-Transcript-
00:25 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:29 Welcome to the cafe. So good to be here today, Pastor Clark Covington, with a second Reflections on the Radio Ministry, a second one.
00:38 We did one in the previous episode about trusting God, Proverbs 3:5-6, and how God has guided our ministry for the last several years.
00:49 And now the other one, I believe this will be maybe the last one we do on the series for a little bit, is humility, you know, reflecting on the radio ministry and the role of humility.
01:04 And you say, well, that’s great. What does that have to do with me? Well, I believe you can learn from what God has done here in this ministry.
01:10 And I believe that this principle that is seen through this ministry can be very powerful in your life. It’s a biblical principle.
01:19 The idea of humility, Psalm 25:9. The meek will he guide in judgment, the meek will he teach his way.
01:30 You know, to be meek doesn’t mean to be weak. It means to have strength under control. Jesus was meek and he had all power in the world, all power in the universe.
01:39 But he had control over that strength, right? And the meek, those that have their strength under control, he will guide in judgment. The meek he will teach his way. Think about a proud person.
01:53 How can you teach a proud person anything? Think about someone that’s arrogant. They think they know it all already.
01:59 You know, as somebody that has been, for better or worse, teaching in a classroom or some kind of orientation for some years now, it’s always the most difficult student is the one that thinks they already have it figured out, right?
02:09 And so that student typically, they have some level of pride or cockiness, arrogance.
02:17 Oftentimes they don’t respect you or they don’t fear you, so they just act out. And it’s very hard to teach that individual.
02:24 I mean, if they don’t calm down, if they don’t get themselves under control, if they don’t believe they need teaching, how could they be taught?
02:31 And so God shows us that in the lives of just dealing with students.
02:36 By the way, when I was a student, I was not a great student. And I’ve fulfilled a lot of these unteachable characteristics. So no way am I putting down the students out there that are restless and not listening and so forth.
02:46 I’m not putting them down. I’m just speaking a truth here, seeing it from both ends. The Lord, I think, allowed me to be a bad student and then said, okay, you’re a bad student for however many years and now you can deal with those students for however many years.
02:59 And there’s, I guess, no such thing as a bad student. They’re not bad people. They’re just kids oftentimes.
03:04 You know, as a lot of teachers will tell you, they’re acting out because of something going on at home. And I guess that’d be another way is, you know, maybe you teach a Sunday school or a youth group and in that role too,
03:17 you see oftentimes those that are having the most trouble sitting still are listening. There’s more to the story, right? And so what we need to do is have a clear conscience before God.
03:27 And that means that we need to understand our place. And that there is the start of any good ministry, including the radio ministry.
03:35 We see here, it’s so important to understand, you know, Romans 3:23, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
03:44 And I preached the message not long ago about how Romans 3:23 really helps put into perspective why so many struggle with the idea of salvation. You know, they can understand the world is not a great place.
03:58 Even lost people can tell you that there are, you know, that there’s some form of like sin or depravity in the world.
04:08 I mean, some people will say, oh no, but most people will admit, you know, unless they’re living on Mars, they’ll admit that, you know what, we’re not living in a great place.
04:20 And you know what, historically, we’re not getting better. We’re getting worse as a country in terms of whatever.
04:24 We haven’t evolved, we’ve devolved, amen. You know, you read the stories and stuff, you see the news, it’s absolutely jaw-dropping the bad things that are happening here today.
04:31 But we’re all, you know, we were told, hey, just get educated, just do this, do that, everything will be okay.
04:35 We’ll get reform in prison, we’ll get reform in the schools, we’ll take God out of it, and everything will be fine. And what happens? Everything, again, does not become fine.
04:43 And you put a spin on it all you want, but we are living in a moral decay, in a culture that’s violent, in a place that people don’t feel safe.
04:52 I live in the buckle of the Bible belt, and I don’t like my wife going to Walmart at night. The ATM, the company that makes the ATM that I use, I found out in Charlotte that if you put your card in there,
05:04 they’re taking pictures of your number, the thieves are, they’re taking your number from the card.
