The Healing Word

Guest (Male): The Healing Word Ministry on One Place is brought to you by the generous donations of people like you. At any time during today's message, feel free to send a prayer request or make a donation using the link provided. Now, I pray you will be blessed as Pastor Jack Morris delivers a message from the word of God that will encourage and strengthen your faith in him.

Pastor Jack Morris: I've got confidence, Jesus is going to see me through. No matter what the case may be, I know he's going to fix it for me. I've got confidence. Can you say that? I've got confidence. I've got confidence. I've got confidence.

Guest (Male): If anyone in the Bible was acquainted with suffering for preaching the truth of Christ, it was the Apostle Paul. Today, Pastor Jack Morris is going to lead us in a study of Philippians chapter 1, where Paul exhorts the early church to love one another and put aside any action that might divide believers.

Pastor Jack Morris: Look at verse six, Philippians chapter one, verse six. This is the key verse of today's. I've just done a little review, but the review was absolutely necessary, at least it was for me. That's it. Let's read it in unison. Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. That's today's verse.

I want to give you that verse. The Holy Spirit has spoken to my heart and he has given it to me, now I'm going to pass it on. Notice, there are three things. Being confident. There's not a whole lot of things in this world that we're confident in, but being confident that he who began a good work, that's point one in your outline.

He will carry it on to completion, that's point two in your outline, until the day of Jesus or the day of Christ Jesus, that's point three in your outline. Confidence. I'm confident. Paul is saying, I'm confident of what God has done in you. And I'm confident in what God has done in you. I'm confident that he has saved you, forgiven you, put your name in the book of life, that you're a child of God, and rejoicing in the Lord.

I'm not guessing about my Christianity or yours, or hoping that I'll go to heaven when I die. No, I'm confident that what he has done, he has done to completion and he has done it perfectly. Our Christian experience. Now, last week I talked about Lydia, who was the first convert in Europe. The church at Philippi was the first church, the first Christian congregation in all of Europe, and the first convert was Lydia.

Do you see, we can name and number converts when they have really received Jesus. Paul went down to the river, and Timothy, and they were going to pray. And there were some women washing clothes and dying clothes, and Paul talked to them about Jesus. And Lydia opened her heart, or the Holy Spirit actually opened her heart, which the Holy Spirit is doing today. He's opening our heart. I pray that he is, to the word of God that I'm preaching, the word of God that is written in the book of Philippians.

This lady was a worshiper of God. She wasn't saved to the extent like you and I are because she had never even heard the name of Jesus prior to this day that Paul went by. Paul shared that name, meaning Savior, Emmanuel, God with us. And she responded quickly and accepted the Lord. She was a person that could go back and say, I was saved on such and such a date. And she was baptized on such and such a date.

Friend, you may be able to name the date you were saved. But if you can't name the date you were saved, then use your baptismal certificate and use that as your birth certificate into the kingdom of God. But everybody needs to drive a stake and say, this is when it happened. And if we can't become confident about it, maybe it didn't happen. So this would be a good time to turn to the Lord and say, come into my heart Jesus, and forgive me and save me and make me a Christian.

So confident in what he has done. I know in whom I have believed. Paul said that he is confident in what God has done. Verse six. Being confident in this. Oh, I can drive a stake and say, I have it in my heart. I'm confident that Christ is there and indeed he is. And then notice, confident in what he is doing. What is God doing in your life right now? Something is going on. Everybody who is alive and breathing has something that is happening and transpiring.

Notice he said in verse six, I will carry it on, what I started. Paul is saying, what God has started, God now will carry it on to completion. Meaning good times, times that aren't so good, that are difficult, times when there are unexpected troubles that come. God will carry it on and carry you through. You see, what God starts, God completes. God never started anything that he doesn't complete. And he started something good in you.

And I hope that you are confident of what he has started. That you are absolutely confident, no doubt about it. You're a believer, a Christian. How many people today say, I'm a Christian, but not living for the Lord, not doing what God would have them do, not even going to the house of the Lord, but tossing around that name Christian? Paul said, I'm a Christian and I'm confident in this. And when we are truly in Christ, that confidence is there. Even in the bad times.

There was a youth group that over 50 years ago, I pastored a church. It was a small church, small youth group, but I see these young people coming on and I'm so thankful. They used to sing a song, and it seemed like it was their theme song. My God has never failed me yet. Troubles come from time to time, but that's alright, I'm not the worrying kind. Have you ever heard that one? I've got confidence, Jesus is going to see me through. No matter what the case may be, I know he's going to fix it for me.

