The Healing Word

Guest (Male): Friend, love will hide a multitude of sins. Love will hide a multitude of negative things that are disturbing you. Those things will grow dim and love will grow bright in the presence of Jesus.

Psalm 107 verse 20: "He sent his word and healed them." Welcome to the Healing Word. Here's Pastor Jack Morris with today's message that will grow your faith in God and lead you to a closer walk with Jesus.

Pastor Jack Morris: Navigating your circumstances. Navigation simply means the art of going from one place to another place with safety and efficiency. The early sailors were the first ones to begin developing the art of navigation. In the beginning, they would sail their ships close to the shore and they would take sightings from landmarks on the shore. Then later on, they ventured out into the deep when they didn't see the shore and they would sail their vessels according to the sun by day and the North Star by night. Later on, they developed nautical charts, and then came the compass, and on and on it goes until today, even our automobiles are navigated. We have GPS—"God, Please Show me." That one came from Eriat Edmundson.

We need the Holy Spirit to give guidance to us. We live in a world that is very capricious. It's always turning. Nobody knows what a day is going to bring forth. Do you know this is the first day that you've lived this day? You've never lived this day before. You'll never live it again. No one knows what tomorrow is going to bring forth. We have plans, we think, we hope, we pray, but only the Lord really knows. Friend, we don't want to get so very comfortable that we know and can predict because we can't. We have God, and thank God for the Holy Spirit that helps us.

We need to navigate some emotional problems and some spiritual challenges. Think, for instance, a person is called and told they have cancer. That means weeks and months of observing, chemotherapy, pain, medication, and then usually surgery. The person has to navigate all through that to keep his or her spirit up because it will get one down and discourage one unless we look to the Lord. I just don't know how people in the world make it without God. They get these terrible heart conditions and how they navigate or how they keep going. But you and I have the Lord, and how thankful we are. Can you say praise the Lord? You have the Lord to navigate you and to help you through.

How about people that go through a divorce? How do you navigate a divorce? You go to the court, you have the settlement of property, and the court often has to decide who gets the custody of the children. A divorce is a long, drawn-out, expensive affair, and if you don't have the Lord to navigate you and to help you, how do you do that and stay happy and blessed in the Lord? A lot of Christians are dropping out because of the difficulties that they're facing. They get their eyes off of God and they try to work it out and navigate themselves by their own brain, by their own carnal thinking. It is so hard. It's difficult.

How about if you lose a loved one? A loved one dies. The pain and the loss doesn't go away very quickly and sometimes it never goes away. How do you navigate? How do you keep going, keep alive, keep yourself well, happy, successful, and safe? I could mention a lot of things. Some of you are navigating some very difficult times right now today. Do you know why? Because God gave me this message and says, "Go tell my people how to get through their difficulties, how to navigate, how to go forward with their life." I'm here to tell you from the word of God. I am going to speak this truth by God's grace. You're going to receive it and some of you are going to be greatly encouraged and you're going to make it with victory.

I've been reading through the Book of Job. How that man ever navigated through what he went through. Friend, we don't need friends like he had. We don't need those kind of friends. But there's always somebody out there to tell you how to do it. Somebody that has never gone through it or never suffered through it, but they know how you ought to do it. That was Job's friends. Those kind of people are around today. It has been something navigating this church for 43 years. Only the Lord. I have to say what the psalmist said: "Had it not been for the Lord." Can everybody say that? Had it not been for the Lord. God has helped us and blessed us and he is here to continue doing so, provided we look to him.

Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus because that was a discouraged church. Discouragement is a terrible thing. Discouragement will shut you down because it'll sap your energy. It'll cause you to become dismal and only look at the negative. Listen, even churches become discouraged at times and individuals in the churches become discouraged. Here is a great church whose founding pastor was the Apostle Paul, and that church became discouraged. I'm going to read from Ephesians chapter 3, verse 13. Paul is speaking. He said, "I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are for your glory."

Paul had heard somehow that this church was out of victory and that this church was discouraged. Discouragement means you feel like giving up. You just don't have the strength to go on. You lose heart. You become slack. That's what I was talking to Tyler a moment ago. How did you keep going when you could only go to a Bible-teaching church occasionally when you were in a place that was so foreign and so distant from what you were used to? I have seen God's people keep going even when discouragement would threaten them. They would find a way to keep going. They navigated by the help of the Lord.

