-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the cafe.
00:41 Welcome to the program. Pastor Clark Covington here with another message here at the KJV Cafe. I hope you’re having a wonderful day, a wonderful week.
00:49 We are looking at how to supercharge your relationship with God, which the title, which I’m looking at the title, it’s not that optimistic. The title is what’s standing between you and God. Okay.
01:03 So that’s one way to put it. But I guess another way, if I was trying to put a better look to this message, I could say it’s what’s going to supercharge your relationship with God. Because truly there is a method to grow very close to God that he gives plainly in his word, plainly.
01:19 And I love the idea, this underlying theme, this message, and we’ve had a couple of episodes here discussing this, but I’m going to recap it anyway. So you’re good if you haven’t heard them, but I love the idea.
01:29 And this is just a general principle of scripture that I believe and I’ve seen is that the more that you seek God in his word, the more he’ll reveal himself to you.
01:40 Preacher last night at a revival meeting said, you’ll get as much of God as you want. You have as much of God as you want. I’ve heard that before mentioned when I would listen to radio preaching in the past.
01:51 This is so true. So you want a lot of God, you seek God and you don’t want a lot of God, you shun the things of God. And don’t we see that in the church today? Some people, they’re just devouring the word of God.
02:04 They want that meat of the word and they love the Lord and they’re sold out to him. That’s some, maybe a small sum. And then there’s many that are pretty indifferent.
02:14 They kind of want to make sure they check that box, that they’re there in church and that they’re identifying as Christian, but they don’t want to rock the boat and they don’t want to make waves and they’ve got a schedule and they don’t really love change.
02:28 And if they are God’s own, amen, then that is grieving the Lord because truly they have as much of God as they want and it’s not very much. And oh, how that must grieve the Lord.
02:40 And I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. The reason why it grieves God is the same reason why if you had a child that had gone astray, you would be hurt by that. If you have a wayward child, say a teenager, a young adult, they go, they go off and they’re not living like you taught them.
02:55 Are you hurt because they didn’t listen to you? Yeah, maybe, you know, maybe your pride’s hurt a little bit. Maybe you’re frustrated. You couldn’t have communicated to them better, but truly I think you’re hurt or I would be hurt.
03:07 And I’ve been hurt by a child doing this. It’s to their own demise. It’s their own demise.
03:16 Amen. They’re living in the world to their own destruction. The Bible tells me the wages of sin is death.
03:24 How much more clear can that be? I’ll tell a quick story here and then I’m going to get right to the point. When we were, uh, when the fair was going on here in Cleveland County, maybe seven or eight years ago, our eldest, uh, wanted to go to the fair and, um, he had birthday money. I think he had $20 and, uh, Hey, this was seven or eight years ago.
03:43 They 20 bucks was really something. Now that’s a little bit less with inflation, but to me it’s always, that’s always a fair bit of money. Okay.
03:50 Just to me, it is, he’s got this $20 he’s birthday money. It’s his, you know, and it’s just the two of us and we’re walking around and there’s one of these carnival, um, uh, tents or whatever it be trailers and, you know, throw the ball at the knock over the, the, the milk bottles or whatever it was. And I said, son, don’t do it.
04:14 It was, I think they were wanting all $20. I said, so son, don’t do it. I think, Oh, it was throw the ball into the milk jug.
04:20 Don’t do it. Don’t waste your money. And he walked away and ignored me and I didn’t love that.
04:27 And he gave that man the $20 and he took the ball and it actually went into the milk jug and the man said, no, you weren’t standing behind the line. And that was it. So he didn’t, didn’t win a prize.
04:39 And I was hurting for him. I didn’t like being disrespected, but I was hurting for him because he lost that little bit of money that he had in that sham. Amen.
04:52 It’s funny every year they come back and it’s like, well, what point is somebody going to say enough? But anyways, that’s for another message. But you know, he, I was hurting for him. Amen.
05:01 Because it’s to his demise. He wasn’t listening to his father. Well, we as Christians, those have been bought by the blood of Christ.
05:07 It is to our demise when we are not listening to Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior. And you’re saying, Oh, well, does he talk audibly? Well, he does in his word. He speaks in his word.
