From His Heart

Speaker 1

If you need some wise counsel today, you're in for a wonderful surprise on From His Heart. Here's Pastor Jeff Shreve.

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Jesus is the wonderful counselor and he knows about our problems. You come to the wonderful counselor and he tells you what you need to do and whatever, however that looks in terms of actual what you're going to do, at the core of it is trust me, trust me. I know what I'm doing because I'm the miracle working counselor.

And here's the question. Will you, in your struggles, in your trials, in your problems, in your besetting sins, will you come to the wonderful counselor and let him do a wonderful work in you? He can heal every scar with real truth, real love, real hope from his heart.

Speaker 1

You and I can get so overwhelmed with pride, problems, and pressures, especially around Christmas time, that we can feel like we're absolutely losing it. We think, oh, if there was only somebody I could go to, somebody that would give me some help. Well, there is. He is the wonderful counselor, and he stands ready to help you and me today.

This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve. Thank you for joining us for a message of real truth, love, and hope, because the wonderful counselor is here. And that's the title of today's message from Pastor Jeff's Christmas series, What a Wonderful Name. Isaiah's description of the Promised Messiah.

Now, today we're exploring the beautiful names of Jesus and how he can change our hearts and bring peace to our lives. Before we get started, a quick reminder that for your support from His Heart this month, we'd like to send you Pastor Jeff's new devotional book called The Heart Is God's Home. It's a devotional book for each day next year. I'll tell you more later, but you can find out more at fromhisheart.org.

Right now, though, open your Bible to Isaiah, chapter nine. Here's Pastor Jeff to begin this timely, uplifting message today called The Wonderful Counselor is Here.

Speaker 2

Isaiah 9:6 states, "For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us." That's the infinite sacrifice. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, and the government will rest on his shoulders. His name will be called, will be proclaimed, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. So the very first name he gives us is the name Wonderful Counselor. Not just any counselor, but the wonderful Counselor.

Now, when Isaiah told us that his name would be called, would be proclaimed, it's not so much that people would see him on the street and say, "Hey, Wonderful Counselor." It's not that his name means that; his name proclaims that that's who he is. He is the wonderful Counselor. And because Isaiah calls him the wonderful Counselor, there are four wonderful assurances that we glean from the name Wonderful Counselor.

Assurance number one: Jesus is the wonderful Counselor, and he knows about our problems. You might go to a counselor and have to tell him your problems because he doesn't know about them. But the wonderful Counselor knows all about your problems before you ever open your mouth. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good.

Not only does he know, as the wonderful Counselor, but wonderful assurance number two is that he cares. He knows and he cares about your problems, your struggles, and your trials. First Peter, chapter five, tells us this: "Humble yourselves therefore, under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your cares upon him because he cares for you." Casting all your anxiety upon him, all your worries upon him—why? Because he cares for you. So he knows, and he cares.

Thirdly, he wants us to come to him with our problems. The wonderful Counselor says, "I see it and I feel for you in this." And here's what I want you to do: I want you to come to me and talk to me about it. When the Lord says, "I want you to come to me," you come to the wonderful Counselor. You know that the wonderful Counselor is a safe place. It's safe to share everything with him.

Lots of us don't like to share things. We don't like to share things with people, and we definitely don't like to share the sins which so easily entangle us.

Speaker 1

Why?

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Cause we're ashamed of those things. So we don't want to share those things. But hey, David, man after God's own heart. He did some terrible things. Terrible things with lusting after Uriah's wife, Bathsheba, having sex with Bathsheba, and then having Uriah the Hittite, her husband, killed because Bathsheba ended up pregnant. And David didn't know what to do. And everyone would know, hey, Uriah was out fighting a war, and there's no way that he could be the father of this child. And it was going to come back on David. So he ended up having Uriah killed. Put him in the heat of the battle. He told the general Joab, put him in the heat of the battle. And everybody else would draw. That was David. That's the man after God's own heart. He did those terrible things, but what did he do with all of that? He brought it to the Lord. He shared it with the Lord. All the ugliness and all the sin and all the terrible things, he shared that with the Lord.

