The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: Friend, listen to me. You're fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful what God has done. Let us take advantage and go to the Lord in prayer and know that we can go right into the very throne room of God.

Guest (Male): Have you ever stopped to consider why God created you, and if He really knows who you are? Pastor Jack Morris is here today to offer a perspective on that very subject. So let’s get to an introduction of the message for today, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.

Pastor Jack Morris: Hello friend, I'm Pastor Jack Morris, and we're at the Largo Community Church. God created everyone special, and you are special to Him. I want you to hear this message, know how much God loves you. Just listen with your heart. God cares for you, He loves you, He made you. You're here by design and purpose—God's design, God's purpose.

Friend, God has a plan for you that is wonderful. It's a blessing if you follow it. Let's go into the sanctuary of the Largo Community Church and hear the Sunday morning sermon, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.

Fearfully and wonderfully made. A little boy came running into the house one day after playing out in the yard with his friend Billy next door. They were throwing the ball around and having a lot of fun, and he came charging in the house and said, "Mom! Mom, where did I come from?" And the mother paused and she thought to herself, "I knew this day was coming and I'm not ready, but I'm going to give it a try." So she said, "Johnny, you come on in the family room, sit down."

And so for 20 minutes, she talked to that little boy about the birds and the bees and the whole story: the sperm and the egg. And his eyes got bigger and bigger and bigger. And so finally, when she was finished, she said, "Now Johnny, do you now know where you came from?" He said, "Yes. I often wondered where I came from. Billy next door came from Chicago."

Now we're going to try to find out today where we came from and our purpose in coming. We're not here by accident. We're here by God's divine choosing. Can you say praise the Lord? You're somebody today because God decided you should be born and you should be on this earth and there's a mission for you and He sent you here. But most of us, we know we're physical, but we don't pay a lot of attention or give a whole lot of thought to our physical being.

We take it for granted. I do, you do, we all do. I mean, I'm moving my head back and forth and my eyes are scanning and my hands are moving and my legs are moving and my brain is working. And that happens every day, thank God. When it doesn't, I'm dead. But I don't give a whole lot of thought to it. If I want to go someplace all of a sudden, my legs just start taking me there. Fearfully and wonderfully made.

And then God made me an emotional being, made you an emotional being. You can think, you can love, receive love, give love, you can grieve, you can be sad, you can be happy, you can have compassion. I mean, God made you like you are. Would you put that scripture up for us, please, verse 14? And I want you to read it in unison with me.

"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that full well." So God made you a wonderful being and also a spiritual being. But I think about this body, fearfully, reverently. God took great pains. He gave a lot of thought to all of this that He put together within us.

Now there's a brain with billions of cells and activity that is going on. There are other cells in our body that live and die rather quickly. And then there are those neurons that we received at birth and we've carried them all our life long. And the brain communicates or transmits knowledge through those neurons to every part of our body. I mean, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful what God has done and how He has created us. Created by God, think about it. There was a dear minister that I knew many years ago. He's gone now, but he wasn't so happy with his body. Now, he looked fine to me, but he told us all one time, he said, "My shoulders are just a little narrower than I would like them to be. And this part of me is just a little wider than I would like it to be."

But he said, "You know, God made me. General Motors didn't make this body." And then he stopped and he said, "You know, maybe General Motors could have done a better job." Fearfully and wonderfully made. So if you have health, you can turn your head, you can speak. I talked to Doris Hicks the other day and I only understood about a fourth of the words that she was saying.

And then the nurse came and asked me, "Do you understand what she's trying to say?" Friend, if you could love, if you could talk, if you could shake hands, if you could hug, if you can be nice, by all means in Jesus' name, do it! Do it and be thankful that you can do that.

Now God created all things: the heavens and the earth, everything that is made, animate and inanimate. And then He created man. By that I mean He also created woman. I'm going to turn over to Genesis chapter one, verse 27. Now listen to this and listen very carefully.

"So God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created him. Male and female He created them." So when God speaks about man, He's also talking about woman. When God created man in His own image, male and female He created them. So we're all, male and female, created in the image of God.

Man is the apex of that. Man and woman, when I say man, when the Bible says man, the Bible is also speaking of women. The apex. It's amazing how God created the body, how we're now flesh and blood. We're bone and skin, and blood runs all through our body. And then God breathed into man the breath of life and we became a living soul.

Friend, you just didn't happen on the scene. God had a plan, He put you here and He has a very beautiful purpose for each of our lives. Now we are sustained by God. Not only did He create us, but now He's sustaining us. And when I read this passage, Psalm 139 verse 14: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made."

