The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: Stop trying. Stop trying. You are trying. It hasn't gotten any better, has it? Has it gotten any better in your life, in your family, in your finances? Has it gotten any better? You answered in your mind. But I'll tell you, with God, all things are possible. He can make it better. He can and He will.

Guest (Male): We joyously welcome you to The Healing Word, a ministry of the Largo Community Church. On the program today, Pastor Jack Morris is going to look at our efforts to make things happen versus God's will and timing. One way can result in heartache and disappointment when the two are not moving in the same direction. But joy and peace can result when God is in control. Let's go hear the message today, "Nothing's Impossible with God."

Pastor Jack Morris: Now I want you to look at that title for just a moment. "Nothing Is Impossible with God." Notice that: "with" God. If there's an important word there, and every word is important, that word "with" is the most important, perhaps. It is certainly equally important.

We can't do it on ourselves. There are things that are happening that are just beyond our human ability to cope. And I know some of the things that you're coping with. Others are coping with or trying to cope, and it's difficult to be able to manage some of the stresses that are in our lives.

But listen to this. With God. With God. Come on, say it: "With God." Nothing is impossible with God. We're going to make it, friends. Nothing is impossible with God. If you have God, nothing is impossible. But there are a whole lot of things that are absolutely impossible without God.

I'm not going to try to play God and run my own life and my own affairs. How foolish I would be, but how foolish many people are. Abraham had the promise of God, but somehow there was a time along the way that he forgot that promise. And that happens to Christians today.

We have the promises of God. We're relying upon them. We're believing them. We're trusting Him. And then as life goes on, businesses go on, family goes on, our children's education goes on, sicknesses go on, financial problems, sometimes we begin to move away and lose sight, and those promises are not as keenly in our mind. They become a little bit dull. And that's happened to Abraham.

And after Abraham began to forget and tried to get involved himself and make the promise come true, then it was his wife. If it isn't one, it's the other. Friend, we need to stand together, have that family altar, be together in our faith and in our belief, and trust the Lord to do what He says He's going to do.

He's going to do it, but circumstances cause us to sometimes begin to forget. That's what we're going to look at today. But we must remember the Holy Spirit will come and help us to remember and trust, and we will see the hand of God even in the area of impossibilities.

Now, if you can get a hold of what's going on. What is stressing you the most today? What is heavy upon you? Think about it. Get a hold of it in your mind right now at the beginning of the message. Get a hold of it. Go ahead and acknowledge it.

Someone says, "Oh, I'm not going to acknowledge it." Well, acknowledge it. You have to acknowledge your sin. The Bible says, "If we confess our sins..." So acknowledge your stress. Let it come out. Let it come into front focus in your thinking now.

And as the sermon goes forth, the Word of God will go forth, and the Word of God will attack that whatever it is that's stressing you. You can't handle it. If you could handle it, it wouldn't be stressing you right now. You would have handled it. But you can't handle it. It's stressing you right now.

Thank God you're in the house of the Lord to hear the Word of God. So since you can't handle it, again, if you could handle it, you would have already done so. But you can't. Acknowledge that. "I can't handle this." Now name it in your mind. Name it. What is it that you're having a hard time with?

Now let the Word of God come forth, the healing word. "He sent His word and healed them," the scripture says. The Word of God is being sent forth today, and God's going to do the impossible. Nothing is impossible with God.

Now let me go back. We're going to go through the message. The Word of God is going to come forth. There's going to be healing: spiritually, emotionally, yes, even physically. Because the things that are going on spiritually and emotionally attack you physically, and that's when we call it distress.

There is stress, there's burden, there's hardship. We wrestle with it. We think about it. And it goes on day after day until it breaks us down. We get an ulcer, we have a heart attack, whatever. The immune system is gone. So stress then becomes distress when it becomes physical.

So there's a lot of things going on in your spirit, in your emotions, even in your body. But here comes the Word of God to bless and to heal and to make you whole. Let's get a little bit of a review. Very quickly, I'm going to go through this.

The last three weeks, God called Abraham. Abraham responded to that call. As God spoke to him and he responded, God's going to speak to you and you're going to respond. God told him, "I want you to leave your country, your family, the idol worshippers, the society and the culture that you've lived in."

This was going to be... he didn't call it a born-again experience, but that's exactly what it was. He was the first man in the Bible that believed God, trusted the Lord by faith, and came into a relationship with God by faith. Just like you and I. We are now the seed of Abraham if we have truly believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and have come to God by faith.