And all throughout the psalms, when he had things coming at him and people coming at him, what would he do? He'd cry out to the Lord because he knew the Lord was a safe place. So it's safe to share everything with him. And it's necessary to share everything with him. It's critical to share everything with him. You wanna build a close relationship with the Lord, you have to share with him. See, sharing creates vulnerability, and vulnerability creates intimacy with God. If you just share surface stuff with God, safe stuff in your mind, you think, well, this is safe. You know, there's no sin attached to this. There's no bad motives that I have attached to this. So I'm gonna talk to God about this. These safe stuff in the safe zone. In our minds, we think everything is safe. But we think that's the safe zone where you just have a relationship with God that's just surfacing. You have to get down and you have to start sharing some things. And when you do, all of a sudden, you deepen your relationship with him. Why? Because you're sharing secrets with him. You're sharing shattered hopes and shattered dreams and all the pain and all the failures, you're sharing all that with him.

But see, here's what most people do. Guys especially do this. And ladies, this is what we talk about at man up. Ladies tend to be better at sharing than men. Men don't seem to want to share too much because that makes us vulnerable and we don't like to be vulnerable. And so we typically don't have very many people to share with or anybody to share with. And that's why Thoreau said the massive men lead lives of quiet desperation. No one to talk to about what we're struggling with. And the truth of the matter is, most men are struggling with the same things. And so I think, well, nobody else has this problem. And the guy next to me is thinking, well, nobody else has this problem. The guy next, nobody else has this problem. All three have the same problem. If they would just share with one another. But here's what we try and do. We try and, man, just buck up, bucko. I mean, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, get a stiff upper lip. You can handle this.

There was a song that was written by two guys, they were brothers. One of them was named Felix Lloyd Powell. He was from Wales. He was serving as a staff sergeant in the army during World War I. And he and his brother wrote a song to encourage the troops. It was called "Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile." And that's how the lyric went. Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile. What's the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile. So pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile. What do you do with troubles? Well, you don't have to share 'em. You just pack 'em up. You just put 'em in the knapsack. You just stuff 'em in there and you just put on a smile and everything will be fine. They wrote that song and it was a huge hit. And soldiers would march to that song. It was deemed one of the most encouraging songs written in that era. That's what Felix Lloyd Powell and his brother wrote in 1915.

You know what happened in 1942? Felix Lloyd Powell was overwhelmed with problems and financial pressures. And he put on his uniform, took a gun, and blew his heart out. You know what that tells me? There are some things that you can't pack up that I can't pack up, that we can't just stuff away and act like, well, this is no big deal. I can handle this. I'm a big boy. I can do this. Cause you can't. I can't. No one can. David couldn't. You gotta get that stuff out. If you try and bury those hurts, it's like burying toxic waste. It's gonna leak out and it's gonna poison and it's gonna ruin. Hey, it's critical to share everything with the Lord.

There's a lady in 1st Samuel, her name was Hannah. She shared her problems with the Lord. She had a tremendous problem. She was married to a man named Elkanah. And Elkanah had two wives. He had Hannah and he had Peninnah. And Peninnah had children. Hannah could have no children. And they would go up to Shiloh, that's where the Ark of the Covenant was. And you would go up there once a year to worship. And so they went up to Shiloh and Peninnah would make fun of Hannah because she had no children. And back in that day, if you didn't have children, I mean, you were stigmatized big time. That was the desire of every Jewish wife is to have children, to be Israel. And so she went before the Lord. And she was so broken, and she was so just crushed. And she poured out her heart to the Lord. And she was praying so earnestly that Eli the priest saw her. And her lips were moving, but there was no sound coming out. And he thought she was drunk. And he said to her, "Hey, are you going to come to the temple of the Lord drunk? I mean, what kind of a woman are you?" And this was her response.

But Hannah replied, "No, my Lord. I am a woman oppressed in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have poured out my soul before the Lord. Do not consider your maidservant as a worthless woman. For I have spoken until now out of my great concern and provocation." And Eli said, "I didn't know. I'm sorry. May the Lord grant you your petition." And she got up and the Bible says she ate and drank, and she no longer was sad. Why? Because she cast her burden on the Lord. She poured out her heart to the Lord. She got that out of her heart, and she got it before the Lord. And she left it there with the Lord.

