TV 1758 | Taking Hold Conclusion

God wants to give us fresh victories, fresh experiences of His presence and His power so we can actually move on instead of just keep breathing. I want to get past just keep breathing, don't you? Well, the Lord does too. He's the one who gave, who told us all this. And like somebody said this morning, He doesn't dangle stuff and then say, ha ha, you know, fooling, or you don't deserve this so I'm just teasing you a little bit. God doesn't tease us. He tells us the truth about our need, but oh, what a perfect answer He has. And His name is Jesus. Praise God. I'll tell you, when He comes in to live and gives us that new life, we have everything we need, but don't we need every single day to lay hold of that? There's an eternal life. It's forever. It's a life I wasn't born with. I didn't get it from Adam, but I need that life every single day. And if I will learn how to say, Lord, I need you, I need you every hour. Every hour I need thee, the old hymn. This is what God was trying to say through Paul and others. Everything we need to live a godly life, or a godly life, through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness, certainly not by mine, through these, alright, He has given us His very great and precious promises. So the whole thing is not based upon anything that I can do. It's not based on His commands to come up with something. It's based on His promises of what He's willing to do if I'm only willing for Him to do it. Do I really want Him to do all these wonderful things in me, or am I just kind of content? Or am I willing to just yield to the pressures of the moment, to my own history of failure, to all that's happened in my life? Am I just going to allow that to be my prisoner, or to be a prison of that?

Prisoner of that. Don't mind me if I stumble over my words. Praise God. Just don't get old. Or older, anyway. By His own glory, through these He has given us very great and precious promises, why? So that through them you may participate in the divine nature. How in the world could a sinner like me actually participate in that kind of a nature that's perfect and pure and holy? How could somebody like me actually have that? Oh man, I need a Savior who's willing to cleanse me completely, to take away every stain that sin could ever put in here. All that we've sung about this morning. Thank God for the cross. Thank God we have a place we can go in faith. Because God did it. I didn't go seeking there, He came seeking me. Why should He do such a, why should He love me so like the old hymn? Praise God. Precious promises. So that through it, so that I could actually share in the divine nature. That's God's plan for every single, that's what the Christian life is meant to be about. Don't deliver us from reducing it to a religion. To practice thinking, I'm okay because I don't do the bad stuff that so and so does. You know, the fact is, I don't care, I mean I was born in a preacher's home and I didn't grow up going way out and doing crazy stuff. I'm just as much a sinner, just as much indeed of a Savior as the worst serial killer sitting on death row in any prison, any place in the world. I was born with the same nature, I could no more fit into heaven than they could. Unless His grace and mercy reached out to somebody like me.

Praise God. So the answer to the question, did He do enough? Oh yeah. But the other thing, okay, yeah He did enough, but not for you. You're not included. God so loved the world and He gave His one and only Son that, what's the next word? Whoever, whosoever believes should not perish, but have everlasting life. The scripture is so full of Him, of Jesus, things like Jesus saying, I didn't come to call the righteous. Obviously. He's talking about people who thought they were righteous and they really weren't. But I didn't come to call the righteous, I came to call sinners to repentance. And you look at his life and the people that he reached out to with love and mercy that nobody else in ordinary society would have touched. And yet he reached them, didn't he? I'll tell you, I thought of one scripture that obviously you could dwell on any one of these, but what about Romans 8? So many scriptures there, but all about how he works in everything and his purpose in bringing us to salvation is to change us so that we'll be more like him. And then he's already promised to finish the work, we're glorified. But then what he says, what he begins with this other passage in verse 31, listen to what it says. What then shall we say in response to these things? So now Paul has enumerated all the glorious things, the purpose of God, his ability to finish what he started. So what are we going to say to this, basically? If God is for us, who can be against us? Praise God. Praise God. He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us, how many?

Paul kind of takes in everybody, doesn't it? He's the savior of all men, especially those who believe, because there are those who refuse to believe. But there is nobody that Jesus went to the cross for and said, oh, I'm here for everybody but you. God help us to answer the devil with the word of God when he says, not you, you've messed up, you've gone too far, you're this, you're that. This is for everybody else but you've got your own special needs and I'll tell you, we're all special needs when it comes to the kingdom of God. We're different and yet we're all the same. And there's no need that in your life that's so different that God can't do what it takes. Now, I was thinking about the fact that God told Timothy through Paul to fight the good fight of the faith, to lay hold. And then we find out that it's through his promises. So the Christian life is not a push button, okay, I accept it, it's done, I've got everything. It's a life where I'm going to have to keep going and receiving and seeking and looking to Him and getting what I need day by day by day by day by day. And we have somebody who is more than willing to do that. The problem is, do we do that? You see, we've got a part to play in this. And we have one picture, many pictures in the Old Testament that are unlocked in the New, but one of them was the fact that there was a promised land, wasn't there? It was given to a people. And when Joshua was getting ready to take them in, it's interesting in most of the translations that are out there, they rightly say, every place where you tread, you put your foot, what? I have given you. There was a promise. They weren't going in there thinking, oh yeah, we're just a people that need a place, we're going to go get it.