05:15 There’s a lot of red letter text in his word. Amen. Beyond that, we as Gentiles have Paul’s epistles, those letters that Paul wrote to, uh, to all the churches.
05:20 Amen. We have those epistles, uh, Galatians, uh, Philippians, uh, Thessalonians, Corinthians. What are, what are those for? Those are for us.
05:34 As I understand it, Paul always writes to believers. Amen. And so we have the scriptures, we have God’s inspired word.
05:42 Amen. And we’re not listening to God. Proverbs 1:5, a wise man will hear and will increase learning.
05:49 And a man of understanding shall attain unto wise councils. A wise man will hear and increase learning. And we’ve talked about in previous episodes that we need to hear like children.
05:58 Children are just automatically from what I can tell for the most part, faithful and obedient in the sense that they believe, you know, you tell them something, they’re going to believe they’re not going to be real skeptical and questioning.
06:11 Now I know some kids like to argue and so forth, but for the most part, if you tell the kids that, Hey, this is a high tide at noon, they’re going to believe you even if they don’t see that it’s high tide at noon. Right.
06:21 But they’re just going to believe mom and dad. And yet God tells us all kinds of wonderful truths in his Bible. And we don’t believe them because we don’t live them out.
06:29 We don’t act them out. Uh, the, in the book of James, it says faith without works is dead. Well, that’s a lot of people have a dead faith.
06:36 They’re not living out what God’s commanded them to do. They’re not loving their neighbors. Uh, they’re not forsaking things like, uh, coveting.
06:46 They have idols in their life. Uh, Exodus 20:3-5, thou shouldn’t have no other gods before me. Thou should not make any unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is an earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.
06:55 Thou shall not bow down thyself to them nor serve them for I, the Lord, thy God, I’m a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children onto the third andfourth generation of them that hate me.
07:06 So God’s letting you know if you hate God and the Bible says that he, that’s not for me is against me. If you hate God, he’ll go ahead and visit the sin of the, your great, great grandchildren.
07:19 He’ll go ahead and let them know how much you hated him. Amen. That’s not good.
07:24 That is a jealous God. Amen. And so we have to look and see what idols do we have in our life? What have we put before God? Amen.
07:30 And the little G God of this world, the big, the little G God, but the big pervert, the father of lies, the devil has done everything he can to create confusion in this world to, to, to pervert the word of God, to make things that are evil look good and things that are good look evil.
07:49 And that’s why a fundamental preacher like me would be called in society today, a bigot. I’d be called closed minded.
07:55 I wouldn’t be for equity and inclusion. I would have all kinds of tags on me because I’m preaching the word of God because the devil has confused people enough, especially in the school system, uh, and,
08:13 and throughout society and certainly in the workplace to allow for people to have no idea what is godly if they are not actively listening to God. Proverbs 1:33, but who so Harkness unto me shall dwell safely and shall be quiet from fear of evil.
08:25 So here we see in Proverbs 1:33, the same first chapter here, 33rd verse that when we listen to the Lord, we will dwell safely and be quiet from evil. Well, that sounds excellent. Amen.
08:37 I would love to dwell safely and not have any evil around me. And when we listen to the Lord, we are blessed by God. Uh, we are given counsel by God.
08:46 Uh, we are given peace by God, and this is only from listening to God, but we have to listen on the Bible. Word is Harkin. When you look up the definition of Harkin, it literally means to listen.
08:57 And so we are to turn to God. How can we listen to God if everything else in this world is trying to get our attention? We all have smartphones. If your phone is like mine, it’s constantly going beep and buzz and everything else.
09:12 Well, how can you listen to the Lord if that’s happening in my devotional time, the phone is either off or flipped upside down. So when it buzzes, I can’t even look at it. Amen.
09:22 Because it is such a distraction. How can I listen to God if I’m tuned into the things of the world and there are idols in your life today? Maybe, maybe not. God knows that are standing in the way between you and God.
09:35 Uh, and it can be anything. And there’s so much discussion these days about all of the ways that people have just decided, okay, they’re not going to go to church. Sports teams are scheduling games on Wednesday at six o’clock.
