-Transcript-
00:26 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:31 Welcome to the cafe. Thank you for joining me. My name is Pastor Clark Covington, and today we’re, well, I should say KJV Cafe.
00:39 I guess I’ve said it in the introduction, but I’ll say it again. You’re listening to KJV Cafe. Amen.
00:45 Thank you so much for joining me. I don’t take it for granted. Anybody listening today, I feel so blessed to be able to talk with you, amen, and to help share God’s Word with you.
00:54 And today we are taking a little bit of an unusual approach. Typically we have a firm message, title, and scriptures, and we go through Bible study essentially every episode, 15-minute episode. We also do 30-minute episodes and even 28-minute episodes.
01:12 We’re all, you know, hey, whatever you need, 15, 28, 30, we’re here for you. Maybe one day we’ll do a 60-minute, that’d be kind of cool. But today we are just here to talk about reflections in the ministry.
01:26 The Lord had given me this, Reflections in the Ministry. It’s been on the radio just over two years, over two years on the radio. And the verse I have is actually my life verse.
01:41 So Reflections on the Ministry, radio ministry, just to share with you what the Lord has put on my heart here. Proverbs 3:5-6, trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths.
02:02 You know, I wrote that scripture there, a young lady, a daughter of a mission family asked me to sign her Bible. I have to say that’s probably the first person that’s ever asked me to sign their Bible. It may be the last.
02:17 And so I looked at her and I looked at the Bible, looked back at her, I said, okay, you want me to sign it, amen. I don’t think that autograph will be worth too much. But I was pleased, so pleased to do it, to sign it there.
02:30 You know, just telling that young lady, trust the Lord. And I put Proverbs 3:5- 6 in there because I thought that verse was just the first one that came to mind. So applicable.
02:43 It’s my life verse. My mom years ago gave me a little sailboat statue and on the placard it had that verse on there as before I was saved, amen. And I never forgot it.
02:53 And I thought that was really interesting because the world always tells you to trust in your own understanding, amen.
03:02 And so thoughts and reflections on the ministry to share here today, look, it is really interesting to look at radio ministry today and where God is working because I just finished preaching a series on how the Israelites were not listening to God, right?
03:18 They weren’t listening. They weren’t hearkening unto God and that God would have done everything for them if they would just listen to him and obey him, okay?
03:26 And is that not where we are today in a lot of cases, Christians? I believe this here today, that if we would just listen to God, you know, and I’m no better than anybody.
03:37 I also struggle with this idea of wanting to take things into my own hands. My biggest enemy I believe is idle time. It is hard for me to sit still.
03:47 It’s hard for me to be still and know that he is God, amen. That’s a challenge for me. That’s something that’s always been a challenge for me ever since I was really young.
03:59 I like to stay busy and active. I like to have a to-do list where we check things off the list and cross things off the list. You know, as I’ve studied behavior of men and women, I think I studied this because of foster care training.
04:14 I think that was where it was at. I don’t know. I think about how parents are and how the man is and the father is and the woman is, the mom, dads, they want to get stuff done.
04:24 I think that’s where I learned this, but that’s a trait. It’s a male trait and I definitely have that trait. And yet the Lord is really impressed upon me to be patient.
04:34 And so what does that mean for you? You know, what you’re struggling with in your life, and I’m guessing it may have something to do with the ministry.
04:43 I mean, the people that listen to Christian radio, oftentimes they’re either in the ministry or they’re very dedicated to their church or they don’t have a church and the radio kind of becomes their, you know, their worship or whatever it may be.
04:54 You know, maybe there’s something that you’re struggling with what God’s calling you to do and you want to just do something, right? And God is calling you to be patient.
05:04 And Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to trust in the Lord with all our heart. With all our heart. And that word heart, now we are Heartland Ministries, Heartland Community Baptist Church.
05:20 Our founding verse is Romans 10:9-10, which talks about believing with the heart and speaking it with the mouth to be saved and to believe in Jesus with the heart.
05:31 And the heart has really worked, that word has really worked its way into so many messages that I’ve been preaching lately because it’s really the deepest part of our soul.