This was something God had promised. So they were operating on divine promise. Folks, we need that, don't we? One of the biggest things that we need to learn how to do in living out this life is to seek God and to know what He wants, to know what His promise is so that we can stand on solid ground. I don't want to just think I can use God to become a billionaire or some earthly goal. But there is truth in what we've heard so many times, we have not, why? Because we ask not. And so in order for Israel to actually take possession of what God had given them, they had to do some fighting, didn't they? And over and over and over, the Word of God was, don't be afraid, I'm with you. I would say very clearly today, that's God's Word to you and me. Whatever it is that's rising up to say, you're not and you can't be, we need to rise up and say, God has promised and I believe Him and I'm not afraid of you, devil. You can throw that spirit of fear at me all you want to, but I serve one who is defeated. You with the cross. That's the one I trust, and I'm going to stand fast believing His promise. You know, we had a service a while back where it was ... I'm trying to remember the actual name. I don't remember the name of the service, but the substance of it was prayers that God always answers, and basically it rested on the idea that we have a whole lot of scripture that tells us what God wants from us. He says, I want you to be this, I want you to do that, and how in the world is it that we just don't quite believe that when it comes to actual day-to-day living? Can we not go to Him and ask Him for things He's already told us belong to us? We use the expression seeking the Lord. Seeking is not just a wish, a passive wish. This is an active ... If you've lost something, what do you do? You go look for it.

There's an action component of seeking. Seeking is look, is going to the source. It's an action we take to get something we don't have and doing whatever it takes to get that. God wants us to have a position where we look to Him, we seek Him, we ask Him, but we ask Him believing that He is willing to do what He said He's going to do. I wonder how many times that's the place where we stop short. Am I the only one that's ever done that? God wants to break in upon us in ways that He hasn't. Anybody believe that? Or does He just want us to muddle on, go from generation to generation, just sort of keep the religion going? I want Him. Do we have a right to ask Him for that? The answer is yes. There they went. The biggest component is, in every case, they had to seek the Lord's direction, they had to do what He said, and when they did it in faith, God gave them victory after victory after victory. They had some times when they didn't do so good. They had to learn from it. We've used the expression before, we're going to fail. We're going to come short, but let's fail forward. Let's learn from the things that we don't get quite right, because God is going to teach us. He's going to, in all things, be at work in those who are His own, those who love Him, those who are called according to His purpose. The Israelites went in, and one battle went one way, another battle went another. We can't go to the Scriptures and say, this is the way it happens, or this is the way it's supposed to happen.

Every time, every situation, we're going to have to seek the Lord. There were times they would go and a city would just fall. Do you know, I was reading, I'm in Joshua now in my chronological reading, and I was reading about one city that the Lord told them to go, and they went, and they laid siege, and it said the second day. I wonder how many times we seek the Lord, and then it doesn't happen, doesn't happen in our timescale. Lord, I did what you said, and there they are, they're still there. Something's wrong, oh my God. We need to be willing to go to God with a persistence in our faith that's not tied to what we see, it's not tied to what we feel, it's not tied to anything of this earth except what God said. How many Scriptures are there that we know very well have emphasized that truth about going to God and seeking Him? We see needs in people, we see needs in our own lives. Do we not have the right to take the promises of God and go to God with a confidence that He cares and that He is more than willing to answer? Of course, you've got to let Him do it His way, in His time, but I'll tell you, there's a ... I mean, how many Scriptures do we see where the Lord honors those who are persistent, even those who don't look like they deserve it? What about the, was it the Syrophoenician woman? At that point in history, she didn't have any claim to the things of God, and yet she'd heard about Jesus, and she had a daughter with a demon. And she kept falling, crying out, crying out, crying out, and the devil said, shut her up. And she finally came and said what it was about. And Jesus actually said, it's not right, to paraphrase a little, it's not right to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs. Whoa. Do you ever get offended? Well, you know, we need to get over ourselves.

To where those things don't bother us and we can see past. She said that for a reason. But look at the response that she gave, truth, Lord. How many of you would have responded that way? This lady had something that you and I need. And so she went to him and said, truth, Lord. But remember the children, I mean the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table. He said, I've never, I haven't seen faith like this in Israel. Go and it's done, it'll be done for you. That's the kind of God that we serve. That's the kind of Savior that we serve. We can look in the mirror and see all that's wrong and take it to Him. You know, Kathy used the expression the other night in prayer meeting, shameless persistence. Remember where that came from? That was Jesus teaching us about prayer. And He talked about a situation where a man's friend comes to him late at night. He has nothing to feed him. And so he goes to a friend at midnight, knocks on the door and tells him the situation. The guy says, go away, it's midnight. I'm in bed. Well, what's the appropriate response from Jesus' point of view? He just keeps on knocking until the guy says, well, I'm not going to get rid of him. I guess I better do what he says. And so he does. He hears him, not because he's his friend, but because of his shameless persistence. I wonder how many of us, we let the devil talk us out of that. Oh, that's being presumptuous. When we're, when we, there's a genuine need that God has revealed, and we have His Word clearly to go by.