09:50 Well, if church is at seven and your game starts at six, how can you be at church on a Wednesday night? Uh, there are teams that are now doing all kinds of things on Sundays. Uh, there’s stores that are running sales. I’ll be here first thing Sunday morning.
10:02 Well, what happened to church? Amen. Hey, I grew up, uh, well grew up. I spent 10 years in South Carolina where they had blue laws, where things weren’t even allowed to open until the afternoon.
10:11 And now you have things being promoted on Sunday mornings. And all of this is to take us away from God’s word, from the word that stands true. And all of these things, the Bible tells us will pass away.
10:25 They’ll burn up. Okay. There’ll be no more.
10:28 But the Bible tells us that his word is eternal. It lasts forever. So do you want to invest all your time in these things that will burn up that are worthless? Amen.
10:35 If the Lord came back today, what would it matter? All those things that you’ve been spending time with away from God, what would those things matter? Listen to the Lord today.
10:46 Forsake the idols in your life. The result of listening to God is dwelling safety, safely and quiet from evil.
10:53 And you say, well, how do I listen to God? He’s not speaking out loud. Well, you listen by getting into the word. The Bible says that faith cometh by hearing and hearing the word of God.
11:03 You get into God’s word. You study God’s word. You immerse yourself in God’s word.
11:10 Uh, I’m a auditory learner. I’m a visual learner, and yet I do enjoy reading. So I do all of those things.
11:16 I’ll listen to preaching. I’ll watch a Bible study on YouTube. I’ll listen to radio preaching.
11:21 I’ll watch, um, video content from places like voice of the martyrs, uh, or, uh, all kinds of things. I’m on email lists and so forth. I’ll watch children’s Christian stuff.
11:28 I’ll listen to godly music, maybe a bluegrass gospel or whatever it may be, or, or gospel music, Southern gospel. I’ll listen to hymns. I’ll read about biographies of Christians.
11:40 I’ll listen to Christian audio books. You see, just immerse yourself. And I’m not saying I’m anybody special, but where, where do I find time to get close to God all the time? Because if I’m working, uh, and I know some people have a job where they cannot have, uh, headphones in and so forth, but mine, I’m the work I do.
12:00 I typically can listen to something while I work or while I’m driving on and on, you know? And, and so the blessing of being a preacher is I study God’s word for part of my job. Amen. My, you know, my heavenly calling, amen.
12:12 It’s not a job, it’s a calling, but I’m studying God’s word. And for you, if you’re not in the ministry, then you have to get creative. Sometimes there’s coloring books that’ll have scripture that you can intricately color that scripture and meditate upon it.
12:24 Uh, there’s journals where you could write poems to God. Uh, there’s songs that you can sing to the Lord. Amen.
12:32 Uh, there’s so many ways to listen to the Lord. And what I mean by that is to study and meditate upon the scriptures, to think about them. And as you think about them, God will reveal more to you.
12:44 And in our text for us here, Proverbs 1:5, a wise man will hear it will increase learning and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels. We need to seek counsel from Christian people, from people that are sold out to the Lord and ask them,
12:57 how are they listening to God in their day to day life? Look to them, see actions, not just words, but actions, what they’re doing to draw close to God. Maybe one way to draw close to God is to serve him, you know, to be a deacon in the church or an elder or to work in the Sunday school or the bus ministry or all the above, uh, doing things for God, looking at how we could get counsel from those that have been there and done that and have a close relationship to God.
13:24 Rather than looking at those individuals saying, well, they’ve got the ear of God, but I never will. Well, that’s not true. You have the same access they have.
13:32 If you’ve been saved, you have the Holy spirit living within you. And so you just simply need to number one, identify what idols are in the way of your relationship with God.
13:44 And the number two, you know, look to God, get into his word and seek that godly counsel as to how you can increase in learning of the Lord and how they have and how they’ve grown close to God.
13:52 And then as God blesses you through this experience, please, please, please testify. Let others know that God has been blessing you as you listen to him and forsake the things and the ways of this world. You have great influence.
14:02 People will may look at you. They may look up to you. Amen.
14:07 And you could change someone else’s life. Well, God could change someone else’s life through you by that testimony. I thank you so much for listening.
14:15 Draw close to God today. Amen.