05:41 You know, the heart is what’s referred to, obviously not the literal organ, the heart, but just that depth, you know, of like not shallow, right? What’s shallow? An emotion is shallow, right?
05:50 Like somebody steps on your toe and you’re like, oh, how dare you? You know? Well, they stepped on your toe.
06:05 It’s just like a response, right? You don’t even mean it, you know? It’s shallow. It’s an emotional response. They forget your straw at McDonald’s or wherever.
06:06 No, I’m not going to say McDonald’s. McDonald’s is great. They’ll never forget your straw.
06:10 But wherever, whoever, whatever unnamed establishment would forget your straw and, oh, I can’t believe it. Bless God, they didn’t even remember my straw. These are emotions.
06:18 These are shallow things. And God is saying, trust the Lord with all thine heart. Trust him with that deepest part of you.
06:25 Because we realize in the scriptures, out of the heart, right, comes either good things or bad things that end up coming out of our mouth.
06:31 And so out of the heart, if we’re evil in the heart, then we’ll speak evil things or we’ll do evil things that will have evil fruit about us.
06:38 And if we are pure in the heart and we have love in our heart, then we’ll speak love and do loving things about us.
06:45 And so our actions and our words really are simply indicative of our heart. And so Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us, trust in the Lord with all your heart, with all thine heart.
06:56 Trust the Lord with all thine heart.
06:59 Not some, amen. And so obedience to God, especially, like I said, in this radio ministry in these last couple of years, has been about trusting God.
07:08 Because there’s been times when we’ve looked at changing things, you know, whatever it may be, right?
07:15 The format or doing a podcast or going on more radio stations or less or whatever it may be, right? It always comes back to trusting God with our whole heart.
07:26 Because if we’re hedging our bets, if I’m hedging my bet, amen, and saying, well, I trust God, but I’m going to keep going over to, you know, this advisor, this worldly advisor, not that I have one, but if I did, right?
07:39 That would then be kind of not really trusting God with your whole heart, right? And so whether it’s the radio, whether it’s internet evangelism, whether it’s door-to-door soul winning, confrontational soul winning, whether it’s a track ministry, whether it’s international ministry, whether it’s supporting missions, whether it’s being a mission yourself,
07:58 whether it’s where God wants to put you for a Sunday school teacher or youth leader, or even a preacher and a pastor, you know, whatever it is that God’s called you to do, maybe evangelism, be an evangelist.
08:11 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto thy own understanding. Now this is what always gets me, you know, I grew up being told to just get enough education and you’ll have all the understanding.
08:25 And I bought that hook, line, and sinker because I was not a good student.
08:31 So I felt like, oh man, I don’t know if I’ll ever get all this education to have all this understanding, but I sure want to try because my teachers keep telling me that’s all I need to do. Right?
08:41 And these students that get all A’s, they seem to be like, have it together, or they seem to be walking around like they got a plan, you know? And I was over there just trying to play football or lacrosse or whatever it was,
08:54 just wanting to play sports, chase girls, all the things a young man would want to do, had very little interest in the spiritual stuff. But now I look at this as gold.
08:56 This is greater than gold. This is diamonds. This is greater than diamonds.
09:02 Because God’s saying, don’t trust your own understanding because our understanding is rooted in what? It’s rooted in the world, is it not?
09:04 So our understanding is rooted in the world and our heart then desires that the fleshly side of us, the lust, desires to live like the world and be approved of by the world.
09:15 And the world and God, our God, the God, our God, the God of the Hebrews, amen, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, he desires us to be separate from the world and to have a heart that trusts him.
09:33 And that we don’t lean on our own understanding.
09:36 Because look at, I mean, when Abraham, as I understand it, came into the promised land that God led him to, there was famine. And so his understanding was, well, Egypt is pretty rich, so we’ll just go to Egypt, right?
09:50 I didn’t, that wasn’t a good idea, amen. He could have been killed if he hadn’t lied that, you know, Sarah was his sister. There were so many examples of when we trust our own understanding, we could go off and make a mistake.
09:59 You know, King Hezekiah, you know, God told him through a prophet that he was going to die. And he said, well, let me live many more years, please.