God told him to leave your countrymen, go into the land that I will show you, and continue. Some of us start well but we don't end up well. But some of us do end up well, and I'm thankful for the Lord's power and presence to comfort us and help us to end up well. So he left.

Now, he had a nephew named Lot. Lot apparently was also one who would have faith and believe, or Abraham wouldn't have taken him with him or Lot wouldn't have gone. Lot didn't have to go, but Lot wanted to go with this uncle of faith, and so he went with Abraham.

God began to bless them. What a God we serve, a God of blessing. Friend, if we are faithful to Him, He will open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing that we can't even receive. That's what the Bible promises us. I'm so glad it's in the Bible. I've read it. Thank God I have experienced the reality and the fulfillment of that promise.

God began to bless these two men and they became so wealthy. Financially wealthy. Their herds were so great that they had to literally separate. Today we'd say the bank couldn't hold all the money that they had. They were wealthy and they separated and went their different ways.

Well, Lot went to a place called Sodom, and he lived in the city of Sodom with his wife and his children. Four kings united their armies. They attacked the cities of the plain. Sodom was one of the cities of the plain, and they captured Lot, stole everything he had. Lost it all.

But I'm going to tell you in just a moment he got it all back because he was trusting in God and he had a relationship with an uncle who really knew how to pray. He lost it all. Someone told Abraham, the uncle. Abraham attacked the four kings and their armies, overcame, got his nephew back and got all of the belongings back again.

Well, then look at verse one, chapter 15, Genesis chapter 15, verse one. "After this." After this, after everything that I've just told you in the review. "After this the word of the Lord came to Abraham." As I mentioned last week, it's the Word of God coming.

Friend, if you don't hear it, if you don't read it, you won't have faith, you won't have the blessing of the Lord. It is all dependent upon receiving the Word of God. Abraham received the Word of God, he went into faith and followed the Lord into the Promised Land.

The Word of God came to him again, and God said to Abraham, "Do not be afraid." Well, there were a couple of things that maybe he was afraid of. One, it could have been that he was afraid that those four kings were going to regroup and re-attack and come back after him. That may have been.

But here's the big thing that he was afraid of. He was afraid that the promise of God that he was going to have an heir, that would ultimately result many, many years later and in many, many births later ultimately in the coming of Jesus Christ.

It all started with Abraham and his son Isaac. It all concluded with the coming of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ didn't have any earthly children on this earth after that. It was all to bring about Jesus. It was all Jesus.

And Abraham was now an old man. He didn't have a son. How was this promise going to be fulfilled? The promise is there, I believe the promise, but there is no heir. I don't have a son to bring about and make this promise. And he began to fear. Now this was human logic.

He had a very trusted servant, Eliezer. And according to the custom of the land, Abraham said, "I will take this trusted servant and I'll make him my heir." Now the custom of the land said a family could do that. It was legal. Everything was legal. He was not doing anything wrong.

He said, "I'll take this man that knows me, that I know him. Young man, I'll trust him. I'll make him my legal heir." Well, God says no. Not going to do it. God has a plan. Friend, I want you to say this with me: "God has a plan." There are things that have happened in our church that have really shook our church to its foundation in relationships.

But God has a plan. God has a plan. Nothing misses His view and what He knows is going on. He has a plan. And so Eliezer would not be the one. Abraham accepted that. Well, then they went on a little further and now Abraham's wife Sarah gets involved.

She said, "God said..." Now Eliezer was not of the loins of Abraham. He did not come from the body of Abraham. God says, "Your heir will come from your own body." So look at this now. Here comes human logic and reasoning. And Sarah says, "I will give my husband my maidservant. He can have sexual relationships with her. She can become pregnant."

"I will take the child that comes from her and make that child my heir. You see, it's coming from Abraham's body just like the Bible says." Now that too was an acceptable custom. That happened all the time in that age. A lady could talk to her husband, they could cooperate. The husband could have relationships with the maidservant, the maidservant have a child, Sarah then would take that child and that would become the heir.

And God says no again. Now isn't it strange how we like to help God? We want to help Him out. "God, You are in a jam. Your name and title is at stake. I've got to put on a face and a show and make this happen." God said no. You know, God's "no" is also an answer to prayer.

