God’s faithfulness

“Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD; and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He will do it.” (Psa 37:3-5 NASB)

 

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Journal,

I tell these stories largely as a testimony for my children, for my grand children, and for all who have been affected by my ministry through the years.

I tell these stories by way of encouraging others to follow hard after Jesus Christ. But most of all I want others to realize that God is faithful in all His ways. The apostle said that even when we are unfaithful, the Lord is always faithful.

What David said about his walk with the Lord through the years is also my testimony, and most surely the testimony of every child of God who has served Him through the many years.

“I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread.” (Psa 37:25)

 

A Love For Jesus

To begin with, I have deeply loved the Lord for the greater part of my life. In fact I answered my call to the ministry at age 24. This August I will turn 72. But to say that I have loved Him all these years is not to say that my life has been without failures. Yes indeed, I have stumbled many times. Yet in all this the Lord has remained faithful in His love to me. 

But it didn’t begin at age 24. I’m very certain that my mother dedicated me to the Lord from birth. And ever since my mother taught me the children’s prayer of, ‘Now I lay be down to sleep’, I have carried a pulling on my heart that I belonged to the Lord.  

This pulling on my heart carried throughout my childhood. Even in my early teens I remember making a vow to the Lord that I would preach the gospel if He would take care of a situation that I had gotten myself in to. (Don’t remember the situation but it was troublesome. I do remember that the Lord took care of it.) 

The pull of the Lord could not be ignored. Can you believe that I would actually corner some of my cousins in an out house while I blocked the door, and did my preaching. Boy, were they were ever so happy when I let them out. (For you who don’t know what an outhouse is, an outhouse was the answer for nature’s call before indoor plumbing.)

Then at age 18, I joined the Navy. For the next four years the call of God pretty much drifted into the background. And of course I did all those things that are not worthy to be mentioned. Yet the Lord never forgets. He would not let my heart stray too far. It was all a matter of His time.

It is like the sage said — 

“He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.” (Ecc 3:11)

Yet there was something amiss. Even though I loved Jesus fervently from my heart, I didn’t always understand that much about God’s character. Most of the preaching I had heard was filled with passion but short on teaching on the ways of the Lord, or on discovering the very heart of God.

My ministry was molded around what I had been taught and had observed. There was a lot of emotional pushes but not much by way of true Biblical substance.

 

A Need for Understanding

In 1971, I left the full-time ministry. The drain was just too much. So, for the next three years I devoted myself to serious spiritual adjustments. Sure, I preached out and continued my ministry of winning souls to the kingdom, but I also went into business. In my mind being in full-time ministry was a thing of the past.

Those three years became a mile stone in my walk with the Lord. It was during that time that I began to experience the Lord on a level that I never knew existed. What had been a mixed struggle and a strain in my walk of faith, was now becoming a joyful walk filled with stability and grace. The Lord was teaching me His heart. A whole new world was opening up.

And through the years I’ve come to realize that a believer’s walk with the Lord is an ever ascending walk. We are always discovering wonderful things about the Lord Jesus Christ. 

But let me draw attention to an incident that became one of the many ascending points in my walk with the Lord.

It had to do with what I will call…

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Conducting Business With the Throne

Psalm 37 is a ‘a fullness Psalm.’ It has to do with God’s wisdom for life. Psalm 37 is designed to help shape our faith walk, to teach us how to think and what to believe. The essence of this Psalm is that we need to learn to trust the Lord in every circumstance of life. I point to Psalm 37 because it had a major place in reshaping my faith walk some thirty-eight years ago.

And now for the story — 

With my first cup of coffee in place I’m into my morning devotion. That morning my devotion brought me to Psalm 37. When I came to verse 4, I read, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

I had to pause. It was one of those divine moments in life. As I sat there looking at that verse, I said a prayer in my heart, “Lord, did you mean that?” That was when I heard in my heart, “Try Me and see.” 

It was like God had given me an invitation to ask of Him anything that I wanted.

Now, I have always loved my sons, but I really wanted a daughter. I quietly responded in my heart, “Lord, I would like to have a daughter.”

Almost in the twinkling of an eye, I heard once again in my heart, “She’s yours.”

That was it. Business had been conducted with the throne of God.

At the time Betty was expecting our fourth child. We had no idea what our next child was to be. The Lord had already blessed us with three sons.

I shared with Betty what the Lord said. Then when I shared this with some of the church members, they gave me this kindly smile, sort of like, ‘Yeah. We’ll see.’ Someone even challenged me on what I shared, that the Lord does not tell us things like that.

It made no difference. I had heard from the Lord.

The nurse walked down the corridor towards the window where I was standing behind the glass pane. She mouthed to me, “It’s a girl.” The tears of happiness rolled down my face. My heart overflowed with joy. Once again the Lord had shown Himself faithful.

But my happiness was not limited to the fact that we now had a daughter. My happiness wrapped itself around a promise that the Lord had given me. The Lord had given me His Word.