10:07 And he begged God, he pleaded with God, he stated his case before God saying, look, I’ve done things you wanted me to do, please let me live.
10:12 And so God gave him more life. And then he ends up showing the Babylonians all the riches and they end up getting invaded and it was a disaster, right?
10:20 And he was trusting his own understanding in that case. There’s so many biblical examples of this, but for you today, I express to you not to trust your own understanding.
10:30 Because again, if we trusted our, if I trusted my own understanding with this ministry, I don’t know where we’d be.
10:37 But trusting God, I know we’re in the right place, even when it’s challenging. And boy, it has been challenging in the radio ministry.
10:45 But we know that God is faithful. Here’s the verse six here, in all thy ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. So in all our ways, we are to acknowledge God.
11:04 And so when it comes to the ministry, we acknowledge, I acknowledge God, amen. And we as a church acknowledge God and our, you know, and my family acknowledges God. I’m trying to think of people or groups that would be involved in the radio.
11:07 We acknowledge God. We acknowledge who he is and what he’s doing. We see the doors that he has opened.
11:13 We also see doors that maybe he’s closed, amen. We see the trials and the tests and the temptations, and we see the overcoming victories and we acknowledge God, amen, and all those things.
11:23 So what happens? He shall direct thy paths.
11:28 And so when we trust God, right, we have a full trust in him and who he is. We trust him with the deepest part of our soul, our heart, and we don’t lean on our own understanding. We don’t go to the world.
11:37 We don’t go to a self-help book, amen, unless it’s the Bible. We don’t go to the world. We don’t go to our business advisors, but we just trust God.
11:46 We have faith. We acknowledge him. We say, this God, this is your ministry.
11:53 And that’s very important. I heard a great little clip, and I don’t know anything about this individual, but he was thinking about getting into a sports, a sporting goods industry, making a certain sporting good.
12:05 And he said, God, if you want me to do this, then please give me a passion for it, because I guess it wasn’t something he had had a passion for, that particular craft of making this sporting good.
12:16 And he said that God gave him a passion for it. That’s great faith, I believe, asking God, say, God, if you want me in this, then give me a passion for it. And if you want me in this ministry, then provide the resources.
12:25 Now, if God does provide, amen, we thank him for it. If he doesn’t, it may not mean that he doesn’t want you to do it, but it may just be a trying and a testing time that you have to continue to pray and seek his will.
12:37 But surely, if you seek the Lord, and if you knock, he will answer.
12:43 If you desire for God to hear you, and if you are repentant before God, the Bible says to cleanse your hands, you filthy sinners. Draw nigh to him, and he’ll draw nigh to you, amen.
12:50 If you get right with God, and you seek God, and you call on the holy name of God, he’ll show up and he’ll show out.
12:56 And that is my testimony for the radio ministry. You look at our finances, and you look at the stations we’re on, there is no way this should happen. There’s no way, but God has been faithful.
13:08 And I testify to this. It almost brings me to tears to know what God has done in this ministry, because there’s no earthly way that I could have done it, that anyone else could have done it.
13:17 And so he gets the praise, and he gets the glory, and he has the power, whether to continue on and to grow it, to shut it down, whatever he wants to do.
13:26 I heard a great quote, I believe it was from Vernon McGee, when he was getting old and passing away, he has got that Bible bus program that’s so wonderful, and he said to the people that were gonna gain control of that operation, he said, simply put, keep running the program till the money runs out, and then shut it off.
13:43 I thought that was a beautiful picture of just, you know what, God’s gonna provide, and when God doesn’t provide, then it’s time to stop. And that’s as simple as that.
13:51 So whatever you’re doing here today, take encouragement that God is with you if you are seeking him, and that God will guide you if you trust him with all your heart, if you don’t lean on your own understanding, if you acknowledge him, he’ll direct your paths, and those paths,
14:03 even if they’re challenging, will be prosperous for you. I challenge you to pray to God today, to seek his will like you never have before,
14:13 and to desire to do his will, and to don’t peg God against some worldly standard, because his ways are higher than our ways, to trust him, and he will direct you in a wonderful path.
14:19 Thank you for listening. Take care. Tune in next time. God bless, and amen.