As the early sailors had the sun by day—well, for you and me it's not S-U-N, it's S-O-N—we have the Son by day. They had the North Star by night. We don't have the North Star, but we have the bright and morning star. Friend, you have all you need to make it through in victory. There's not a trouble or a difficulty that comes your way or my way that God is going to put upon us that you and I can't bear. Sometimes I've wondered, "Lord, can I make it? Can I stand up under this?" I've heard so much negativism. "This is wrong, that needs to be changed, something else needs to be done." Anybody can point the finger, but then they go home and relax. They don't do it, but they can sure tell me and you how to do it. Turn to your neighbor and say, "You're going to make it." You're going to make it.

Here's a discouraged church and discouraged believer today. You're going to make it because God is here. God has taken note of your situation. In my praying to the Lord, God put it on my heart and said, "Go tell them that I'm with them by day, I'm with them by night, and I'm going to see them through." I'm telling you that right now. God is with you to help you. Paul writes to this church and tells them don't be discouraged because of me. Notice what he says in verse 14: "For this reason," because of your discouragement, because you're losing faith, you're losing heart, you're ready to give up, "for this reason I kneel before the Father. I'm going to pray for you. I'm going to kneel before the Father."

Why did he put that word "kneel" in there? He didn't just say "I'm going to pray for you," but he said "I'm going to kneel" because Paul felt a sense of desperation for that congregation. The Jewish custom was to stand and pray. We pretty well follow that custom here. Notice when we had the prayer time, when Tony led us in prayer and we prayed the Lord's Prayer, we were standing. That was the Jewish custom to stand and pray. But Paul said there was such a problem, discouragement was so heavy upon the people, that Paul went down before God on his face. He was telling the people by what he said that they too can pray. You're a child of God. Seek the Lord.

You may not kneel in your posture because there's really never a scripture that tells us exactly the posture that we should be in when we pray. We can pray sitting down, lying down, walking, kneeling, or driving. The scripture doesn't say, but the scripture does tell us that in our heart, our heart should be kneeling in humility before the one who can hear and answer us. Sometimes we get so deep into the difficulty and we go for days, even weeks, before it ever dawns on us, "Hey, I ought to pray about this." As soon as Paul heard that there was a condition existing where people were losing heart, he began to pray. He told them, "I'm kneeling before God the Father for you." Notice what he says: "For this reason I kneel before the Father."

What do you think he's trying to tell us here? You have a dad. You're part of a family. You have a father that has birthed you into this world. You're not an orphan. Look at these words. Be encouraged. Every time Jesus prayed, although the word "Abba" isn't there before the word "Father," the intimacy, the Abba Father intimacy is always there. Many times when I pray, I'll call God "Abba." Other times I'm just saying "Father." But I have that intimacy and that relationship. He's not a distant God. There are some fathers who are distant fathers. They can procreate a child into the world but they don't care for that child, support that child, love that child, educate that child, or feed that child. They can procreate a child, but then they go; they're absent. My heart goes out to some people. They say, "I don't even know who my father is." But you don't have a father like that.

Listen to me. You have a father who cares, who loves you, who provides for you, who is with you, and who's going to help you through those discouraging times and all other times. You have a father, an Abba Father, a heavenly father. That's what Paul was telling his church at Ephesus. That's what the Holy Spirit is telling the Largo Community Church in Mitchellville today. You have a father. You can kneel before him and you can go to him. He will hear your prayer and he will navigate you. It's not all going to be lost. But if you give up, you don't pray, and you don't look to him as you try to do it on your own, friend, you're going to live a sorry life. It's not going to be easy. It's going to be very, very difficult for you. He said, "I kneel before God my Father." He's saying, "My God is a dad." He's not only a father, but I've got a dad who's with me, who helps me, and who blesses me. Amen? You've got a dad. He loves you and he's with you.

There are at least four petitions that Paul presents. He's letting the Ephesian church know—and thank God this passage is here for us today—that we can read it and God will do the same for us what he did for the Ephesian church. What Paul told them, I'm telling you, and the Holy Spirit is bringing it to you to convince you that victory is coming. God is your father and he's going to bless you. Friend, you and I have more outlines step by step on how to live a victorious, overcoming life, but we give up too soon and some of these methods are not followed.

In verse 16, he said, "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power." These were discouraged people. They were growing weak and growing faint. They needed help right now. He said, "I'm praying to the one who can turn things around for you, the one who can show you the way. You have a dad, you have a father, and he's going to care for you." He said, "I'm praying that God will give you strength." Paul didn't know, but I'm sure he may have had a premonition that he was going to be executed. If they're discouraged and ready to give up because he's in prison, my God, what's going to happen to them when they chop the pastor's head off and decapitate him? Sometimes we're praying and things don't get better; they get worse. Am I talking to people today who live in this world?

