big net. It was work, believe me. Nothing in the net. Discouraging. But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore. Time will run out before we get a chance to comment any further on this. Let me just say, listen, if you’ve been working through the night of some difficult experience, and there doesn’t seem to be any answer, any solution, any fruitfulness, when morning comes, Jesus is gonna be on the shore waiting for you. He hasn’t forgotten you. As I often say, God didn’t bring you this far to drop you now. You trust him.

Dear Father, today, oh may we obey Thy Word. In Jesus name, I ask this. Amen.

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



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