Hey, the Lord knows. He's a wonderful counselor. He knows about your trouble. He cares about your trouble. He says, "Come to me with your trouble." And then assurance number four. He can make the difference in our trouble and in our problems. The wonderful counselor can make a difference. Now, when the scripture says he's the wonderful counselor, it uses the Hebrew word "pella." P, E, L, E, pella. And that word means a miracle, a marvel. A wonderful counselor is an advisor, a guide. And the Lord is the wonder-working guide. The wonder-working counselor. The miracle-working counselor. He's the one who can make a difference in our problems. Now, he knows when you come to him and share your problems with him, he knows exactly what you are to do.

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See?

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Why do we go and talk to people about our problems? Well, because you have a problem and you need to know what to do. I don't know what to do. I'm being squeezed. Help me know what to do. And the wonderful counselor, he knows what you're supposed to do.

And the Lord said in John, chapter five, to the man who had been sick for 38 years at the pool of Bethesda, he asked this question: do you want to get well? What a mean question, huh? Been here for 38 years, and you ask me, do I want to get well? Of course I want to get well. That's why I come to this pool. You know, they had the superstition that every now and again the angel would stir up the waters. And if you're the first one in the water, you know, you get healed. This guy's been coming for 38 years; they're dropping him by the pool, just hoping that the waters would stir and he could get down in the water.

When Jesus asked him, do you want to get well? he's like, well, how can I? I'm an invalid. And when the waters get stirred, I can never get down there first. It's the guy that gets down there first who gets healed. I don't ever get healed. I like what one lady said. She said, well, you know, if you've been there for 38 years, why don't you just park yourself right by the edge, and if you see the water just flip over in there? I mean, how long are you going to sit there doing a bunch of nothing?

Hey, do you want to get well? That's the question that the wonderful counselor asks you and me. Do you want to get well? Now here's the thing. If you want to get well, see, he knows what we need to do because he's God. He's the miracle-working God. He is the mighty God. So he knows everything. He knows exactly what you need to do. But the question is, do you want to do it?

And really, when you boil it down, because he would have people do different things in their situation. In the miracles that he did, there would be different things. In the first miracle he did at the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee, he told the servants, fill the water pots with water. That's what they needed to do. He told Peter in Luke chapter five, hey, let down your nets for a catch. Master, we've been fishing all night, caught nothing. Yeah, go into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. There are no fish there. Lord, you're going to do that?

See, in really every situation in your life, in my life, in the Christian life, every situation is the same when you boil it down to the core. And here's the same question: Will you trust me? God says, will you trust me? Fill the water pots with water. Why do we need wine and we don't need water? Fill the water pots with water. Will you trust me? Throw out the nets in the deep water for a catch. Well, Lord, we've been fishing all night. There are no fish. Will you trust me? Go show yourself to the priest that you've been cleansed of your leprosy. Well, Lord, that's not going to help me. Cleanse me and I'll go show myself to the priest. No, you go show yourself to the priest. And as they were going, the Bible says they were cleansed.

See, trust always has with it action. And if you say you trust God and you're not acting upon that trust, you don't really trust God. I love the story of Tim Lee. Tim Lee, who was at our church, had his legs blown off in Vietnam. He wrote this book, Born on the 5th of July. Well, this is what Tim Lee has to say as he's in the hospital in Philadelphia. He keeps having surgery after surgery after surgery on his legs, and they keep taking more and more of his leg away because he has an infection and they're not able to get rid of it. He said this: Call it depression, despondency, pity, frustration, whatever you want to call it. It overwhelmed me. It threatened to kill my spirit as it permeated my mind and emotions, blocking my ability to reason and to believe in a future. My life's dreams were abandoned. I had no purpose, no plan. What could a man without legs do? I certainly couldn't remain an active duty Marine. That career was over. I could never live a normal life. I could never do the things my friends who avoided military service were doing. I had given my legs for a country whose soldiers laughed when I was injured.