05:12 Now, in my case, they get my card and say, oh, that’s a poor preacher, we can’t, there’s nothing in there.
05:17 But for those, that’s a little preacher joke, but for those that have some, don’t use those certain kind of ATMs, be very careful, you know, be very careful.
05:27 The point is, we live in a society that is horribly dangerous, litigious, I could go on and on. There’s like, you know, everyone’s suing everybody, there’s lawsuits, everybody, everywhere.
05:37 And again, I’m living in the buckle of the Bible belt, and I’m seeing all this wickedness, and I’m thinking, what about the cities?
05:42 I can’t even imagine the cities, these epicenters of just bastions of sin and crime and all these other things. And you say, oh, you’re just talking about that. I grew up around it.
05:51 I grew up near a city. I understand how wicked those places are. So don’t tell me I’m talking about it, I’ve lived it, amen.
05:56 But back to humility, let me get off my soapbox, let me get back to humility. The point is, God will guide the meek in judgment, and in the meek, he will teach his way.
06:04 And as we reflect on this ministry, you have to be meek, because in the radio ministry, you don’t know who’s listening, you don’t even know if anyone’s listening.
06:13 And in Christian radio, you’re up against popular radio. In fundamental Christian radio, you’re up against contemporary Christian radio.
06:23 And so you take away the drum beats and all these other things, and you’re just left with Bible teaching.
06:31 And a lot of people have forsaken that, it might step on their toes. People look at the fundamental radio station and say, oh, they’re preaching about sin. I don’t want to listen to that.
06:41 And so if you think you’re somebody and you deserve some kind of audience, you may be greatly disappointed.
06:46 And so you must be meek, you must be humble. You must have your strength under control to know that God has a plan for you, and that God is desiring to mold you in a certain way.
06:56 And maybe you’re in a similar ministry, like a track ministry, or you’re in an outreach ministry, soul winning. That can be very difficult, going knocking on door to door.
07:06 During COVID, after COVID, we started doing the door hangers, trying to be very sanitary and so forth, not getting near people because of COVID.
07:21 And people were very, very aggressive in our just telling them, we were just inviting them to church. Rarely we even ask, be able to ask the question, have the opportunity to ask the question, if they knew they were going to heaven.
07:31 But can you imagine, you have to be meek.
07:36 If you think that you have the greatest soul winning capability in the world, and yet you’re not having an opportunity as much as you used to, or people aren’t listening or desiring to listen, then you could be disappointed, amen.
07:46 Proverbs 16:18-19, pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Better it is to be of a humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.
08:01 And so God desires us to be of a contrite heart. The idea in the Beatitudes there in Matthew, that we are to be of a broken spirit, a contrite heart.
08:07 The idea is we need to realize our form, realize our nature, realize that God himself is sovereign, realize that we have been saved only by the blood of Christ, that our righteousness is like filthy rags to God.
08:19 It’s like filthy gauze baths, amen. And so our humility is so important in all forms of serving God. God cannot use a crooked tree, an unfruitful tree.
08:30 So like a bad tree, the Bible says that a bad tree cannot bear good fruit, and a good tree cannot bear bad fruit.
08:37 If we are proud, if we have pride, if we have a proud look about us, God can’t use that, amen. God won’t use that.
08:42 And so we need humility. Look at the men that God used in the Bible, men like Moses, who was humble, so humble, he said, when God called him to lead his people out of Egypt, he said, look, I can’t even talk right.
08:50 Please, Lord, you know, help me have someone to speak for me.
08:57 You look at David, who even though he was royalty and God gave him these huge victories that David just poured his heart out to the Lord in Psalms. What are Psalms?
09:12 They were like songs that they would sing. So he was making public his love for God.
09:17 He was letting himself be so vulnerable for God. He was chastised, I believe, by one of his wives when he was dancing before the Ark as it was coming in to Israel, and she said, you look foolish, amen. He didn’t care.
