Waiting For God’s Perfect Timing

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing all right? Oh, I’ve just been praying for you. Many of you I have never seen, won’t meet you until we get to glory, but my heart goes out to people whom I know are in need or who are discouraged or who are feeling down, just generally washed out, and wonder if life is worthwhile. Some of you’re so busy you don’t know which foot to stand on and some folk have a heavy heart. Life has dealt you a cruel blow and your heart is breaking. All different kinds of people listening to these broadcasts and oh how I pray that God may put His truth and His love and His blessing and His peace and His comfort into what I have to say to you, bless your heart. I do pray for you. Yes, I do.

Well, we’re looking at Mark chapter 8, you and I, we’ve come to the conclusion that the Lord Jesus, now the second time within this setting of hungry people, has turned to His disciples and given the responsibility to them and so He said, “How many loaves have ye?”, they said, “Seven”. Not much conversation there they just answered in one word. So now He takes action. “Our Lord Jesus commanded the people to sit down on the ground and He took the seven loaves”. Now it’s interesting to me, if you don’t learn once, God takes over. In Mark chapter 6 it says, “He commanded the disciples to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass and they sat down in ranks by hundreds and by fifties”, and so on. Now in chapter 8, He takes over, “He commanded the people to sit down on the ground and He took the seven loaves and gave thanks and broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before them”. A very small thing there, but it just occurs to me that if you don’t learn God’s procedure, He takes over and moves around you. I’ve seen that happen out in a lifetime of watching God work in different ways and being in the middle of things that God was doing, and I’ve seen people and sometimes I myself I think have been guilty of this mistake, who missed God’s direction on something, who had the dubious luxury of seeing God do it a different way. I won’t give you illustrations of it because you can think of enough of them yourself. Just remember this, be very careful and highly alert to learn the lessons of procedure that God teaches, you day by day, so that you won’t have to stand by and see somebody else do it, because God is going to get His will done either through you are through somebody else. Want to mark that down in the notebook of your mind? Learn the lessons of divine procedure, be careful to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit of God, because if you don’t obey them, He’s going to pick up somebody else who will and get His work done.

Pastor Ward Potts who has a large and growing church in the Cleveland area, and some you know him, was telling me that as he was in prayer one day, God laid a certain ministry, a type of ministry on his heart, and he said, “God I can’t do that”, and he said, this this dear pastor talks with the heavenly father very intimately and personally and reports the conversations the same way. He said, “Father said to me, ‘If you don’t do it I’ll get somebody else to do it’”. Well that galvanized him into action and went ahead and obeyed God in the matter, but you know that’s a deep and abiding truth that you and I better learn. The earlier you learn it, the better off you’ll be. Be careful to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit of God who dwells within the believer, because if you back off from the will of God in something, He’s going to pick somebody else to do it, but He’ll get His will done. Oh, yes He will. Dr. Champion, my old professor in the seminary, Eastern Baptist seminary years ago, used to stand in front of the class, look at us and say in a voice like thunder, “God will get His will done either with you gentlemen or without you”. Oh yes. Well in any case, He commanded the people to sit down and He took the seven loaves. There goes your lunch fellows, and gave thanks and broke give it to His disciples, and they had a few small fishes and He blessed them, gave them as well. So now they took up seven baskets of leftovers. Four thousand people fed, seven baskets of leftovers, and then it says, “And then He sent them away”.

Small thought here; be alert for God’s timing. The disciples had a burden for the benediction in another record of the feeding of the five thousand; we have the disciples saying, “Send them away, for the day is now. This is a desert place and now the time is far past. Send them away”. See, they had a burden for the benediction, it wasn’t benediction time. God’s timing is very important and you learn it not so much by listening to my preaching or teaching, but you learn it by waiting in prayer and before the Word of God, until He whispers to your heart. Now this is it. God’s timing in the events, “Keep the heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life”, the breaks in life come to people whose heart is right with God, and who wait on Him. Do you believe what I’m telling you? That the timing of events in your everyday life does have a relationship to how you wait on God for His direction? Well, it certainly does.