What God honors is someone who will come with shameless persistence, refuse to give up, give the same kind of a spirit that Jacob had when the Lord arranged for him to have, be in a situation where it looked like the promises of God were not going to happen. He was about to get wiped out by a brother that had threatened to kill him years before. And he wrestles all night with an angel. And the angel says, let me go, it's daylight. What did he say? I will not let you go until you bless me. This is God trying to encourage you and you and me never to give up, but to believe that regardless of how it looks and how it feels and how long it takes, we have every right to take this. We have, that's what Paul was conveying to Timothy, lay hold. But laying hold means a whole lot of fighting. We're fighting against our own nature. We're fighting against the wisdom, if you want to call it that, of the devil. We're fighting against all kinds of things. They were fighting against real giants when they conquered the land. I'll tell you, the devil can, and don't be surprised when you kind of take hold of this and say, yeah, praise God. Guess what the devil's going to do? He's going to fight. He's scared to death of Jesus. Like I said, you don't bother him, neither do I. Boy, he's scared of Jesus. I want more of him. I want it to be him and not me. Praise God. I forgot where I was going with that, but anyway, praise God. Do you think the Lord is telling us these things to discourage us or to tell us how it really is?

Because His purposes in changing us and making us like His Son involve us. us having to take some effort to believe. Faith is not just a feeling and a belief in some doctrine. Faith is actively believing what God says in the face of whatever the devil throws up in the way of a hindrance. It's saying, I will not let you go. I just encourage us. Let's not be silly and presumptuous and jump in the other ditch. You can be in one ditch where you just accept things. You can be in the other ditch where you're trying to change the world and think you're something you're not, but I want to be in tune with him so that I can have a genuine peace-driven sense of what he wants to do in my life and I've got a solid foundation to stand upon. I have every right to go to him with that kind of a spirit, not a what's the matter with you, get with it kind of thing, but I'm just saying, Lord, I'm not going to give up on this. I'm standing fast. I'm going to trust you. I don't know how many testimonies I have heard over my lifetime of people who went through times where they were just standing and it looked like nothing was happening, but they refused to give up. Do we not need some shameless persistence? Do we not need to be able to say, I will not let you go until you bless me? You said it. I don't care what the devil says. I'm going to stand and I'm believing you. Not just for me, but for other people and for him to show us what his plan is to reach out beyond these walls. God has a plan and a purpose, but do you think he might need to work in us a bit in the process? A whole bunch because, again, it wasn't Paul just telling Timothy to, you know, you've

got all these responsibilities. You better ask God about it. That's certainly true, but he prefaced his remarks about seeking God and laying hold with, you better lay hold of righteousness. You better seek righteousness and all these other qualities that need to be in your life. You're going to have to get them from somewhere. There's a source of life. There's a flow. There's a river that's flowing from heaven. God has given us a tremendous source of power if we realize it. Without faith, it's impossible to please him, isn't it? He that comes to God must believe that he is and, what, that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. That sounds like something I need to do, isn't it? He'd give me the faith. He'll give me what it takes to do it, but I've got to take that and put it into action With real issues in my life, in my life around him, or the circumstances, whatever it is that he lays, that he gives me a peaceful witness about, I need to take hold of his promises and believe him and expect him to do something. I'm all for reaching for the impossible, but God wants us to take hold of something that is definitely impossible in ourselves. To believe that you and you and you and you can take hold of what he has promised in this book and it becomes yours and you become part of something that's eternal because everything here is going to pass away, but what he is doing is forever. Oh, what a day that will be. We sang it so many times this morning in so many different ways. What a day that will be when we stand there before the one who went to the cross for us and we realize what he accomplished, what he gave us and what it took. Oh God, may God make that more real to me and to you right here, right now so that we don't just sit there and live like spiritual paupers when we have the riches of heaven

at our disposal through the promises of God. I want to be like Timothy, mighty servant of God, sent to help the church there, minister beyond just a local church, and yet he needed to take hold, to lay hold of eternal life. Anybody here need that? I do. To God be the glory. This has been the Midnight Cry broadcast. If you would like a DVD or CD of today's message in its entirety, please request it by program number. While it is not required, a donation of $10 for DVDs and $5 for CDs is suggested to help with expenses. Also for those who request it, we will send you our quarterly publication, the Midnight Cry Messenger, free and postage paid. Send your requests to Midnight Cry Ministries, Post Office Box 685. Southern Pines, North Carolina 28388. We invite you to join us again next week at the same time,