The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: Now make God, listen to me, make God your Alpha and Omega. Make God the first and the last in your life, the first and the last of everything. Make God the first and the last.

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Healing Word, a ministry dedicated to offering strength and encouragement through God's word for anyone facing life's challenges. As believers, we want to serve God and walk in His will, though the path isn't always easy. Today's message is here to meet you at your point of need, bringing hope and renewing your faith. Now, here's Pastor Jack Morris.

Pastor Jack Morris: God's New Year promises. This whole book is filled with promises, wonderful promises. My prayer is that we will hear the promise, hear it in our heart, and that our heart, meaning our life, will be changed by the word of God. There are things that are trying to change our life, but may the word of God be heard, and may the word of God change our life.

Just a moment ago, one of the choir members, you see me hugging them and we're loving and kissing on each other up there, one of them said, "Pastor, last week's message made a change in my life." Friend, if you come to church and there's no change in your life, then you have missed the purpose of your coming. There should be a change every day in the house of God.

Every time the word goes forth, there is something for you personally, something for me. I want to get it, I don't want to miss it because it will not return. When this Sunday is gone, it's gone. So, listen with your heart. Come prepared in faith believing that God is going to speak to you.

We're going into the new year. There are things that are going to try to frighten us. The devil wants to scare the life of Jesus out of you. He wants to frighten you and me so much that he'll blow out the light that is within us. But if we hear the promise and the promise comes into us, there's nothing that's formed against us will be able to stand against us and hurt us in any way.

So, faith. Faith is the opposite of fear. Faith and fear cannot live together. If there's fear, there's no faith. If there's faith, then there's no fear. So, one of the other, and you make the choice. And if you're hearing the word of God, then faith is building in you and fear is leaving you.

The other, "Be not afraid." The other, "I am your shield," meaning "I'm going to be your protection today and your protection throughout the new year." Isn't that wonderful? Listen to me, friend. Who else can say, "I'm going to protect you in 2017?" Did anybody make that promise to you yet?

And if they did, who could keep it? But Jesus is with us always because He says, "I'm your very great reward," meaning He is with us always to bless us, to help us, and to protect us. Now let's look at verse one. He said, "After this, the word of God came to Abram." Look at those two words: after this. After what?

You see, you have to look at every word because every word carries a message. So, let me go back now and tell you what he's talking about by giving you a brief history. It was after God called Abraham to follow Him. God called him out of idol worship. His family were idol worshippers.

They worshipped gods that couldn't see, gods who couldn't speak, gods who couldn't hear, gods who were whittled out of wood, gods who were chiseled out of stone. And so God came to Abraham because God saw something in Abraham that would respond to the word of God. And God called Abraham.

So God called Abraham to go... well, we know now it was to the land of Israel, but Abraham didn't know where he was going. He was just going to follow the Lord. I was talking with the women's fellowship team members this past Saturday, yesterday morning, and we talked a little bit about Noah and the flood and this beautiful, wonderful, magnificent ark that God led him to build.

Everything was according to specification, 100%, except one thing God left out. You know what he left out? The rudder. Who's going to steer this ark? Now, what God is saying, "I want to be your rudder. I want to steer your life through the new year. I want to help you to know what to do and where to go. I'm going to be the rudder just like God steered the ark. God's going to steer the ark of your life." Isn't that something? Isn't that marvelous?

See, God will do great things if we let Him do it. But here is Abraham going off into a land he knew absolutely nothing about. And he took with him his nephew and his nephew's wife and their children. And God began to bless them. You see, friends, when you hear God like you're hearing Him right now this morning, I'm God's mouthpiece at this moment.

When you're reading the word of God, you're also taking in the word of God and hearing the word of God. When you hear the word of God and you say, "That's for me," even when you hear the word of God and it steps on your toes and you say, "Ouch, I'm not doing that. I need to start doing that," or, "Ouch, I'm doing that and I need to stop doing that."

Come on, we need some ouches. Are you with me today? Yeah, we need some ouches. God needs us to come and step on our toes a little bit once in a while and let us know that we need to do this or stop doing this. Well, when we obey God like Abraham did and like Lot did, the blessing of God is going to come.

You want the blessing of God? I want the blessing of God. Obey God, the blessing comes. It's just that simple. It really is. And their herds began to grow. Now, in that time, they didn't have dollars and cents like we have today, the money in our wallet and in our purse. They looked at their herds, how many cattle, how many sheep, how many oxen they could count them. That was their wealth.

And their herds grew and grew and multiplied. Lot's herds multiplied, Abraham's multiplied. What was happening? God's blessing was upon them, and they were becoming rich materially and financially. And they became so wealthy, their herds were so great, that those two men decided, "We've got to separate our herds and go different ways."