09:28 He was so humble that he loved God and he desired to give God all the glory and desired to give God all the praise and some of the richest praise, really the richest praise that I’ve read a human right has to come from the Psalms.
09:41 And that’s David being humble. And so you see someone like David, you see someone like Moses, you see Abraham, you read about Abraham when he was trying to buy a burial plot for Sarah, his wife, amen.
09:53 God had given him all that land and he still desired to pay for it. In the scripture there in Genesis, it talks about Abraham bowing before little children like as a sign of respect. He was so humble and meek.
10:03 These are the ones that God can use. We have to have humility. I could go on and on.
10:09 We have to have humility. And when we have humility, we have meekness, we understand that God has a plan for us that is good and we just trust him and we are humble. Guess what happens? God lifts you up.
10:22 James 4:10, humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up. And I’ll tell you, there’ve been times in the radio ministry when I’ve been preaching and I’ve maybe just been tired or frustrated and I might get a little note or put something in one of our radio programs on YouTube
10:38 and someone will comment or send a message and it blesses me. It blesses me to hear, hey, someone used this for Sunday school or someone was blessed by this or someone has renewed the relationship with the Lord.
10:51 If we had any part in any of those things, it blesses me. And what that principle is, is when I am brought low, he lifts me up, amen.
11:01 Like John 3:30, he must decrease, but I must increase, right? And we understand that God is wonderful to the sinner, but he’s a stumbling block to the proud.
11:14 And so whatever you have going on in your life, and the Lord just led me to do reflections on the ministry.
11:21 A couple of episodes here, the first one and then this one. Maybe there’s something in your life that the Lord’s calling you to do.
11:29 And maybe the thing that’s standing between you doing that, that the Lord’s calling you to do and where you are now is humility.
11:35 Is that idea that you may not get anything worldly out of it, that there may not be any worldly benefit.
11:42 The idea that you may not know where that gift is going on the mission field, or you may not know if you’ll be able to serve in a big role or a little role or in a big church or little church or whatever circumstance it is.
12:00 Understanding that, look, God is a good God and God has a plan.
12:06 And a lot of our programming is on AM stations. And as someone that spends a lot of time online and so forth, when I listen to terrestrial radio, it’s typically FM, amen.
12:17 And so I’m thinking, well, those are smaller stations, right? But God has a plan to use those stations.
12:23 And if just one, throughout our entire radio ministry, however long the Lord allows it to continue, if just one hears the gospel and gets saved, if just one comes to a knowledge of Christ,
12:36 it was worth every minute, every second, if just one. That is the power of a holy God. And that is why we serve God.
12:48 Not to bring fame to us, not to have our name lifted up, not to do something provocative or big for us, but to do something for God.
12:59 And you know, there’s a song, praise him on the little days, or you hear God, you know, God is in the little things and so forth. That’s our God, amen.
13:09 He is in the details, amen. There’s an old saying, the devil’s in the details. That’s a perversion.
13:14 God is in the details. He’s in the details. And he has a great plan and his ways are very unusual.
13:20 You look at Gideon in the 300, look that up, amen. The Lord used one man who was not really qualified and just a few people to defeat a mighty army and a mighty group.
13:30 And he did it by his power and he’s gonna do it again, amen, with Israel, amen.
13:38 Everyone’s gonna come in. The book of Revelation tells us they’re gonna all think, oh, we’re just gonna wipe out little Israel now and God’s gonna show up and show out, amen, in ways that are unfathomable.
13:47 But from between now and then, we need to serve God humbly, meek, under control, serving him with obedience, serving him with zeal, not grumbling and not complaining, not looking for reasons to get out of the ministry,
14:03 but looking for reasons to stay in because God is faithful and he wants to do something through you by the working of the Holy Spirit.
14:13 So be obedient to him, humble yourself before a mighty God and he will lift you up, desire to serve him and please him and he will place you in a wonderful ministry and he will keep you there till the appointed time.
14:26 Thank you for listening. Take care. God bless. Tune in next time. Amen.