Fearfully meaning God reverently, reverently put this body together. And I am now to reverence it, not to abuse it with any unclean habit or in any other way. Reverently. Wonderfully, it means that God did something that is far beyond anything I can imagine or think. This is the handiwork of God. You are and I am the handiwork of God.

And how God so blessed us and now put His Holy Spirit within us. And when He breathed into us the breath of life, we became a living soul. Now that separates us from the animal kingdom. We are part of the animal kingdom, or we share with them flesh and blood. But something that they do not share with us, and that is spirit.

We have a place now in God to where we can commune with God, talk with God, go to the throne of grace. Friend, listen to me. You're fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful what God has done. Let us take advantage and go to the Lord in prayer and know that we can go right into the very throne room of God. You are body, soul, and spirit.

And then God made you a new creation. Not only did He save you, not only did He give you a body, a soul, but then He comes back and He saves you, meaning He birthed you again into His kingdom. Now not everybody is born again. Not everybody is in the kingdom of God. But you are today all because of His broken body and His shed blood.

A little girl heard the story of people having a heart transplant: take out the old heart, put a new heart in. And she asked her parents, she said, "When a Christian's heart is transplanted, they take out the heart that this person asked Jesus to come in and now they put in a new heart. Does that person have to ask Jesus to come in all over again into the new heart?"

Friend, God has a place in every heart that He has prepared, where He has prepared a throne room for Himself to rule and bless and grace your life. He's in your heart. Now Jesus spoke to Nicodemus and He talked to Nicodemus about the born again experience. That's how He termed it: born again.

Now we were born the first time. Here I am, you see me. I was born the first time. That is an important thing, extremely important thing. But then we talk about being born again and then we say, "Well, I've been born again, I've been a Christian, I've been baptized." But the first birth, we see it. It's visible. It takes up space.

But the second birth, it's invisible. It doesn't take up much space. We don't see it like we do the physical, the being. And we don't pay or give a whole lot of attention or a whole lot of thought to it. I talked to a lady, she was talking about her children, grown children. She was concerned about their lifestyle, how they were living, where they were living, and who they were living with.

And she said, "Well, I believe they're okay though in God's sight because they know about God and they believe in God and I believe that's the important part about it." No, friend. Jesus doesn't take a nod. Look at me. You see me? When my mother looked at my dad and my dad looked at my mother, my dad just didn't give my mother a nod and I was born. I am not the result of a nod.

We are born from above, born of the Holy Spirit, infused by God. Now friend, God's word is forever the same. God's word is the same for me, for you, for your children, for your teenagers, for your young adults. God's word doesn't change and God's word doesn't make exceptions because that's your son or your daughter. Not at all.

We must be born again. That's what Jesus said. "Ye must be born again." It is a divine must, not a divine nod. Not a church thing on occasion, or a church thing on a regular basis. Jesus now lives in my mind, in my brain, in every cell of my body. And I am now, I am now the temple of the Holy Spirit.

And so are you if you come to this table today. You're making a profession of faith. You're saying Jesus is in me because you're going to take the wafer, you're going to put it in you. You're going to take the juice, the fruit of the vine, you're going to put it in you. You're saying He has come in. I have taken Him in. I am now dramatizing what has already happened to me and what continues to happen to me. Jesus now lives in my body.

Do you know Jesus is in you? Jesus is in you. When you go to a ball game, Jesus goes to that ball game. When you go to that movie, Jesus goes. He's in you. Wherever you are, whatever you do, Jesus is there. I want to glorify Jesus. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I don't want to take Jesus and drag Him into places.

There's Christians today, and I can't explain this fully, but they walk into bars. Now Paul is saying, you take Jesus into a prostitute's bed and you make Jesus lie with that woman. I mean friend, do you know what happened to you when you were born again, or have you truly been born again? We have to ask ourselves the question whether or not we have truly received Christ.

Now look what it says here. He said, "Do you not realize that Christ is in you?" There's a lot of people who do not realize that, but today the Holy Spirit impressed upon me we're coming here to take in physically the bread and the wine, what we have taken in spiritually. And we're saying that we have taken in the results of Jesus at Calvary, and now all of this is inside of me and now lives within me.

And Paul is saying to those Corinthians, "What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? Do you not realize?" Second Corinthians 13:5. "Do you not realize," and there's a question mark, "that Christ is in you?" Now there's Christians today that I don't think they... they say, they take communion, they testify to being born again. But something of realization is missing.