 

The Anchor of God

For some reason this learning experience was different. The Lord had often shown me things. I’ve had dreams and visions. I’ve had the Lord put in my heart things that were going to happen. And they did. So what made this event so different?

This time there was a direct connection with a promise written in God’s sacred Word. The Lord said that if I would delight in Him, that He would give me the desires of my heart.

What was the great lesson I was learning? I was learning that you cannot separate God from His Word, and that a life of faith must have an anchor. The anchor for our faith journey is to be based entirely upon the promises of God.

I was learning that everything I would ever need in life, that is, to live by and to carry out God’s work had already been provided. God even put His provision in written form, the Bible. My entire faith journey was to be an out working of God’s promises. The Bible is a book of living words.

Jesus said,

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”

Did the Lord stop dealing with me by dreams and visions and other directives in my heart? Not at all. What I had now was a deeper appreciation for God’s holy book. I found that the Bible is given to us as a guidebook that God uses to instill His promises into the deep of our heart. God’s words are spirit and life words. 

 

Hearing the Words of a Book

Oh yes, the Bible is much more than a book of facts where we can collect information and argue doctrine. When the Holy Spirit moves on God’s Word and begins ministering to our heart, it then becomes a living book.

Listen closely to what God spoke through the prophet Isaiah —

“On that day the deaf will hear words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see. The afflicted also will increase their gladness in the LORD, and the needy of mankind will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.” (Isa 29:18-19)

And this, my friend is a major cause of the new covenant. Listen carefully to how God’s prophet describes the covenant of Christ:

“‘Behold, days are coming’, declares the LORD, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,

“… not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the LORD.

“‘But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the LORD, ‘I will put My law [‘instructions’] within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

“‘They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, “Know the LORD,” for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,’ declares the LORD,

“‘…for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.'” (Jer 31:31-34 NASB)

I broke the afore Scriptures into paragraph portions because I wanted you to read each segment on its own. God writes His instructions upon our heart. Don’t just glance over these Scriptures. Meditate on them until your understanding is opened. 

Not long afterwards, the Lord open the gate to miracle land for me and my family.

The Gate of Miracle Land

Do you remember what the Lord said about the gate and the narrow? Listen:

 

I’m not sure the Lord was simply referring to the salvation alone. Salvation reduces itself down to a matter of conviction, of repentance, of confession, and of calling upon the name of the Lord.

No, it seems to me that the Lord is speaking of how we can learn to live in the life that He has for us.

In my case one more step was needed. At the end of my three years of spiritual adjustment, I made a contract with God. My heart was filled with the things of heaven. But there was something that I needed to do. I realized this sounds strange but the Lord Himself had drawn me to this place.

 

A Contract With Heaven

Yes, I made a contract with God. This was my contract – I told the Lord that I would go anywhere He wanted me to go, and I would do anything He wanted me to do, that my life was no longer mine to direct. But there were two things that I wanted from Him. First of all I ask the Lord to tell me personally what He wanted me to do and not send someone else to tell me. And, secondly, I must have my wife.

The Lord accepted my contract. In such a short time He opened to us the gate to miracle land. Betty and I, along with our sons and our new daughter were back into full-time gospel ministry. That was 1975.

Oh yes, there were many more lessons to learn, but into miracle land we ventured. Now we had the answer to every need, to every trial, to every circumstance that would come our way. We were experiencing God’s character, God’s heart, and God’s faithfulness.

I wish I had time and space to share more on our journey into miracle land. But alas, the story is still being written.

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God’s Great and Mighty Promises

So, what is the real point in all this? Let’s hear it from the apostle Peter — 

“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. (everything has already been provided for.)

“For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.” (2Pe 1:2-4 NASB)

Did you catch it? Living by faith is nothing less than living on His precious and magnificent promises. The land of faith is also called the land of promise. You don’t earn the promises. You are an heir of the promises.

Listen to how Paul adds to this:

“For the Son of God, Christ Jesus, who was preached among you by us–by me and Silvanus and Timothy–was not yes and no, but is yes in Him. For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they are yes; therefore also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us.” (2Co 1:19-20 NASB)

The Lord God has laid out before us great and mighty promises. We are the heirs of those promises.

Here’s the problem. How can you live by the promises of God if you don’t know what they are? Living by faith is not living by our feelings, or emotions, or ‘I hope so’, or, some esoteric experience, and so on and so on and so on. Living by faith has to have an anchor. It has to have a divine connection with the Lord Jesus Himself.

The anchor of the faith walk will always center on the Word of God. We are to believe in, and live from the promises of God. We are the very heirs of God and of all the Christ promises.

What more can I say. I shared just a bit of my walk down memory lane. I’ve had so many people ask me to write a book about the things I learned. But how can I do that. The book has already been written.

Have you made your full surrender? Here is a song. Let it speak to your heart.

 

 

Think about it.

Always your servant in Christ,

Buddy

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