You got confidence that he's going to fix it for you? Come on and build your faith up. Build your faith up. Hear the word of God and become strong in the Lord with confidence that God is going to see you through even when those unexpected troubles come. And they come, but God is going to see you through. He's going to do it. You know, we like that scripture, Romans 8:28. Remember, all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

We love that one. I love that one. We all do. But when troubles come, somehow we seem to forget almost that all things are working together for good. It's like baking a cake, and I love cake. And they're going to bake a cake. Do people still bake cakes? I don't know. It's easier to buy them. But when you bake a cake, my mother used to bake cakes. She would put in salt and put in flour, put in egg yolk. Now each one of those taken by themselves, nasty tasting.

Salt, egg yolk. Who wants to eat egg yolk? In other words, who wants to have trouble? But when they all come together, she would put it in the oven and out would come a beautiful cake. Friend, have confidence in the God who loves you and gave himself for you through Jesus and trust him with all your heart. I've got confidence, God is going to see me through. No matter what the case may be, I know he's going to fix it for me. That's Romans 8:28, all things working together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

Right now, this very moment, let me back away from the Bible and the sermon. Right now, think about that unexpected trouble that has come, or that trouble maybe you have had for a long time now. Now think about it. I've got confidence that God is going to see me through. I want you to even now tell the Lord, I've got confidence, God, you're going to see me through this unexpected trouble, this unexpected sickness, that unexpected inflation that has depleted my funds.

I've got confidence you're going to see me through. Friend, you try to see yourself through, well, you know that's not going to work. But I've got confidence that you're going to see me through. I mean, we can take church and leave church, read the Bible, not read the Bible. We're so casual, just so casual about our spirituality. God help us. And I want you right now to think about that unexpected trouble or that trouble that has been there for a while.

I want you to stop. I'm going to stop preaching right now so you can talk to God. You can talk to me, you can talk to one another, that's not going to help very much. But what you talk to the one who can fix it for you, there comes the healing. There comes the answer. There comes your victory. Do you believe what I'm saying today? In what I'm telling you, is it biblical or am I just talking off the top of my head?

Friend, how deep is your Christianity? How deep is mine? Come on, for right now, I'm going to take about 30 seconds. That's all, for you and me to bow our heads and tell the Lord, I've got confidence in Romans 8:28, in the God of Romans 8:28. I've got God in my life. The God that's going to bake this beautiful cake when all the ingredients come together. He's doing something very beautiful for you. Let's bow.

Thank you Father for hearing our prayer. Thank you for being our Father. God, we're not orphans. We have a Father. You are our Father. And we thank you in Jesus' name. You have heard our prayers. Praise God. We have a funeral coming up here Tuesday. Mrs. Ethel Lawlord. Talking to her on the phone getting everything ready for the funeral. She talked about her husband David. Both of them members of this church. You are more likely to hear it Tuesday when I preach the eulogy.

She said David was a man of three P's, if I can remember now. She said he was a man of purpose, that's one P. A provider, that's another P. A protector, that's another P. You know, God is all of that and more. This is the God that we love and serve and who loves us. That hymn, Great Is Thy Faithfulness. Obviously you know where I took that sermon title from. God is our faithfulness. Written by a man by the name of Thomas Chisholm. This man, let me tell you just a little bit about him.

He lived in Tennessee back in the late 1800s. He was 16 years old, never finished high school, but way back in there where he lived they didn't have school teachers, so they made him a school teacher and he didn't even have a high school education, but he was a brilliant man. Now, this is the man that wrote Great Is Thy Faithfulness. He was sick all his life, off and on. He would have bouts with sickness.

He became a born-again Christian. He gave his heart to the Lord. He became an evangelist, but he had to give up the ministry because of poor health. He had very little money coming in. He moved to New Jersey. He became an insurance man. And then the last few years of his life, he lived up in Ocean Park, Delaware. And people would, there was a camp meeting up there every year and he would attend it. People would see him walking the streets by himself. They would see him on a park bench by himself.