Because the herds up front would eat all the grass and the herds back here, when they would get there, there'd be no grass, these herds would starve and die. So they decided, "We'll separate and go our different ways." Friend, listen to me again. God wants to bless you today, this year, and every year that you're here on earth.

He wants to bless you. and He only has His word to give us to follow. And He's never going to ask you to do anything you can't do. Did you hear me say that? "Oh, I can't afford to do that." You can't afford not to do that if you want the blessing of God. These men were blessed. It's not a sin to be wealthy and rich. No sin in that.

The sin is when we love riches and wealth more than we love God, and our riches and our wealth has focused our attention away from God. These men were wealthy, but their focus was still on God. Well, Lot went to a place called Sodom, a little city on the plains. There he moved in and he had his land and his wealth.

And Abraham went into the plains, moving on toward the land of Israel. Well, a war broke out. Kings attacked Sodom. They captured all the people of Sodom, including Lot, his wife, and his children, captured all of them, took them into slavery. Somebody got away from there and made his way to Abraham and found him and told Abraham, because Abraham didn't know, there were no cell phones back then, obviously.

And they told Abraham. Abraham marshaled his forces and attacked four kings and four united armies that amalgamated together to form one great army. And God blessed him again. Not only was God blessing him financially, but God was blessing him with power and with strength. Friend, you've got to obey God.

This is going to be a great year for some people, really. And Abraham and his forces overcame those four kings and their armies, and Lot was rescued and brought back. It was beautiful what God did and how God blessed Abraham and how He rescued Lot. Now, here is the perplexing thing, and this happens to all of us.

And I do pray that you hear what I'm going to say now. Very often, when a great victory comes, not long after that great victory will come a great temptation, a great burden, even what appears to be a great defeat. And you'll say, "How can God bless me one day and then I fall down the next day? I'm blessed and then down I go."

How is it? Look at the scripture, look at it. It said, "After this, God speaks to Abram and says, 'Don't be afraid.'" Abraham, what are you afraid of? You're a wealthy man. You're one of the richest men on the face of the earth, one of the most powerful armies on the face of the earth. You've got it all. You're the envy of everybody.

What are you afraid of? Why does God have to tell you not to be afraid? Now, friend, it's not a sin when we're tempted to fear. Here's where the sin comes: when we begin to take our directions and our cues from the fear, when our behavior changes because we're afraid. That's where the sin comes.

And when our behavior changes because we're afraid, that's what I talked about last week. Now our fear becomes our idol because our idol is conditioning our behavior. And we're taking all of our cues from our fears. You see, fear comes. It comes to everybody. And when fear comes, something traumatic happened last week.

Something traumatic happens, it'll attach itself then to our psyche. All of a sudden there comes the thought, "This could happen again to you, you know." And then the thought, "This just may happen." And you'll say, "Yeah, it would be terrible if this thing came back on me." And then finally the anxiety will say, "It's going to happen to you."

And now you're bowing down to your fear. But God says, "Don't be afraid." Come on, say that out loud, "Don't be afraid." Now, that's God talking to you. Now, notice what it said: "After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram." It's the word of the Lord that comes to you that's going to drive out and push out that fear.

If you don't get the word of God, if you are hit-and-miss when it comes to the word of God, you're going to be a sorry Christian. You might be a Christian, but you're not going to be a victorious, overcoming Christian. It is the word of God that came to Abram that caused him not to be afraid, that caused him to prosper. Abraham had his focus on God, and he was taking his cues from the word. And the word was leading him on.

What guarantees do you have in life? Really, what do you have? Things will start out well in the morning, and before evening the clouds will come and the rain and the snow. Things will start out so peacefully and wonderfully. You'll get up and praise God, "This is the day the Lord has made," and before the day is over, who knows what may happen?

Who knows? Friend, you don't know what a day, what a night, what a moment is going to bring forth, but you have a God to trust in. And you have the word of God coming to you. It comes to you every Sunday morning. It comes to you in the sanctuary, in the Sunday school, in the small groups. Friend, we're without excuse if we fall prey to the devil's fear. We're without excuse. God has provided everything.

So God is an omniscient God. He sees everything. He sees the mountain that's up ahead that you're going to have to climb. And some of you are going to have to climb some steep mountains, some of us. He sees that mountain. He sees that valley of darkness and shadows that we're going to have to walk down into.

But, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." There it goes, that word fear again. Let it be gone out of our year life. God sees the mountain. He sees the valley. He sees the rough road up ahead. But I'll tell you, He's an omniscient God who can bring down that mountain, who can lift up that valley, who can smooth out that road.