Paul had a premonition that things may get worse. They couldn't have gotten any worse. Here was a church so discouraged. Paul founded that church and from that church many other little churches throughout the country that is now Turkey were raised up and many people came to the Lord and were brought to Christ. The first thing Paul prayed was that God would give them strength. The second thing he prayed for was that God would fill them with love. Look at verse 17: "So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and I pray that you, being rooted and established in love—" Rooted, established in love.

I'm going to read the dimensions of love. You want to read them out loud with me? Verse 18: "May have the power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ." What love. Not just singing "Love Lifted Me" or "The Love of God." Yes, singing it, but truly experiencing it. Friend, love will hide a multitude of sins. Love will hide a multitude of negative things that are disturbing you. Those things will grow dim and love will grow bright in the presence of Jesus. How wide is that love? God's love is so wide that it will reach out to embrace the whole world. Stop looking in that direction. You're going to become discouraged. You're going to miss your devotional time because you're not going to get much out of it. Pretty soon you're going to say, "I'm not getting much out of church anymore. Maybe I ought to look for another church."

That's how it works and I love you enough to tell you the truth that God cares for you, he loves you, and he wants to help you. He wants to strengthen you with that love of Jesus that encompassed the whole world and encompasses you today. That love that is so wide. That love that is so high that it reaches up to the highest heaven to the very throne of God, to that dad above, and that love flows down. That love is so deep that it reaches down to the lowest sinner and to the most discouraged, defeated, hopeless, helpless individual to lift that person up. Friend, you never get so low but that that love can't reach all the way down and touch your life and bring you back up. Love that is so high, wide, and deep. This is the love of God. The love that God has for us and for you today. You're loved with a great and everlasting love.

He prays: "God, strengthen that church and help those people to experience your love." Because of their discouragement, they don't feel loved and they don't feel like loving. It not only happens to congregations, it happens to individuals within congregations. Then he prays in verse 19 that this love would surpass knowledge. What is he saying? It's just not a love that is academic. Not a love that is academic, but it's a love that touches lives and changes lives. You don't have to be a saint to know Greek and Hebrew. You don't have to be a saint to know the definition of love. You don't even have to be a saint to know how to teach certain books of the Bible. You can teach it from an academic standpoint, but from a heartfelt heart touched with the love of God, if you teach it that way, it'll communicate Christ.

He is saying that they will be strengthened, they will be filled with love, and they will have love that surpasses knowledge. It will be a love that is experienced in their hearts. A wonderful love, an overcoming love, and a victorious love. Then in verse 19 again, he says that this love will be not in measure. God just won't give you a little cupful every so often, but God will just baptize you in his love. You will just be overcome. Like when we immerse, we go down in the water and the water just floods over us. You will just go out of sight and when a person looks at you, you'll be so immersed in love that all they'll see is the love of Jesus. They won't even see you anymore. That's what Paul is saying to this church that is so discouraged because he's in jail and he hasn't gotten out. He has at least the premonition that he may never get out, which he never did. Not a measure.

This love that God gives doesn't count wrongs or evil. It sees no wrong, sees no evil. It has the power to overlook and keep on going. It's a miracle love. It's a divine love. It's not an academic love. You can't learn it; you have to experience it. And when you experience it, you'll go all the way to victory. When Christ was on the cross, the vertical beam reached high all the way into heaven to the very throne of God where love, forgiveness, mercy, and all goodness comes from. That love reached all the way down into the earth to the most discouraged and most defeated person. Sometimes we're so low. If I'm a child of God, why is all this happening to me? Love that is so broad that it goes out with the outstretched arms of Jesus and encompasses the whole world.

Today, God is wanting with outstretched love to take his arms so extended on that cross and bring them down and put them around you and say, "I want to be a dad to you. I want to see you through this sickness, this cancer, this heart problem, this divorce, or whatever it is that you're going through. Whatever difficulty you're having in the family or on the job, I want to put my arms around you. I want you to let me see you through. Don't try it on your own. Try it with me and go all the way to victory in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ."

Guest (Male): If today's message strengthened your faith, we invite you to stand with the Healing Word through your prayers and your generous support. Every gift helps us take the gospel to more people who desperately need to hear that Jesus still saves. Join us tomorrow for another Healing Word message. Until then, blessings on you.