In 1960, he passed away and went to heaven. Now, this song didn't catch on until Billy Graham had it in a London crusade with George Beverly Shea singing it. We like the old hymns, and I always will like the old hymns, but this is one of the newer hymns. And then Moody Bible Institute took this song and made it their unofficial theme song, Great Is Thy Faithfulness. Now, many of the songs or the hymns in particular that we sing here at the church were written out of tragedy or a sad event or a happy event, but there was a traumatic something that happened that precipitated the hymn that they wrote.

Charles Wesley's conversion was so real and so wonderful that he wrote the hymn, And Can It Be. You remember that song? He wrote that out of a conversion experience. And then there was Horatio Spafford. The saddest thing. His children were on a liner going across the Atlantic, and in a terrible storm it sank and killed all of his children. And then he wrote the hymn, It Is Well with My Soul. But this hymn, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, there was no tragedy, there was no happy experience, there was just the everyday routine of life.

This man would get ill, he'd gain a little bit of health for a while, he would get ill again. He said he never had much money because of his sickness. He couldn't even go on in the ministry because of ill health. But this is what I'm trying to say, friend. You don't have to do something great for God when something traumatic happens or even something good happens, but just in that daily routine experience, day after day after day, you can love God, praise God, write a poem, sing a hymn, be a servant.

The word servant up there with Paul. Paul and Timothy, servants. Let's serve the Lord in the church and out of the church. I remember going down to Quito, Ecuador, years ago. They have the HCJB radio and they have a hospital there. And I was ministering and teaching the missionaries. And the pastor of the church, it was time for him to resign and let another pastor take over. And the very first Sunday he was not in the pulpit, he went to the nursery. The pastor of that church.

He kept going to the church. It was a wonderful church. I preached in that church several times. And he went to the nursery. He said, for years I pleaded with people, come be a Sunday school teacher, our children need you, won't you come? Won't you come and sing in the choir? The choir needs help, won't you come and be a servant of the Lord? Won't somebody come and help me with the nursery? And he said no one, very few, certainly not enough to keep things going. Because everybody had their own agenda.

Servant of the Lord, but not serving the Lord. And he said, so I became a nursery worker the Sunday after I resigned as pastor. I knew the man. Now, serving the Lord not only in church work, yes, in church work, but also serving the Lord, maybe even more importantly, outside the church tomorrow when you go to work and you meet people, you're a servant of the Lord out there. Servant of the Lord. God is faithful, friends. He's going to bless you and he's going to help you.

Come on, let's do something beautiful for Jesus, here and out there. Let's get these kids going again. Going into the third year, I've been praying, writing letters, calling, on the radio, making announcements, doing everything I can to keep the church together and keep it going. And because of you and your faithfulness, it's going. Can you say praise the Lord? It's going. Say this, it's going to be okay. Indeed it is okay, and it's going to be okay. I've got confidence, Jesus is going to see me through.

No matter what the case may be, whether we have servants here or servants out there, I know he's going to fix it for me. I've got confidence. Can you say that? I've got confidence. I've got confidence. Now I want to talk about the prison 10 years before he wrote Philippians. When he was put in prison in Philippi for preaching the gospel, telling people to give their hearts to the Lord. He cast a demon out of a slave girl who had the spirit of fortune telling.

She couldn't tell fortunes anymore and there were men who were making a lot of money off of her telling fortunes. And they couldn't make money anymore, so they had Paul arrested. They had him beaten, Paul and Silas, put in stocks in a prison on their back, with lashes on their back. And at midnight they started singing. Friend, when you can sing under those conditions, whatever condition you're under today, go ahead and start singing. Sing in your car, sing in your home.

Well, they were singing. And at midnight the prisoners heard them singing. And something happened. The angel of God came down and literally shook that prison until the prison doors came off their hinges and opened up. This jailer came running in and took out his sword, was going to kill himself because of what the Roman officials would do to him and his family. He couldn't even imagine what they were going to do to him but he was so frightened.

And Paul called out, don't do yourself any harm, we're all here, all the prisoners, not one of us have escaped. And then the man called out, what must I do to be saved? And Paul said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved and your whole house. Friend, when you get saved, look out, your whole family's going to get saved. But if you're not consistent, they're not going to be consistent. I didn't get an amen on that one, but you heard the truth. You're in that house, in that home for a reason.

God put you there. You have a work to do. You're a servant of the Lord not only in the church when it's convenient but in the home when it's convenient and not convenient. We are servants of the Lord. But there had been a number of hymns written and good things from those in prison. John Bunyan who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, he wrote half of that book while he was in prison.