But today the Holy Spirit is here to help us and He wanted you here. Friend, there's no accident that you and I are here today to hear this message. There have been services that you have missed, but God saw to it that you're in this one. He wants you to realize who He made you. Fearfully and wonderfully made.

Now Christ is in me. Now the scripture says, and I'm going to close on this, but if I've said anything this morning that blesses you, I want this to bless you. The scripture says in Romans 6:23, "The wages of sin is death." Now listen to me for just a moment. And I have prayed because I know that I'm dealing with something that is not easy to put into words and explain verbally.

But Jesus was virgin born. He was born of the virgin. She built Him a body, she identified Him with the human race. The Holy Spirit came upon Him and entered Him, and now He is filled with the Holy Spirit. So Jesus is both God and man, two natures in Him. Now He has done exactly the same thing when He came into your heart.

There are now two natures in you. We must realize that Jesus has made us like unto Himself. Your parents identified you with humanity. Jesus came into your heart and identified you with the kingdom of God. And now there are two natures in you. You will decide, you will decide which of those natures you're going to yield to and obey.

You can yield to that human nature and drag Jesus around in some of the places where He doesn't want to be. Or you can yield to Him and live a happy, joyous life of peace without grief and guilt. There are too many guilty Christians and they've brought the guilt on themselves. But listen to this. "The wages of sin is death."

Jesus took our death. When Jesus was on the cross, God looked at that humanity side of Jesus. Remember Jesus went into the garden and He took the cup and He drank into Himself the corruption and sin, my corruption and my sin, your sin, the sin of the world. He took it within. Everything about the Bible and the teaching is in and within. Jesus took my sin within and my sin now goes throughout His body.

He became a sinner for me. Then He goes to the cross, He's nailed to the cross. And when God looks down, God looks not upon the divine nature in Jesus, but He looked upon the human nature, the sinful nature. My sin, it's within Him. Sin was not tacked on Jesus like you would decorate a Christmas tree and put the balls and the tinsel on it and it just hangs on the outside.

No, sin was within Him, just as He is within you now. Sin was within Him. And God looked down upon Jesus, He saw my sin and your sin. He only looked at the human, sinful side. Jesus was on that cross for me, He was on that cross for you. He wasn't on that cross for Himself or for God. So everything that was going on on that cross had to do with humanity, human nature, and sin.

The wages of sin is death. Wages, what's wages? That's your paycheck. You worked for it, you earned it, you deserved it. Jesus took my sin, now He's going to receive the wages for my sin. And the wrath of God came down. Jesus had my sin in Him. God looked and saw that sin and He turned the other way.

God would have been very happy to look upon His own image in Jesus, but He saw my image in Jesus. He saw your image in Jesus and the wages that I have earned week after week, month after month, year after year of living in sin was put inside Him when He took the cup. And now God, because God is just and justice must be done, God does not overlook...

See, we overlook sin in ourselves, we overlook sin in our family members. "Oh, that's all right, they'll be okay someday." No, no. There may not be a someday. And God looked upon the sin in Jesus and His wrath came... The wages of sin is death, and death, physical and separation from God. God turned His back, came down upon Jesus.

Now God looks at you and me, and He looks at Jesus in us—in our body, in our mind, in ourselves. He looked at our humanity and sin in Jesus and now He looks at us and looks at Jesus in us.

Guest (Male): As we just learned on today's Healing Word broadcast, God not only knows who you are but has a wonderful plan and purpose for your life. I invite you to go to Him in prayer and to read your Bible this week as you seek to know more about Him. We hope that today's message has been a true blessing and has encouraged you to walk closer with God. As we conclude today's program, here is Pastor Morris with some special requests.

Pastor Jack Morris: Before I go, I would like to encourage you to send your testimony to me. If God has blessed you and brought healing to you in any way—spiritually healed, mentally, emotionally healed, physical healing, financial healing, healing of a marriage, in any way—send me your testimony. I will rejoice with you.

And then, if you would like to be part of our streaming service at 9:00 and 11:00 from the Largo Community Church on Sunday mornings, it would be a joy to have you. Just go to our website, scroll to the top, live streaming. I'll preach a Sunday morning sermon and I believe that the word of God will bless you there also.

And friend, we need your prayers, we need your financial help. So if you can send a financial gift and please pray, it'll be so greatly appreciated. Blessings and peace be upon you. I'm Pastor Jack Morris.

Guest (Male): Join us tomorrow for another Healing Word message. Until then, blessings on you.