He said, I listened to the soldiers around me at the hospital. They were all in just this big room. He said they'd be crying. They'd have terrible nightmares. He said some ended up just quitting. And it wasn't too long after they quit that they died. So he said this: I had a choice. I could wallow in self-pity, always asking, why me, Lord? He said I could view the people that worked here at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital as a hidden dungeon with henchmen all around me, seeing myself as a victim with an irreversible death sentence. Or I could look at it as an institution of hardworking, sincere professionals trying to assist me in getting better and getting on with my life. My legs wouldn't grow back. I couldn't change that. But I could change my attitude. I could move forward regardless of my situation.

He said I had a decision to make: perdition or paradise. The sooner I decided, the sooner I could get on with the rest of my life. I made the decision to trust the Lord, who sacrificed not just his legs for me, but his life. He made the decision to trust the Lord. You come to the wonderful counselor, and he tells you what you need to do. Whatever that looks like in terms of actual what you're going to do, at the core of it is trust me, trust me. I know what I'm doing because I'm the miracle-working counselor.

See, he's able to work miracles. He said, behold, I'm the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is anything too difficult for me? And the answer is no, nothing is too difficult for him. He's able to do anything. He's able to make a way where there seems to be no way. He's able to take a shattered marriage and put it back together and make it better than it ever was. He's the God who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think.

Hannah prayed to the Lord, "Lord, give me a son. And if you give me a son, I'll give him back to you as your servant. And he'll be a Nazarite until the day of his death. He'll be serving you." And God remembered Hannah and gave her a son. She named him Samuel, which means "asked of the Lord." When she weaned him, she brought him to Eli, the priest at Shiloh, and she said, "This is the son I prayed for. I made a commitment to give this boy to the Lord. So I entrust him to you." She gave little Samuel, probably 4 or 5 years old, to Eli. She dedicated him to the Lord.

The Lord remembered her and gave her three more sons and two more daughters. The woman who was barren now was the mother of Samuel, one of the greatest Old Testament prophets and judges. And she had three other sons and two other daughters. God is a miracle-working God. What did God do for Tim Lee, who made the choice to trust him? He gave him a wife, children, and grandchildren. He called them into the ministry. Tim was a pastor, and from the pastorate, he went to be an evangelist. God has used Tim Lee, as he used him in our church, around the country to lead tens of thousands of people to faith in Jesus Christ.

God can do anything if we'll just trust him. He's the wonderful counselor. See, he knows, he cares, and he can work miracles. And here's the question: Will you, in your struggles, in your trials, in your problems, in your besetting sins, will you come to the wonderful counselor and let him do a wonderful work?

Speaker 1

You. May God comfort you and use today's message to strengthen you. Today, it was called "The Wonderful Counselor Was Here." It's from Pastor Jeff Shreve's Christmas series. What a beautiful Isaiah's description of the Promised Messiah. You can find out how to get the message in the series when you go to promisheart.org and click the Listen link.

God has done some incredible things through your support this year at From His Heart, including touching so many lives with the truth of God that few will speak on public airwaves. We received a letter from Alan in England who encouraged us with these words:

"Dear Pastor Jeff, My wife and I live in England. I receive your daily devotions via email and I love listening to your clear lessons. I pray that the churches in our area would preach like you do to excite people about what the Lord can do. Your services are so vibrant, which is why I just simply want to say thank you, sir, for your devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ, for your knowledge of the Scriptures, and for the hard work you do for your calling. You are teaching us and helping us to understand the Scriptures better."

Thank you, Alan. What a great testimonial and proof that God is using this ministry to empower Christians and bring others to Christ.

As you likely know, December is a critical month for most nonprofits, as we would normally receive about a quarter of all the income we get all year long. If God has used this ministry to bless your life, we would appreciate you praying about a generous gift to us by December 31st to help us plan better for next year.

When you give your gift, we'll send you a thank you gift. It's a new year-long devotional book called "The Heart Is God's Home." It's a moving and deep daily dive into God's Word that will bring your heart closer to God each and every day. To make your year-end gift and get "The Heart as God's Home," call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-BIBLE) or simply go online to promisheart.org.

God bless you. Well, we're out of time for today. I'm Larry Nobles, trusting you'll be able to join us next time when we open God's Word and share real truth, real love, and real hope from God's heart here on From His Heart.

From His Heart is the listener-supported broadcast ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve, speaking the truth in love to a lost and hurting world. Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. To find out about that, go to fromhisheart.org.