You see, when the condition is not right, God says no. When the time is not right, God says what? Grow. Slow. When the time is not right, God says slow. And when you are not right, God says grow. But when everything is right, God says go.

You see, God has a time. And when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son. We just celebrated His birthday on December the 25th. When the fullness of time. God has a great clock and a great calendar, and God is very, very intelligent. He has a plan and He knows exactly what He's doing.

But friend, I know in my heart right now there are people here right now discouraged. You're down. You're even tired physically. Life has just worn you out. Where have you been? Today, thank God you're in the house of the Lord, and this is a day to begin again with Jesus.

This is your day. Take advantage of it or go back out there and moan and groan and fume and be beaten up by the world. Friend, it's altogether up to you and me. We are deciding our own future. With God, all things are possible. With God.

He makes all things possible, and He can make things so possible for you. Your life can be so much more joyful. Oh friend, please. The Holy Spirit is here speaking to me. There's some people here I need to tell you today, and I believe God is speaking through me, and I'm going to tell you what He's telling me to tell you.

Here it is. Stop trying. Stop trying. You are trying. It hasn't gotten any better, has it? Has it gotten any better in your life, in your family, in your finances? Has it gotten any better? You answered in your mind.

But I'll tell you, with God, all things are possible. He can make it better. He can and He will. Now God has a plan and a purpose. Well, why the delay? Why did it take God so long in bringing Isaac into being? Abraham was a hundred years old and his wife was ninety years old when Isaac was born.

You know why? God wanted Abraham to get out of the way. He wanted Abraham to know, "Abraham, you can't do it. This is a miracle that is starting with you and it's going to end with the coming of Jesus." And this is of Jesus, this is of God, this is not of you. Your laboring in vain.

It's not going to work your way. It's got to work God's way. Now there's only one way to get to heaven and that's through Jesus Christ, through His precious blood, through confession and repentance. But how many people are saying today, "Well, I've been a good man. I've done all right with my life. I've treated my children right and my parents."

And they go on and on with a whole laundry list of how wonderful they are. And God is saying, "But you're a sinner and you're lost until you confess." And anybody anywhere can confess. It's the easiest thing to do to become a born-again Christian, to accept Jesus as one's Lord and Savior. So easy. So easy. You all still with me? Okay, good.

So why did it take Abraham so long? Why did it take God so long? Because God had to make sure Abraham was completely out of the way so that God could answer prayer in a supernatural way and that God and God alone would get the credit. God and God alone.

You see, Jesus was born of the virgin. With God, all things are possible. Only God gets the glory out of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. But He waited. There's a scripture in Judges 5:28. "Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why is the clatter of the chariot delayed?"

I've been praying and praying, but I hear nothing coming. Where are you, Lord? I'm in this valley, I'm in this problem, I'm in this difficult situation and I'm praying, but You're not getting me out. Friend, He's going to get you out.

There's going to be a resurrection. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of that's not seen. Just keep trusting God. God's building faith in you. You're going to come out. Now the scripture says in Jeremiah 32:17, listen to this. "Ah, Sovereign Lord, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for You."

Now when he said, "Ah," the word "ah" is simply an expression of delight. Some of us if we would say something like this: "Ah, Lord, I don't know what's going on. But it's not pleasing to me. It's hurting me. I'm upset by it. But ah, You have a promise. Ah, Your promise is that You'll never leave me nor forsake me. Ah, my delight is in You, Lord. Nothing is impossible with You."

Friend, when you start praying that way, you are moving heaven. Heaven is moving for you and God is going to do something. "Ah, Sovereign Lord," meaning you know that He is the creator of heaven and earth. That He is the almighty. That He has all authority.

He can turn things around and change things completely. Do you need a change in your life? You're not pleased with the changes that have been taking place. Well, God is here to give you the change that you need and to bless you. Jesus said, "With man this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible."

Friend, get God in your marriage. Get God in your finances. Get God in your employment. Yes, have you ever prayed about your job? Prayed about the people you work with? Prayed about your spouse or your children? Take it to the Lord in prayer.

God answers prayer. With God... oh, I would like to say it over and over. I would like to shout it from the mountaintops. With God, all things are possible. But not with me. I can't do it. But He can and He will and He is present to do it. All things are possible. Nothing is impossible with God. Can you say amen? Amen.

Guest (Male): We hope that the message today, "Nothing Is Impossible with God," has blessed you and encouraged your faith in God. 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.

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