I told the story of my insurance salesman friend out in the West Coast, who the puts his prospect cards around him in a semicircle on the floor of his office and prays over them before he goes out to call and he says, “The Lord sends me to the right people”. Just the other day I met another salesman who had heard that story. He said, “You know Cook I do thattoo”, actually was excited. He said, “I do that too”, and he said, “Oh the Lord blesses”, he said, “It keeps me from so many dead calls and God sends me to the right people”. He was excited. Well why not, why not? In the pastorate I used to make three calls a day, a thousand times a year, go tell somebody about the Lord Jesus, in addition to your hospital calls and death calls all that, and I used to pray about where to go. Oh, yes. Does God know who’s home before you get there? Why of course. Does God know what mood the people are in before you get there? Oh yes He does. Can He send you to people who need you? Yes he can, preacher. Pray about your calls, pray about the planning of your sermon series. A series that you might preach this year could possibly go far better six months from now. Who knows? God knows. Pray about the subject matter of your sermons, pray about your schedule, day by day, pray about your calling schedule, who shall I call on and where and when? Oh, yes. Pray about your business. God can make the day go better. See what I’m saying to you is this, there is a relationship between the way things happen ideally and God’s perfect timing, and you can get into that perfect timing by waiting on Him. Want to try that for yourself? I know you’ll be delighted with the results. Then it says, “After that He sent them away”. Now, it was benediction time.

Small thought here; if you’re confronted with a hundred hungry people, you better feed them and then preach to them. Bob Pierce used to say, “You have to deserve a hearing”, and that’s why he would take a ship load of rice and to distributed in refugee camps during the Korean War, and why he set up the many orphanages and all the rest, which today have burgeoned into this great worldwide ministry called Worldwide Vision. My good friend, Ted Engstrom, and others active in that great ministry. You have to deserve a hearing, somebody’s hungry, feed him, if somebody’s needing clothing, clothe him, if he needs job, go help him get a job, if he needs a roof over his head, find shelter. Do something, don’t just stand there, do something to help meet the need, and in the process you can tell that individual or that crowd about the Lord Jesus Christ. Deserve a hearing, do something today to deserve a hearing for the gospel. Well now we go on in Mark chapter 8 and verse 10 it says, “Straightway”, there’s Mark’s trademark again, he always uses straightway, right away don’t delay, let’s get going, “Straightway He entered into a ship with His disciples and came into the parts of Dalmanutha, and the and the Pharisees came forth and began to question with Him, seeking of Him a sign”, that’s our word miracle, a miracle from heaven, “tempting Him and He sighed deeply in His Spirit”. This the second mentioned of the sighing of the Lord Jesus. You find it in the preceding chapter where the man who is deaf and dumb came to our Lord Jesus for help when it says in Mark 7:34, “Looking up to heaven He sighed and sayeth unto Him, ‘Effatha’” thy ears be opened, and his ears were opened, the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly”.

Now again here it’s different, He sighed, as recorded in Chapter 7, because of the misery of the people this man particularly around Him now He sighed because of the unbelief of people. “He sighed deeply in His Spirit and said, ‘Why does this generation seek after a sign?’”, in other words miracle proof that I am what I say I am. “Verily I say unto you there shall no sign be given to this generation. He left them entering into the ship again and departed to the other side”. Now, if an unbelieving heart, you say, well show me and I’ll believe, you are risking what these Pharisees were risking and that is that the Lord Jesus will turn away from you. Says, “He left them”. Today my friend, somebody may be just sort of standing on the edge of a commitment of faith, but in your heart you say, oh I don’t know, I don’t think it’s going to work, I don’t know about all this, I wish somebody would prove to me that it’s real, and what you’re are risking my friend, is that you’re going to miss a meeting with the Lord Jesus Christ. Right now commit yourself to Him. He said, “I’m standing at the door of your life and knocking. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in”. Commit yourself to the Savior in faith and say, Lord Jesus I do believe you, and I do confess You as Lord, and I do ask you to come into my heart and life. Pray that prayer and I can guarantee you that you will have your answer and you’ll know that Christ is real.

Dear Father today, oh may we be alert for Thy guidance so we don’t miss God’s timing, may we be open to Thy presence so we don’t refuse Thy blessing and have Thee turn away from us, may we walk closely with the Lord, I ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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