You have a God on your side today. You have a God for today and a God for the new year and a God for all your life. He is an omnipresent God. The God omnipresent meaning He's with us always. Always, always, always. You see, He's the God above me. He's the God beneath me. He's the God who surrounds me.

That's the kind of God you have: the God omniscient, the God omnipresent, and the God omnipotent who is all-powerful and nothing can deter Him or hold Him back. You have God. So God speaks to Abraham and God speaks to you because every one of you is an Abraham this morning. He's saying, "Do not be afraid."

Did you hear that in your heart this morning? Did it go all the way into your heart? "Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid." Okay, let me go on. Point B in your outline, God says, "Do not be afraid. I am your shield." Now, what God was saying is, "I'm going to be your protection. I'm going to shield you from the enemy."

In Ephesians chapter six, the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus and he said, "Take on the whole armor of God, the helmet of salvation." What else? The shield of faith. See, what Paul was talking about and thinking about was the Roman military. The Roman soldier would have a big shield, he would hold the shield up.

You see policemen on television where there's riots, they put up a shield. Well, the Romans had a big shield, and it was covered with leather. And when a war would break out or they were going to go into battle or a riot, they would soak that leather until it became soaked with water.

They would pick it up, and then when the fiery arrow was shot, it would be shot into that leather with all that water and it would be extinguished. Now, what is God saying here? "I am your shield. I am your shield to extinguish the darts the devil's going to fire at you." Now, there's going to be darts.

And I'm only going to... I can't even think of very many things but, you know, somebody's going to upset you this year. That's a fiery dart. You've got to have the shield of faith to put it up to extinguish that. Otherwise, you're going to get upset, you're going to start taking your cues from your upsetness. Now you're going to get bitter.

Now you're losing your peace with God. God is saying, "What is wrong with you, Christian? Seed of Abraham, what is wrong with you? You're not hearing the word, you're not responding to the word. Oh, you know what it is, but it just isn't working for you. You don't have the shield of faith."

The shield of faith, here it comes, the word of God your defense. Things are going to happen. Sicknesses are going to come. Some of you are going to lose your job, perhaps. Some of you are going to have some financial problems. You're going to maybe have some problems with your children, your teenagers.

I don't know what's coming, but the devil's after you like a hound, a dog hound out of hell. But we don't have to fear him. We don't have to fear him. We have the shield of faith. Now make God, listen to me, make God your Alpha and Omega. Make God the first and the last in your life, the first and the last of everything.

Make God the first and the last. You know, in the Psalm 23 we read that God's rod and staff will comfort me. The rod and staff, it's out front. That means if I have an affrontal attack, the devil comes at me from the front, God's rod and God's staff, none other again but His word, that rod and that staff, God's going to fight the battle for me.

He will fight that off. Thy rod and thy staff, they're out front. Then it says, "Goodness and mercy shall follow me." Well, if I have the rod and staff out front to protect me from a frontal attack, I have good and mercy behind me from a rear attack. Friend, you're covered today. You're covered. God cares for you. He blesses you. He loves you.

Now, point C: "I am your great reward. I am." He is the great I AM. He's the one that can handle it. I can't handle these arrows. I can't put them out. They just burn me and hurt me and scorch me and they just keep coming and keep coming. But God keeps coming also. You see, I've got to get behind God.

You're hearing the voice of God this morning, the word of God. Point C: your great reward. Now, I already told you Abraham was a very wealthy man, so was his nephew Lot, extremely wealthy. But God Himself was Abraham's greatest treasure. He didn't put his trust in his riches, in his herds.

He put his trust in God. And he could defeat four kings. A shepherd could defeat four kings. Friend, there's nothing that's formed against you that's going to prosper when you have God up front and only you can put Him up front. And His word, you can do that. God Himself is our great reward.

God Himself being in my life. His presence always with me. His word my strength. The church, His church. Come on, make God your God. A God of mercy, the God of grace. Make God your shield. Flee to that rock that is higher than I. Go to the Lord who is my refuge and my strength.

Go to the Lord who is my high tower. He is my and your all in all provided you make Him your all in all. Amen. Amen. God bless you. Amen.

Guest (Male): We pray that you were blessed by today's message. But before we go, we'd like to invite you to join Pastor Jack Morris and The Healing Word family in both prayer and support of this ministry. Your prayer strengthens us and your gifts, large or small, help us extend the reach of God's word to more people who need His hope. Every gift is deeply appreciated. To stand with us today, simply visit thehealingword.com and click on the donate tab. Together, we can share the life-changing message of Jesus Christ. Join us tomorrow for another Healing Word message. Until then, blessings on you.